Climate Change
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The Amazon in peril: The life and death of the world’s most diverse biome
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Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is one of the world’s most extensively researched ecological zones. In addition to its rich biodiversity and economic importance to Brazil, the Amazon is also one of the largest land-based sinks of atmospheric carbon in the world. A significant body of ecological research regarding the Amazon focuses…
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The Health Consequences of Climate Change
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The earth has warmed by 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.9 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century. This may seem insignificant to a layperson, but scientists and health experts agree that climate change poses a serious threat not only to the environment, but also to our health. In a recent study…
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Indigenous Knowledge Can Help Address Climate Change
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As climate change increasingly threatens populations across the globe, indigenous communities relying on rain-fed agriculture are especially vulnerable. Yet governments and policymakers have developed and implemented climate change adaptation plans rooted almost exclusively in Western scientific knowledge. These plans have consistently ignored or omitted the knowledge and expertise developed by…
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For Climate Migrants, Does the Past Shape Current Perceptions of Conflict?
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As climate change has altered environments across the globe, it has caused mass migration. For example, an intense drought in Honduras recently led thousands of people to leave their homes and head north to Mexico for an opportunity to earn an agriculture-based living. In Honduras and many other countries impacted…
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Vulnerability: Agricultural Workers and Climate Change
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Since the broad discovery of climate change in the 1970s, researchers and scientists have attempted to understand its wide-ranging effects. Previous studies have extensively examined the relationship of climate to water access, human health, economic development, and global food supply. But as researchers tend to focus on the larger-scale threats…
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The Role of Climate Change in Africa’s Urbanization
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Globalization and structural changes in African economies are contributing to rapid urbanization—with 50 percent of the population predicted to live in urban areas by 2030, compared to 36 percent in 2010. Simultaneously, climate change is projected to have significant impacts on the African landscape with decreased precipitation, increased aridity, and…
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What are the True Costs of Natural Disasters?
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With a year that included severe monsoon flooding in Bangladesh, earthquakes in Mexico, and hurricanes in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, 2017 was an exceptionally bad year for natural disasters. Policies can help mitigate these tragedies, but to start we must better understand a disaster’s true costs. Conventional metrics consider…
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Can Geo-Simulations Provide A Roadmap to Better Disaster Response?
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The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season was one of the priciest on record, mirroring a global trend of natural disasters becoming more expensive. Understanding the impacts of these natural disasters has become increasingly important. Researchers often model these impacts by creating relationships between indicators such as hurricane wind speed, predicted costs…
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Can a Low-Carbon Economy Grow GDP?
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In the face of climate change, the most effective way to ensure that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are slowed or stopped is by transitioning to a low-carbon economy. From an economic standpoint, however, this switch is no easy feat. A recently published study from the World Bank focuses on two…
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Calculating the Health Benefits of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
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The implementation of a carbon cap and trade program is often put forward by policy makers as a potential market-based solution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) in the United States. Instead of waiting on the federal government, in 2009, several Northeastern states initiated their own cap and trade program…
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The Financial Impact of Natural Disasters: Beyond Disaster Aid
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Recent wildfires in California and catastrophic flooding in Louisiana have drawn public attention to natural disasters across the United States. Yet little is known about the total financial impact of extreme weather events, particularly on non-disaster social programs. Considering that the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events is expected…