Biography |
Current Research |
Selected Publications |
Teaching/Taught
Current Research
I am working on several inter-related projects looking at the impacts of global environmental change in local environments and on households and communities. Some of my major areas of research interest include: socio-economics of biodiversity conservation; protected areas management and participation in natural resources management; vulnerability and adaptation to climate change; climate change mitigation policy in developing countries; international poverty, environment and development nexus; and environmental security and environmental impacts of war and conflict.
CLIMATE CHANGE
My most recent ongoing projects include a study of social adaptation and vulnerability to climate change scenarios in Vietnam, one of the top 10 countries in the world projected to be most effected by climate change this century. This project collected data in 2009-10 from several different landscapes in Vietnam facing physical threats like increased aridity, rising sea levels, and increased riverine flooding. A report I authored on the Social Dimensions of Climate Change in Vietnam was published by the World Bank in 2010.
Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD)
With funding from the NSF’s Geography and Spatial Sciences division, I am PI on a new project to evaluate new forest carbon market policies in Vietnam, known as reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). This project will analyze the ways in which payments for environmental services like carbon sequestration alter land-use decision making by smallholder households; evaluate if these changes in land use serve to increase or reduce overall social and biophysical vulnerability to future climate changes; and assess how local understandings of household decision making and land use influence subnational and national policy to implement global goals like REDD. A multi-scale, multi-method research design will be used, including observational data, surveys, household accounting diaries, key informant interviews, policy analysis, forest monitoring, and spatial analysis of land-use change. This project will be field-based in three sites in Vietnam (highland coffee agro-forests of central Vietnam, limestone forests of northern Vietnam, and lowland tropical forests of the Annamite Cordillera). My collaborating institutions are the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies in Hanoi and Tropenbos International Vietnam in Hue.
MIGRATION
I have an ongoing research project on migration, environmental change, and environmental security. Along with co-PI Chris Duncan, Arizona State University, and funded by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation‘s Program on Global Security and Sustainability, the project collected data from large-scale multi-sited field studies with migrant communities in Vietnam and Indonesia. The surveys were used to investigate the role migration plays in household land-use decisions, and the possible impacts of future climate change on adaptation and migration strategies. Work from this project will be forthcoming.
BIODIVERSITY
I am completing a manuscript on challenges for biodiversity conservation in developing countries, which looks at global policies like the Convention on Biological Diversity and the socio-economic challenges of protected areas planning, titled “Why Conservation Fails: Species, Landscapes, and Environmental Globalization in Vietnam”. The book asks why, given an explosion in the number of protected areas and global treaties on biodiversity, has species loss actually increased in most parts of the developing world. I explore how globalization has impacted the work of biodiversity conservation and how this work might be improved. Several articles on my biodiversity research in Vietnam have been published in Environmental Conservation, Environmental Management, Ambio, Conservation and Society, Geoforum, and other journals
