“Climate Change, Migration, and Inequality”

Filiz Garip (Princeton University)

There are over 10 million Mexican migrants in the United States; about half are undocumented. This work connects the historical mobility patterns to the United States extreme weather conditions in Mexico. The analysis combines predictive machine learning tools with mechanism-based statistical models. The results show that combination and sequencing of droughts are critical to all aspects of the migration process: who migrates, whether migrants use clandestine channels to cross, and when they return to Mexico.

Lunch will be served:

1. Buffalo Chicken Wrap (buffalo chicken, chopped romaine, and shredded carrots with ranch dressing)
2. The Riviera (turkey, brie cheese & thinly sliced granny smith apple with lettuce & cranberry mayonnaise on a croissant)
3. Roasted Vegetable Stack Sandwich (grilled portabella mushroom, roasted red pepper, caramelized onion and other seasonal grilled vegetables topped with a balsamic glaze, served on a brioche roll)
4. Chick Pea Salad Wrap (chick peas, dill, parsley and celery tossed with vegan mayonnaise, served with lettuce, tomato in an herb wrap)
5. Potato salad
6. Cookies & mini brownies
7. Soda and water

The History Department hosts Wednesday Workshops several times throughout the semester to further scholarly dialogue among graduate students, faculty, and visiting scholars. In the form of a brownbag lunch, the speaker presents their research-in-progress and then engages in a Q&A with the audience. 

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From hatchet to seed: Grassroots-led intersectional feminist political ecology for transforming tree-based climate action

Hanson Nyantakyi-Frimpong

Department of Geography & the Environment, University of Denver

Abstract

Since its inception over four decades ago, a major shortcoming of political ecology has been its excessive focus on criticisms while offering few direct solutions. Political ecology research that aims at incisive criticism is often called a ‘hatchet,’ while work focusing directly on nurturing possibilities for social change is called ‘seed work.’ Thus far, how to do political ecology seed work has received relatively scant attention in the geographic literature. In this talk, I will highlight one potential way of doing seed work using a grassroots-led intersectional feminist political ecology approach. Drawing empirical material from a shade-grown cocoa and carbon offset project in West Africa, I will demonstrate the power and transformative nature of seed work. I will further reflect on the difficulty of doing political ecology seed work and argue that although it can be time-consuming and stressful, it is needed now more than ever to support ongoing struggles against social and environmental injustices. In addition to grassroots-led action research, this talk will highlight other approaches through which political ecologists have engaged in seed work and from which the field’s newcomers and current practitioners can learn from.