Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources

This article discusses the history of natural disasters in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru, during the 1970–2011 period. The study analyzed general disaster data over this timeframe and more broadly about glacial disasters from 1725 to 2010 AD. Historically, the region has been affected by a series of glacial disasters that left more than 26,000 people dead. Thus, this article examines the impact of these glacial disasters, considering that they trigger processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in the region. The following methodological strategies were adopted: fieldwork; semi-structured interviews conducted with glacial disaster survivors and environmental managers; literature review on the subject. We propose that climate change increases the risk of glacier-related disasters. From these reports, it has been possible to verify that deterritorialization implies the affectation of the inhabitant’s daily life, the break of relations and links with the place. Moreover, glacial disasters cause a process of abrupt deterritorialization and, consequently, a reterritorialization that will develop more slowly, opening an intense field of disputes between the different involved actors, arousing social conflicts.

As mudanças climáticas e os desastres glaciais afetam diretamente as populações periglaciais andinas nas esferas ambientais, sociais, econômicas e culturais. O aquecimento atmosférico regional está provocando a crescente retração das geleiras na Cordilheira Branca (Peru) ao longo das últimas décadas. O derretimento dessas geleiras implica, entre outras consequências, na formação de lagoas glaciais e o acréscimo do volume daquelas pré-existentes, o que aumenta a possibilidade de desastres glaciais. Assim, este trabalho relata investigações sobre percepções, adaptações e inadaptações às mudanças climáticas e aos desastres glaciais na Cordilheira Branca, Departamento de Ancash, Peru, por meio do método etnográfico junto às comunidades campesinas de Vicos e Humacchuco, incluindo a observação direta e entrevistas semiestruturadas com gestores e campesinos. As medidas adotadas pelos gestores são, predominantemente, obras de engenharia para reduzir os desastres, como o aumento dos diques e...

Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) are among the most concerning consequences of retreating glaciers in mountain ranges worldwide. GLOFs have attracted significant attention amongst scientists and practitioners in the past 2 decades, with particular interest in the physical drivers and mechanisms of GLOF hazard and in socioeconomic and other human-related developments that affect vulnerabilities to GLOF events. This increased research focus on GLOFs is reflected in the gradually increasing number of papers published annually. This study offers an overview of recent GLOF research by analysing 594 peer-reviewed GLOF studies published between 2017 and 2021 (Web of Science and Scopus databases), reviewing the content and geographical focus as well as other characteristics of GLOF studies. This review is complemented with perspectives from the first GLOF conference (7–9 July 2021, online) where a global GLOF research community of major mountain regions gathered to discuss the current state of the art of integrated GLOF research. Therefore, representatives from 17 countries identified and elaborated trends and challenges and proposed possible ways forward to navigate future GLOF research, in four thematic areas: (i) understanding GLOFs – timing and processes; (ii) modelling GLOFs and GLOF process chains;
(iii) GLOF risk management, prevention and warning; and (iv) human dimensions of GLOFs and GLOF attribution to climate change.

Climate change and glacial disasters directly affect the Andean periglacial populations in the environmental, social, economic and cultural spheres. Regional atmospheric warming is causing an increasing retreat of glaciers in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru. The melting of these glaciers causes, among other consequences, the formation of new glacial lagoons and an increase in volume of the pre-existing lagoons; both phenomena increase the possibility of glacial disasters. Thus, this paper reports an investigation of perceptions and adaptations to climatic change and glacial disasters in the Cordillera Blanca, Department of Ancash, Peru, through the ethnographic method with the campesino communities of Vicos and Humacchuco; this method included observations and semi-structured interviews with managers and campesinos. The measures adopted by the managers are, predominantly, engineering to reduce disasters, such as increasing of dike sizes and lagoon drainages. The retreat of the glaciers, as noted by the campesino communities themselves, is the main perception of the impacts of climate change. We suggest that the choice of safe places to live in campesino communities is the main strategy of adaptation and is related to an ancestral ethnoknowledge. The reterritorialization of sites susceptible to glacial disasters is not only due to the need to have a place (to plant, to live), but is also due to the topophilic feelings formed by the affective link between a person and a place. There is a central and structural issue that adds to these problems: the development model prevailing in Peruvian postcolonial society tends to complicate possible strategies for adapting to climate change in the Andes.

This article aims to analyze the contamination of water and bottom sediment at Arroio Moinho (Mill Stream), in Porto Alegre (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil). From two sample collections, a series of diagnostic measurements were carried out, such as: a) physical-chemical and biological analysis of the water; b) water quality index (WQI); c) metal contamination, granulometric and mineralogical analyses of the bottom sediment; d) total organic carbon (TOC); e) categorization into water quality classes; f) contamination factor (CF) and geoaccumulation index (Igeo) geoindicators; g) analysis of per capita income and population density. The analytical results of the water at the two sample locations exceeded the limits established by Class 4 (restricted use). The WQI revealed the worst level (very bad in 2012 and bad in 2018) at all sampling points. The bottom sediment analysis showed that the spring has a low fine-grained fraction content (3%) and TOC levels between 8 and 17%. However, the se...

As periferias das cidades e seus moradores são representadas por estigmas que se (re)produzem com marcas de um estereótipo imutável, através de valores depreciativos que atribuem a elas as mazelas da cidade. Contudo, é importante investigar se a cultura destas populações é formada apenas por carências e violências, como faz crer o discurso único – registrado como um geografismo – que é constituído para estes lugares. Nessa perspectiva, como o bairro Rubem Berta abrange uma área de grande extensão, com uma série de loteamentos, vilas e conjuntos habitacionais, cada um com suas especificidades, a presente pesquisa investiga os olhares que apreendem um desses conjuntos habitacionais, o Conjunto Residencial Rubem Berta – Porto Alegre, RS. Trata-se de um estudo de caso que faz uma análise a partir dos conceitos de lugar e paisagem, buscando compreender na percepção de moradores e lideranças e de não-moradores que trabalham no bairro os diferentes sentidos que estes indivíduos atribuem a este lugar. A abordagem do trabalho seguiu a linha da Geografia Cultural e Humanística como diretriz investigatória, baseando-se nos relatos locais, nos relatos não-locais, nos dados do IBGE e em reportagens jornalísticas, tendo como método a Análise de Discurso. As análises permitiram reconhecer que as experiências topofílicas coexistem em muitos casos com experiências topofóbicas, evidenciando, por meio destas vivências, uma infinidade de olhares sob o conjunto habitacional. Nesse sentido, o estudo permitiu a leitura do Conjunto Residencial Rubem Berta, não como o discurso único o expressa, ou seja, como algo homogêneo, mas sim como um lócus de pluralidades, de pensamentos, de ideias e ideais que expressam o conjunto habitacional como heterogeneidade, repleto de especificidades.The periphery of cities and their residents are represented by stigmas that are (re)produce with marks an immutable stereotype through derogatory values to assign to them the city’s ills. However, it is important to investigate whether the culture of these populations is formed only by deprivation and violence, as does believe the only speech – registered as a geographism – which is made for these places. In this perspective, as the Rubem Berta neighborhood covers a large expanse of area, with a number of settlements, villages and housing developments, each with its specific features, this research investigates the looks seizing one of these housing complexes, the Residential Complex Rubem Berta – Porto Alegre, RS. This is a case study that analyzes based on the concepts of place and landscape, trying to understand the perception of residents and leaders and non-residents (who work in the neighborhood) the different meanings that these individuals attribute to this place. The approach to work followed the line of the Cultural and Humanistic Geography as investigative directive, based on local reports, the non-local reports, the IBGE data and newspaper reports, with the method Discourse Analysis. The analysis allows to recognize that topophilics experiences coexist in many cases with topophobics experiences, showing, through these experiences, an infinities of looks in the housing complex. In this sense, the study allowed the reading of the Residential Complex Rubem Berta, not as the only speech expresses, that is, as something homogeneous, but as a locus of pluralities of thoughts, ideas and ideals that express the housing as heterogeneity, full of specifics

As a comment on India post-Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie’s 1995 novel The Moor’s Last Sigh offers a broad-based critique of modern India within the context of economic policy shifts in India following independence from British rule in 1947.  The gradual implementation of neoliberal economic policies in the 1980s and 1990s accompanied India’s emergence as a major player in the global capitalist economy but also led to drastic increases in income inequality, unemployment, and the proliferation of a vast informal sector of exploitable human capital. Rushdie's novel identifies India's entrepreneurial and capitalist classes, specifically in Mumbai/Bombay, as complicit in the exacerbation of class disparity which has led, in many cases, to increased Hindu-Muslim cultural tensions and the growing ubiquity of government corruption and organized crime. The novel offers additional insight into the exploitative logic of Hindu nationalist politics through its parodic depiction of the Shiv Sena party, which owes much of its political clout to the maintenance of a patriarchal, mafia-esque relationship with urban slum-dwellers. The Moor's Last Sigh delineates new and complex forms of oppression and exploitation in postcolonial India that often occur simultaneously along class and cultural lines.

How can the imagination help us cope with, confront, and overcome contemporary ecological crises such as climate change, resource scarcity, and environmental injustice? Can the humanities help humans simultaneously re-imagine a relationship with the natural world that has frequently been defined in oppositional terms (nature vs. culture) while also improving the well-being of marginalized cultural groups throughout the world?

This course seeks to answer these questions by filtering them through contemporary crises surrounding our most precious resource: water. Turning to literature, film, and literary criticism, we will explore the cultural, economic, and ecological significance of water in diverse cultural contexts. Along the way, we’ll discuss the promises and pitfalls of early environmentalist approaches to river conservation; the convoluted history of dam-building in the American West; indigenous cosmological approaches to resource use in the American Southwest; the ravages of water privatization in Pakistan; hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), groundwater contamination, and the exploitation of rural working class communities in Pennsylvania; and an apocalyptic vision of a near-future Phoenix, Arizona ravaged by a megadrought.

"Victor and the Fish" was selected as runner-up for a global climate fiction contest organized by Arizona State University's Center for Science and the Imagination as part of the Climate Futures Initiative. It was judged by a multidisciplinary field of climate fiction experts including esteemed science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson.