Inequities and exclusions, compounded by the increasing intensity of extreme weather events, pose significant challenges to urban planning for low-elevation coastal zones (LECZ). Inclusive development (ID) and urban flood resilience (UFR) have emerged as widely endorsed solutions by scholars. Granting that they gain substantial support and enthusiasm, they have the potential to transform vulnerable urban areas. While their noble intentions are commendable, the intricacies of ID cannot be overlooked, as UFR often inherits and perpetuates the inequalities ingrained in conventional development paradigms. Given the critical importance of ID and UFR in contemporary urban planning, my dissertation research devolved into their fusion by answering my main research question, what constitutes inclusive urban flood resilience? This investigation was carried out through a series of four secondary research questions distributed over three academic papers, each contributing a unique perspective and insights to this burgeoning field. Through a systematic literature review and employing bibliometric and thematic analyses, Chapter 2 offers a comprehensive understanding of inclusive development and a refined definition of the concept. Subsequently, taking Georgetown, the capital city of Guyana, as a case study, Chapter 3 estimates its UFR and employs dimensionality reduction by way of principal component analysis to present these findings in a transparent manner. Chapter 4 builds on the findings of the previous chapters, by first presenting a novel approach to evaluate inclusive development within the framework of the results of Chapter 2, and secondly, together with a systematic meta-analysis of flood resilience measurements, it offers an examination of the ID-UFR nexus. The findings suggest that the concept of inclusive development is nuanced by context-specific definitions, that flood resilience in Georgetown varies among its sub-districts, and that city dimensions (natural, built, social, economic, and institutional), as assessed by pooling global studies, do not share synergistic relationships, being a measure of inclusive development. These findings are critical to urban planning in Georgetown and similar contexts globally as they provide data-driven guidance for understanding these concepts and applying them toward developing inclusive and flood-resilient cities and communities.

ABSTRACTEffective policy development will be critical to address educational challenges within the Global South. To accelerate economic, political, and social goals, the Global South is under increasing pressure to mimic policy development from other countries. In 2016, the Liberian Ministry of Education leveraged policy transfer to address systemic primary education challenges. Originally known as Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL) and later renamed the Liberian Education Advancement Program (LEAP), the education policy outsourced the management of primary schools through a public private partnership inclusive of eight organizations. As part of the pilot, 185 schools were randomly selected in the policy pilot; 93 operating under the new public private partnership and 92 remaining under government operations. However, the sample schools did not represent the country. Rather, LEAP schools were selected based on infrastructure standards, proximity to major roads, and cell phone capabilities. This research creates a new conceptual framework related to education borrowing, incorporating existing theories and new concepts into a single explanatory mixed-methods case study design. It aims to examine stakeholders in the education borrowing process, factors influencing the adoption of LEAP, and the process of establishing policy transfer. The research also explores whether differences exist in education access, the availability of information and communication technologies, and education quality between LEAP and non-LEAP schools. The quantitative component of the research includes secondary data analysis, through semi-structured interviews with 19 participants with direct knowledge and experience related to LEAP. The quantitative approach utilizes Pearson’s Chi-Square Test for Independence, Fisher’s Exact Test, and independent sample t-tests. The qualitative component of the research employs Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic framework to analyze the process components of policy transfer. The findings suggest improvements in some elements of education, support existing research on education borrowing, and notes persistent challenges in these areas and the cultivation of new obstacles due to LEAP. Through the addition of new conceptual and contextual research, the study contributes new knowledge to global development and intersecting disciplines regarding how countries like Liberia navigate the successes and challenges of education borrowing. Keywords: Global South, Liberia, policy transfer, education borrowing, and primary education

Producing, transforming, distributing, and consuming food requires a multitude of actors, from the microbes in the soil to the truck drivers, from the salesperson to the bacterial life that supports digestion. Yet, the global food system – far from being neutral – unequally provides and extracts resources around the globe to serve and protect the needs of some, while excluding and/or oppressing others and producing trauma in the process. Drawing on feminist scholarship and permaculture research – two fields that discuss the importance of care but only rarely work together – and using social science methods, I explore how to integrate care into food systems, and what are the outcomes of such an integration. I first bring together the voices of 35 everyday experts from Cuba, France, and the United States (Arizona) and perspectives from ethics of care, creation care, indigenous scholars, and permaculture specialists, and I use grounded theory to develop a definition of care in food systems context, and a conceptual map of care that identifies motives for caring, caring practices and their results. I then discuss how caring practices enhance food systems’ adaptive capacity and resilience. Next, I study the relationship between a subset of the identified caring practices – what is recognized as “Earth care” – and their effect on well-being in general, and Food Well-Being more specifically, using three case studies from Arizona based on: (1) interviews of school teachers, (2) interviews of sustainable farmers, (3) a survey with 96 gardeners. There, I also discuss how policies and cultural transformations can better support the integration of Earth care practices in food systems. Then, I examine how urban food autonomy movements are grassroots examples of integration of care in food systems, and how through their care practices – Earth care, “People care” and “Fair share” – they can serve as a catalyst for social change and contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Lastly, I conclude with recommendations to strengthen a culture of care in food systems, as well as limitations to my research, and future research directions.

As one of the countries highly vulnerable to climate change, Nepal has developed climate adaptation policy objectives and integrated risk management strategies to avoid severe impacts from changing climatic conditions. The country has been developing local level adaptation initiatives to create synergy between the policy objectives at the higher levels and location-specific needs of communities. This dissertation analyzes how these initiatives have been shaped by the national and global level discourse on climate adaptation and how they translate into building resilience at the community level. More specifically, using the case of Nepal’s flagship adaptation programs - Local Adaptation Plans of Action (LAPA) and Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) - this dissertation seeks to understand institutional and technological innovations that contributed to the governance of climate adaptation initiatives in Nepal. Methodologically, this dissertation applies a mixed method. Quantitative data was collected by interviewing local level stakeholders using semi-structured questionnaires and from policy documents. The transcripts from the open-ended interviews with the regional and national level stakeholders form the basis for qualitative analysis. Overall, the findings from this dissertation reveal that most of the adaptation activities proposed by local communities were low cost, based on experiential learning, and could be implemented by mobilizing local resources. The case of LAPA shows that community-based adaptation activities are strongly connected to local development goals, revealing the synergy between adaptation policy objectives and development. Likewise, the case of CSA demonstrates how innovations, both technological and institutional, are fostered to co-produce locally specific knowledge required to adapt to changing climate. The collaborative efforts by different institutions operating at multiple levels for scaling CSA through the Climate Smart Village approach provide justification for working together to address the climate adaptation policy objectives. The findings of this dissertation also reveal that the distinction between local and scientific knowledge makes little sense at the community level as successful climate adaptation requires hybrid approaches. This dissertation makes a strong case to enhance the governance of adaptation initiatives through stronger collaboration between local to national and global actors.

Farmer-Managed Irrigation Systems (FMIS) are community managed and operated irrigation systems, celebrated for their successful governance of water resources for many decades and in several countries. Nevertheless, in the face of climatic, political, and social change, their future is uncertain. This dissertation utilizes household adaptive capacity, socio-ecological system (SES) robustness, and the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to structure a multi-scalar and multi-stressor analysis of changes experienced in Nepal’s FMIS. The dissertation documents irrigators’ perception of environmental change, impacts, and response; diagnoses the multiple disturbances impacting the robustness of the FMIS; and analyzes changes in the FMIS as an institution over time, in an effort to understand the major drivers of SES change. Fifteen FMIS from five districts of Nepal were selected for the study. Data were collected through field observations, household surveys, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions. The status of the existing rules was compared with the data collected three decades ago in the Nepal Irrigation Institutions and Systems database. This study finds that FMIS’s robustness is threatened by uncertain water supply, inefficient infrastructure, scarcity of farm labor, weakening collective action, and natural disasters. Farm households, whose actions are necessary to sustain the management of FMIS, perceive environmental change differently according to their ecological region and position along the irrigation canal, leading to different adaptation strategies. Despite livelihood diversification, irrigators rely primarily on irrigation infrastructure management to respond to the impacts of environmental change. Institutional analysis demonstrates the evolution of FMIS in terms of working rules in the face of multiple stressors. In this study, payoff, information, and position rules have exhibited the most substantive change. However, boundary, choice, aggregation, and scope rules are less likely to change. The findings of this work point to the need for geographically differentiated adaptation support policies, and a need for closer attention to the dynamics of labor, environmental change, and institutional persistence in agriculture and irrigation sectors. FMIS being an exemplary institutional arrangement for the study of a SES, the research findings benefit similar institutions globally facing challenges to the sustainable governance of common pool resources.

Agriculture is the second largest water consumer in the Phoenix Metropolitan region, after the municipal sector. A significant portion of the cultivated land and agricultural water demand is from the production of animal feed, including alfalfa (~69% of total cropland area), corn (~8), and sorghum (-3%), which are both exported and needed to support local dairy industry. The goal of this thesis is to evaluate the impacts on water demand and crop production of four different crop portfolios using alfalfa, corn, sorghum, and feed barley. For this aim, the Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) platform and the embedded MABIA agronomic module are applied to the Phoenix Active Management Area (AMA), a political/hydrological region including most of Phoenix Metro. The simulations indicate that the most efficient solution is a portfolio where all study crop production is made up by sorghum, with an increase of 153% in crop yield and a reduction of 60% of water consumption compared to current conditions. In contrast, a portfolio where all study crop production is made up by alfalfa, which is primary crop grown in current conditions, decreased crop yield by 77% and increases water demand by 105%. Solutions where all study crop production is achieved with corn or feed barley lead to a reduction of 77% and 65% of each respective water demand, with a portfolio of all corn for study crop production increasing crop yield by 245% and a portfolio of all feed barley for study crop production reducing crop yield by 29%.

ABSTRACT

Human and wildlife behavior, governance, and economics are often cited obstacles to wildlife conservation. Accordingly, conservation research has historically been conducted in the exterior terrains of behavior and systems, which can be empirically observed or known through systemic analysis and applied through institutional or technical fixes. However, conservation interventions are failing because they do not adequately address the influence of individual and collective interior phenomena including psychological states, worldviews, values, and identities of stakeholders, which can bear decisively on conservation outcomes.

This critical analysis of wildlife conservation science and the social and political histories of Southwestern landscapes illustrates the mechanism of social, cultural, and media narrative linking four irreducible perspectives of the natural world: the I, WE, IT and ITS, or the psychological, cultural, behavioral and structural/systemic terrains, which ground contemporary conservation. Through the conceptual [Re]animation of conservation, this research justifies a more-than-human approach to wildlife conservation that resists the ontological privilege of the human and contemplates human and non-human animals as vitally linked in their mutually relational, perceptual and material environments. The approach extends the human to the natural environment and also accounts for the individual and social needs and perspectives of wild animals, which shape their adaptation to changing environments and conservation interventions.

A qualitative analysis of emotion, metaphor, and narrative utilizing an Integral Ecology framework explores how psychological and cultural terrains link to, and influence, the behavioral and systemic terrains of Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) conservation in the U.S. Southwest. This research disentangles and comprehensively maps influential elements in the four terrains; enhancing relational knowledge on human-predator coexistence and conservation governance in the Southwest.

Climate change impacts are evident throughout the world, particularly in the low lying coastal areas. The multidimensional nature and cross-scale impacts of climate change require a concerted effort from different organizations operating at multiple levels of governance. The efficiency and effectiveness of the adaptation actions of these organizations rely on the problem framings, network structure, and power dynamics of the organizations and the challenges they encounter. Nevertheless, knowledge on how organizations within multi-level governance arrangements frame vulnerability, how the adaptation governance structure shapes their roles, how power dynamics affect the governance process, and how barriers emerge in adaptation governance as a result of multi-level interactions is limited. In this dissertation research, a multilevel governance perspective has been adopted to address these knowledge gaps through a case study of flood risk management in coastal Bangladesh. Key-informant interviews, systematic literature review, spatial multi-criteria decision analysis, social network analysis (SNA), and content analysis techniques have been used to collect and analyze data. This research finds that the organizations involved in adaptation governance generally have aligned framings of vulnerability, irrespective of the level at which they are operated, thus facilitating adaptation decision-making. However, this alignment raises concerns of a neglect of socio-economic aspects of vulnerability, potentially undermining adaptation initiatives. This study further finds that the adaptation governance process is elite-pluralistic in nature, but has a coexistence of top-down and bottom-up processes in different phases of adaptation actions. The analysis of power dynamics discloses the dominance of a few national level organizations in the adaptation governance process in Bangladesh. Lastly, four mechanisms have been found that can explain how organizational culture, practices, and preferences dictate the emergence of barriers in the adaptation governance process. This dissertation research overall advances our understanding on the significance of multilevel governance approach in climate change adaptation governance.

Institutional factors are rarely examined in disaster risks in the Himalayan region, as much of the focus so far has been on improving the scientific understanding of the natural hazards and risks. This is particularly true for glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs), which are natural hazards endemic to high mountain ranges such as the Andes, Alps, and Himalayas. While these have put mountain communities at risk for centuries, vulnerability is viewed to be increasing due to climate change. While the science behind the causes and characteristics of these hazards is now better understood, there is an absence of research understanding the social, cultural and institutional drivers behind creating effective strategies to mitigate risks from GLOFs. This is more so for the Himalayan region, where institutions have recently started to address this risk, but contention between local communities and external organizations can hinder mitigation efforts. To better understand how people’s perception towards disaster risk, a study conducted by Sherpa et al. (2019) examined the socio-economic and cultural perceptions surrounding GLOF hazards.

This research highlighted gaps in how scientific knowledge is disseminated to local communities, and the resulting distrust in government mitigation projects such as lake lowering and Early Warning Systems. A clear need developed to conduct an institutional analysis of the governance systems responsible for disaster risk management and their interaction with local communities. This study examines the institutional conditions under which mountain communities create effective adaptation strategies to address climate induced hazards. We use a mixed-methods approach, combining: a) quantitative analysis of household surveys collected in 2016-2017 and b) qualitative analysis that maps out the various factors of institutions that influence the success of community-based adaptation efforts. Additionally, GLOF case studies from Nepal are compared to those in Peru, where institutions have a longer history of managing GLOF risks. The research finds that there are several considerations including: lack of cross-scalar communication networks, lack of local knowledge and participation in policy processes, and ineffective interorganizational coordination of knowledge sharing and funding streams for local projects. This disconnect between external versus local and informal institutions becomes an inherent issue in projects where agenda setting by external organizations plays prevalent roles in project implementation.

In Nepal, a viable solution for environmental management, food and water security is the production of biochar, a carbon material made of plants burned in low oxygen conditions. Currently, the biochar is manufactured into charcoal briquettes and sold on the market for energy usage, however this may not provide the best value for community members who make less than a dollar a day and sell the biochar for as little as 16 cents per kilogram. This thesis seeks to improve the price of biochar and help their livelihoods as well as explore innovative solutions. One way to improve biochar while addressing water security problems is to create activated carbon, which uses its heightened porosity to adsorb contaminants from water or air. Activated carbon is also worth 100x the price of biochar. This thesis evaluates the mass content of biochar produced in Nepal, comparing it to literature values, and performed gravimetric and thermogravimetric analysis, comparing it to Activated Charcoal. Analysis of the biochar system used in Nepal reveals that the byproduct of biochar, biofuels, is highly underutilized. The higher heating value of biochar is 17.95 MJ/kg, which is much lower than other charcoals which burn around 30 MJ/kg. Low volatile content, less than 5% in biochar, provides a smokeless briquette, which is favorable on the market, however low heating value and misutilizations of biofuels in the solution indicate that creating a briquette is not the best use for biochar. Ash content is really high in this biochar, averaging around 12% and it may be due to the feedstock, a composite between Mikania and Lantana, which have 5.23% and 10.77% ash content respectively. This does not necessarily indicate a poor quality biochar, since ash values can vary widely between charcoals. Producing activated charcoal from this biochar is a favored solution; it will increase the price of the biochar, provide water security solutions, and be an appropriate process for this biochar, where heating value and underutilization of biofuel byproducts pose a problem.