Research

AGENTS: Amazon governance to enable transformation to sustainability

The Amazon basin hosts locally and globally important environmental services, social-cultural diversity, and economic activities. Governing this region amid accelerated changes is a pressing challenge for Amazonian countries. While government programs are often more visible and certainly important, most sustainable forest and land use management initiatives are locally initiated.

Building upon long-term research of team members, the AGENTS project integrates geospatial analyses and participatory methodologies to assess non-state conservation efforts and challenges via stakeholder engagement, in-depth field research, modeling of land change and conservation, and participatory scenarios. The project is mapping where and how non-state actors sustainably use and conserve forests, agricultural systems, and ecosystems in social-ecologically diverse areas across the region. We will analyze 25 years of land use change in watersheds shared by communal, state, private, and protected lands to identify interactions and conservation patterns. We will define governance problems, research questions, analyze initial results, and draft scenarios in collaboration with diverse land users sharing common watersheds. Support: NSF-USA, FAPESP-Brazil, Vetenskapsrådet-Sweden, NOW-The Netherlands.

Project contact: Eduardo Brondízio

Ecohydrological modeling

Modeling the ecohydrological interactions among land use change, climate variability, and forest condition in the Yadkin-Pee Dee River Basin: This project will synthesize research in hydrology, forest ecology, LULC (land-cover/land-use), and water resources systems to explain and predict the future vulnerability and susceptibility of freshwater supply systems under the climate change along the Mountain-Piedmont-Coastal Plain gradient in the southeastern U.S.

Project contact: Tae Hee Hwang

Indigenous Peoples and the Making of Global Environmental Governance

My research has examined how institutionalized spaces for Indigenous Peoples’ representation and participation in global environmental governance have developed and currently operate within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD). My work is grounded in collaborative, interdisciplinary research and service, and contributes to ongoing debates in environmental politics by focusing on questions of legitimacy, participation, and institutional design. Within this scenario, I explore how Indigenous Peoples actively use these forums as part of broader strategies of resistance, given that bureaucratic language and resulting policies have direct impacts on Indigenous territories and livelihoods. At the same time, Indigenous Peoples have increasingly been positioned as central actors and often portrayed as “saviors” of the climate and biodiversity crises, while continuing to face persistent violations to their rights and land across global, regional, and local levels.

Project contact: Beatriz Lima Ribeiro

The Work of Staying: Aging, Precarity, and Placemaking in a Post-Industrial City

This project examines placemaking in post-industrial landscapes through ethnographic fieldwork with older adults in Dubuque, Iowa who cannot afford to fully retire. Drawing on anthropological approaches to examine aging, labor, and place, it explores how residents navigate economic precarity within communities shaped by industrial decline in the American Midwestern. Focusing on everyday practices, community engagement, and local knowledge, the project highlights how older adults actively remake social and physical landscapes, creating meaningful places within environments often framed only through narratives of economic decline.

Project contact: Rachel Seymour

Following the light: using ‘brightspots’ to prevent future Amazonian fires

Uncontrolled fires are increasing in frequency, scale, and intensity in Amazonia and elsewhere in global tropical rainforests, as a result of land cover change driven by climate change, and resource extraction from tropical rainforests to global wealth centers. This project seeks to identify “brightspots” of effective fire management resulting in positive wellbeing and forest conservation outcomes for local communities in the Brazilian Amazon. “Brightspots” studies highlight positive outliers and success stories in conservation frontiers, and seek to recommend ways to upscale their success; this project is the first to look for brightspots in forest fire prevention, and results will be applied to make recommendations for the application of new Integrated Fire Management strategies in the Amazon biome in Brazil.

Project contact: Grania Power

Bodies of Water: The ethnography WE of the Poetics of Black Feeling–Making

Paulo’s research project Bodies of Water (“Corpos d’água”) explores environmental racism and Black women’s relationships to water. Part of his work offers artistic performance that delves into conceptual realms through poetry and corporeal expression, and he has published a volume of poetry also entitled Bodies of Water. Paulo’s performance invites a sensory experience while reflecting on environmental racism and transcending racial and class boundaries. Focusing on the connection between water and Black women, Paulo’s work highlights the draining of dreams and lives from Black bodies by the state, a situation that dates back to colonial Brazil. The situation Paulo examines constitutes an ongoing cycle of violence deeply rooted in the legacy of slavery and entrenched within institutional frameworks.

Project contact: Paulo Ramos