Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship

Volume 2 Issue 3 Special Issue: Climate, Community, and Article 6 Culture

5-25-2018

Georgetown University Environmental Future(s) Initiative

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Cover Page Footnote Professor Randall Amster, Sophie Faaborg-Andersen, Mandy Lee, and Justin McCartney made up the EFI’s historic delegation to UNEA II. Professor Randall Amster and Professor Yuki Kato provided guidance for, and contributed research to, this collection of articles. For more information about the Environmental Future(s) Initiative, please visit our website, http://environmentalfutures.georgetown.domains/.

This full issue is available in Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship: https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/ vol2/iss3/6 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

The Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship Georgetown University, Environmental Future(s) Initiative Edition Volume II Issue III Spring 2018

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THE UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP Volume II Issue III Spring 2018

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editors in Chief Muireann Woulfe Sydney Williams

Student Editors Emily Danca Natalie Intemann Julia McNicholas

Faculty Advisors Ms. Anita Deeg-Carlin, Fairfield University Associate Director, International Studies Program

Dr. David Crawford, Fairfield University Professor of Sociology and Anthropology

Contact Information: Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship Fairfield University 1073 North Benson Road Fairfield, Connecticut 06824 (203) 254-4000

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Climate, Community, and Culture: A collection of articles centered on key questions surrounding how humanity will contend, both tangibly and psychologically, with climate change in and beyond the 21st century. These articles are the work of members of the Environmental Future(s) Initiative (EFI), a group of students and faculty at Georgetown University dedicated to expanding the latitude for undergraduate students to engage with global environmental challenges. In May 2016, three students and one faculty member of the EFI attended the Second United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA II) in Nairobi, Kenya in order to observe and participate in the conference’s proceedings. The ideas and inspirations that those members of the EFI brought back with them formed the core of the following series of articles:

Urbanism and Sustainable Development: Useful Frameworks for Combating Climate Change Sophie Faaborg-Anderson…………………….……………………………………………...…. 4

Community-Based Water Management in Rural Kenya Mandy Lee……………………………………………………………………………………... 9

Our Environment: A Health Crisis – and What We Must Do to Heal It Justin McCartney……………………………………………………………………………... 24

The Impact (or Lack Thereof) of Recent Environmental Negotiations on Climate Induced Displacement Aaron Silberman……………………………………………………………………………… 37

Engaging Narratives: Environmental Essentialism and Intersectional Justice Professor Randall Amster and Professor Yuki Cato ………………………………………….50

Professor Randall Amster, Sophie Faaborg-Andersen, Mandy Lee, and Justin McCartney made up the EFI’s historic delegation to UNEA II. Professor Randall Amster and Professor Yuki Kato provided guidance for, and contributed research to, this collection of articles.

For more information about the Environmental Future(s) Initiative, please visit our website, http://environmentalfutures.georgetown.domains/.

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market environmentalism (FME) and the URBANISM AND eco-city movement, and to address their social justice implications. SUSTAINABLE Introduction DEVELOPMENT: USEFUL A frequently cited definition of FRAMEWORKS sustainable development comes from the Brundtland Report by the United Nations FOR World Commission on Environment Development (WCED) – “sustainable COMBATING development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising CLIMATE the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”1. The definition implies two CHANGE essential components that create two different sets of best practices for urban SOPHIE FAABORG-ANDERSON development. The first half of the definition addresses the needs of the collective and the Abstract individual by suggesting the importance of meeting standards for an equitable and Our globe is undergoing the greatest surge comfortable lifestyle. The later part of the of urban growth in history, and the number Brundtland definition concerns itself with of people living without access to basic the idea of limitations imposed by social services is increasing. As cities and poverty organization in the context of a finite set of skyrocket in positive correlation, the concept resources. Densely populated urban areas that saving the environment must come at focus on efficiency in providing services to the price of slowed social and economic inhabitants, but the best practices for development becomes increasingly achieving sustainability are widely debated. convincing. While sustainability and Free market environmentalism finds its roots urbanization are not mutually exclusive, mostly in the first part of the Brundtland creating a framework for development that definition and focuses on economic fulfills the needs of an increasingly implications of urban design. On the other urbanized world without undermining the hand, eco-city approach stresses the “ability ability of future generations to satisfy their of future generations to meet their own needs is modeled by a variety of theoretical needs” by considering functional planning approaches. Faced with the challenges and social implications of urban presented by a growing population limited development. by natural resources, realizing sustainable Proponents of a first approach to urban development will require a unique style of design, free market environmentalism leadership that capitalizes on new (FME), view urban sustainability as a opportunities through innovation at the prerogative of the individual and national and regional levels. This paper marketplace, maintaining that economic seeks to outline the demands of two major sustainable urban design theories, free 1 "Topic." Sustainable Development. International Institute 4 for Sustainable Development (IISD), n.d. Web. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 4 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

growth is a prerequisite to improving across the state3. Government ordered environmental quality. As part of a larger reallocation of water creates inefficient neoliberal approach, free market outcomes with winners and losers in which sustainability prioritizes individual freedoms voluntary, social beneficial trades are and innovation in the capitalist marketplace discouraged5. and views economic incentives as the The free market approach to urban driving mechanism for urban development2. sustainability emphasizes adopting market Thus, sustainability and green consumption prices that reflect the scarcity and value of are parts of the individual consumer’s goods. Until December of 2011, residents of freedom and citizenship in a self-regulated Folsom, California were charged a constant marketplace. The free market is the engine monthly rate of $35 for water services, of growth and innovation that powers an rather than a price relative to the volume of economically preferable green lifestyle. Free water consumed6. Daily consumption market environmentalists believe that since averaged an incredible 429 gallons per property rights allow for legitimate person in 2014. Residents of Sacramento, exchanges and gains from trade, the where water services are priced according to marketplaces makes the environment an use, consumed an averaged 150 gallons less asset rather than a liability. By putting a per day, at 279 gallons per day in 2014. price value on environmental assets like land Government-led urban sustainability and natural resources, the market further leads to contradictions across and incentivizes stewardship3. Defaulting to between states and regions. The Endangered political and regulatory processes presents Species Act (ESA) includes a stipulation several challenges in water management, that water from certain river systems that are city planning, and regulatory regimes. home to protected species like the Delta The state of California has been smelt, endemic to the Sacramento-San plagued by severe drought for decades, Joaquin Estuary of California, may not be exacerbated by the inflexible water laws and compromised by commercial and regulatory environment that discourages recreational use of the water source. At the conservation. More than 24 million people same time, the U.S Bureau of Reclamation, have been impacted by the most recent U.S Army Corp of Engineers, and federally period of drought, which State Governor funded Central Valley Project provide water Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency subsidies for farming, hydropower in January of 20144. Free market generation, and other purposes7. The environmentalists point to the $900 million Wildlife & Marine Resource Section loss in crop revenues in 2015 alone to stress (WMRS) of the U.S Department of Justice the severity of the situation. As California’s represents these federal action agencies in population is projected to rise by 6 million litigations seeking to balance the contentious by 2030, water allocation and conservation junction between water use for farming and is a major component of urban sustainability the biological demands of endangered species. The U.S Fish and Wildlife Service 2 Baumol, William J. The Free-Market Innovation Machine: Analyzing the Growth Miracle of Capitalism. N.p.: Princeton UP, 2002. Web. 5 Watson, Reed. "Tapping Water Market in California: Six 3 Lorr, Michael J. "Defining Urban Sustainability in the Policy Reforms." Property and Environment Context of North American Cities." Nature and Culture. 6 "Council Approves Utility Rate Changes." Navigation. Berghahn Journals, Spring 2012. Web. City of Folsom, California, Jan. 2011. Web. 4 "California Drought." California Water Science Center. 7 "The Endangered Species Act and the States." The United States Geological Survey (USGS), 26 Jan. 2017. Endangered Species Act of 1973(2012): 173-202. U.S Fish 5 Web. & Wildlife Service. Web. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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and National Marine Fisheries Services, who both be considered to holistically understand defend the biological needs of ESA- and execute urban development11. protected resources and species, are often Functionally, urban planning deals with use the defendants in such litigations. of shared space and mobility within the city. Conflicting regulation creates tensions A challenge in urban design is making use between state entities, farming communities, of multi-use green spaces that can translate and commercial users of the water sources. to greater urban vitality and a healthier The conflicting regulation is worsened by a lifestyle. The social dimension concerns culturally entrenched “use it or lose it” itself with how the physical environment conceptualization of water as a resource in impacts social groups and individuals. Eco- California. city design views urban space as an A second approach to urban extension of public life as a platform for sustainable development recognizes the ecological citizenship and social interconnected nature of environment and interaction11. Striking the right balance equity, supporting governmental reform and between collective sustainability and new policy ideas for smart growth. individual wellbeing within a shared urban Designing urban environments is becoming environment is a concern of the eco-city an increasingly cross-cutting discipline, movement. including everything from green mass transit Most urban design theories highlight to sustainable movements like New the importance of compact and high density Urbanism and European Urban Renaissance. development in making a city functional and At 6.5 billion urban residents, more than two green. Functional zoning, or the sectioning thirds of the world’s population is projected of urban centers into areas of similar to live in urban areas by 20508. The ethos of purpose or tract of activity, is often cited as the eco-city approach is rooted in a a roadblock to effective urban planning12. synergistic integration of economic Zoning inhibits socially diverse productivity and healthy living, pioneered communities, as racial and economic gaps by theorist and author Richard Register in separate the haves from the have-nots. the mid 1970’s9. Register, who founded the Integrated, multitrack city centers are California based nonprofit Ecocity Builders, necessary and desirable to minimize spearheaded the eco-city movement which commute time and thus car dependency, harmonizes citizenship, regional differences, provide more opportunities for social and existing policies to develop functionally engagement and interactions, and greater integrated yet green urban centers10. choice in lifestyle, location, and access to Eco-city design includes functional/ facilities13. This conventional understanding operational and social dimensions that must has broadened the policy initiatives and support for city farming movements; city 8 Turner, Vicotria. "Sustainable Urbanism: An Integrative Analysis of Master Planned Developments as a Vehicle for Urban Environmental Sustainability." Requirements for the 11 Balula, Luis D. "Urban Design And Planning Policy: Degree Doctor of Philosophy. Arizona State University, Theoretical Foundations and Prospects For A New Aug. 2013. Web. Urbanism." Urban Design and Planning Policy - Metadata. 9 Balula, Luis D. "Urban Design And Planning Policy: The Graduate School of New Brunswick, Jan. 2010. Web. Theoretical Foundations and Prospects For A New 2017. Urbanism." Urban Design and Planning Policy - Metadata. 12 Frug, Gerald E. City Making: Building Communities The Graduate School of New Brunswick, Jan. 2010. Web. Without Building Walls. N.p.: Princeton UP, 2001. Print. 2017. 13 Grace, Lee Ka Lee. "Sustainable Urban Renewal Model 10 "Founder and Emissary of Ecocity Builders." Visionary for a High Density City - Hong Kong." Department of Revolutionary - Richard Register. Ecocity Builders, n.d. Building and Real Estate. The Hong Kong Polytechnic 6 Web. University, June 2008. Web. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 6 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

governments have crafted policies includes educating citizens about the permitting small-scale livestock and disadvantages of commercial agribusiness revisited building codes to authorize rooftop and mass farming, and lobbying against the gardens, while both state and municipal use of pesticides and genetic engineering. governments promote commercial urban The shift towards less polluted, congested farming with tax incentives. urban centers is a cornerstone of the social The disproportionate focus and dimension of eco-city urban development16. reliance on traffic engineering has led to city A growing literature on urban layouts that prioritize transport by car and sustainability casts cities in a new light, make travel by bike or foot impractical if not characterizing urban hubs less as epicenters hazardous. Functional urban design must of consumption and rather as the drivers of focus on reducing dependency on cars by urban sustainable development and creating more integrated green spaces within environmental citizenship. Both free market city centers. Disproportionate reliance on environmentalism and the eco-city finance resources like oil and natural gas movement address hard questions about land result in high transportation costs and use and access to green space, urban serious environmental externalities16. As transportation, urban ecology, and utilities. finite resources are increasingly unable to In an increasingly globalized and networked satisfy growing demand for an energy- world, the connections between intensive way of life, existing land use environmental issues and social justice are patterns of separating residential and demanding greater attention. Advocates of commercial use areas will no longer suit urban design often view city farming and urban needs14. Functionally zoned areas will creation of green space, whether through be replaced by multi-functional, dense, government regulation or free-market green urban hubs. balancing, as a way to mitigate deep-seated Interpersonal relationships are social justice issues. Both proponents of influenced by the layout of urban spaces FME and eco-cities often frame urban which seek to balance collective agriculture and green spaces in a positive sustainability with individual freedoms. light, but a thorough analysis of sustainable While urban design in isolation may not be development must consider the social justice enough to bring about social change, the implications of new city designs. Even ability of an environment to provide though urban farming has historically been a accessible public spaces for improving means for low-income residents of densely quality of life is an important component of populated city spaces to survive and feed sustainability. The Slow Food Movement, their families, some parts of sustainable founded by Carlo Petrini in 1986, promotes design theory focus heavily on design consuming locally by promoting small elements that benefit a predominantly businesses and opposing industrialized food middle-class, white population of city production15. The movement expanded to farmers17. include branches in Switzerland, Germany, France, Japan, the UK, and Chile among others. Slow Food’s political agenda 16 Balula, Luis D. "Urban Design And Planning Policy: Theoretical Foundations and Prospects For A New Urbanism." Urban Design and Planning Policy - Metadata. 14 Lorr, Michael J. "Defining Urban Sustainability in the The Graduate School of New Brunswick, Jan. 2010. Web. Context of North American Cities." Nature and Culture. 2017. Berghahn Journals, Spring 2012. Web. 17 Reynolds, Kristin, and Nevin Cohen. Beyond the Kale: 15 "Association." CittaSlow - Philosophy. CittaSlow Urban Agriculture and Social Justice Activism in New York 7 International, n.d. Web. City. Athens: U of Georgia, 2016. Print. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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Works Cited Reynolds, Kristin, and Nevin Cohen. Beyond the Kale: Urban Agriculture and Balula, Luis D. "Urban Design And Social Justice Activism in New York City. Planning Policy: Theoretical Foundations Athens: U of Georgia, 2016. Print. and Prospects For A New Urbanism." Urban Design and Planning Policy - Metadata. Rogers, Paul, and Nicholas St. Fleur. 2014. The Graduate School of New Brunswick, “Database Shows Big Difference Between Jan. 2010. Web. 2017. Water Guzzlers and Sippers.” The Mercury News. February 7. Baumol, William J. The Free-Market Innovation Machine: Analyzing the Growth "The Endangered Species Act and the Miracle of Capitalism. N.p.: Princeton UP, States." The Endangered Species Act of 2002. Web. 1973(2012): 173-202. U.S Fish & Wildlife Service. Web. "California Drought." California Water Science Center. United States Geological "Topic." Sustainable Development. Survey (USGS), 26 Jan. 2017. Web. International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), n.d. Web. "Council Approves Utility Rate Changes." Navigation. City of Folsom, California, Jan. Turner, Vicotria. "Sustainable Urbanism: An 2011. Web. Integrative Analysis of Master Planned Developments as a Vehicle for Urban Founder and Emissary of Ecocity Builders." Environmental Sustainability." Visionary Revolutionary - Richard Register. Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Ecocity Builders, n.d. Web. Philosophy. Arizona State University, Aug. 2013. Web. Frug, Gerald E. City Making: Building Communities Without Building Walls. N.p.: Watson, Reed. "Tapping Water Market in Princeton UP, 2001. Print. California: Six Policy Reforms." Property and Environment . Grace, Lee Ka Lee. "Sustainable Urban Renewal Model for a High Density City - Hong Kong." Department of Building and Real Estate. The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, June 2008. Web.

Lorr, Michael J. "Defining Urban Sustainability in the Context of North American Cities." Nature and Culture. Berghahn Journals, Spring 2012. Web.

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Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, non- COMMUNITY- governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in Africa assumed a needs-based BASED WATER approach, which defines poverty as the absence or lack of the basic elements MANAGEMENT required for human survival.1 Over time, the needs-based approach can become self- IN RURAL perpetuating, encouraging a reliance on outside experts and funding to “discover” KENYA and remedy problems in a given community.2 Rather than focusing on the needs or deficiencies of a place, ABCD MANDY LEE emphasizes that community assets are the key building blocks in effective, long-term Abstract development efforts. Community assets may include: “the skills of local residents; the Access to safe, reliable, and affordable water power of local associations; the resources of remains a major challenge for many public, private and non-profit institutions; communities and households across Kenya, the physical infrastructure and space in a and this challenge will likely be exacerbated community; the economic resources and by the impacts of climate change and rapid potential of local places; and the local population growth in coming decades. A 3 history and culture of a neighborhood.” As diversity of approaches is needed to protect opposed to the top-down development and enhance livelihoods that are vulnerable model facilitated by outsiders, local to environmental changes. In contrast to residents design and implement solutions significant foreign aid projects and non- that leverage existing assets and build future profit involvement in Kenya, community- assets. In many ways, ABCD reaffirms the based development acknowledges the ways “‘self-help’ processes by which in which Kenyan communities themselves communities in Sub-Saharan Africa have are best suited to prioritize, design, and historically and culturally been their own guide development solutions. This article 4 first investors.” seeks to identify the benefits of a community-based approach for sustainable water management in rural Kenya, as well as 1 explore the role of outside actors under this Cormac Russell and Ted Smeaton, “From Needs to Assets: Charting a Sustainable Path Towards Development in Sub- framework. Saharan African Countries” (presentation, Global Sustainable Development Conference, 2009).; Sebastian Introduction Mathews, “Asset–Based, Community-Driven Development (ABCD) in South Africa: Rebuilding Communities from the Inside Out” (presentation, University of Johannesburg Centre for Small Business Development Conference, 2013). 2 Russell and Smeaton, “From Needs to Assets.”; Terry A useful starting point for thinking about Bergdall, “Reflections on the Catalytic Role of an Outsider community empowerment is the concept of in Asset-Based Community Development,” ABCD Institute, 2012, Accessed January 3, asset-based community development http://www.abcdinstitute.org/publications/downloadable/in (ABCD). Developed by John McKnight and dex.html. John Kretzmann at Northwestern University, 3 “Founders,” Asset-Based Community Development ABCD is a framework for identifying the (ABCD) Institute, 2017, Accessed December 20, 2016, http://www.abcdinstitute.org/about/founders/index.html. 9 resources and potential within communities. 4 Russell and Smeaton, “From Needs to Assets.” Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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By exploring the context of IMF in the 1980s in sub-Saharan Africa, development and water management in privatization became a major policy tool Kenya, it becomes clear that asset-based intended to eliminate weak state enterprises community development is an important and enhance free markets.8 The potential model to help expand clean water access to benefits of water privatization include underserved consumers. expansion of services to more users, cost savings, enhanced quality and performance, Water Management Arrangements in incentives to conserve water, encouragement Kenya of private financing, and promotion of technology transfer.9 Though the level of Kenyan government and civil society private infrastructure investment generally entities have long been committed to failed to meet expectations in sub-Saharan ensuring that water is available, accessible, Africa during the privatization wave, Kenya adequate, safe, and affordable for all citizens. has pursued a liberalization scheme that that However, the country struggles with has partially shifted water management to physical and economic water scarcity.5 the private sector since 2002.10 Four-fifths of the country is arid or semi- The Ministry of Water Development, arid and prone to drought, and many areas now called the Ministry of Water and are unable to take advantage of water Irrigation, was formed in 1963 to oversee resources that could help improve water resources and develop water policy. It livelihoods due to lacking investment.6 implemented water projects on a “self-help” According to the WHO/UNICEF Joint basis in which local communities Monitoring Programme for Water Supply maintained control.11 Community and Sanitation, an estimated 36.8 percent of participation in water management expanded the total population lives without access to in the 1980s, spurred by the growth of self- an improved water source.7 In rural areas, help community organizations, especially in access has increased steadily since 1990, rural areas, and the harambee spirit of reaching 56.8 percent of the population by working together fostered by the 2015. On the other hand, access has been government.12 By 2000, approximately 30 relatively higher but steadily decreasing percent of rural Kenyans gained access to since 1990 in urban areas, dropping to 81.6 percent of the population in 2015. In order 8 Kate Bayliss and Terry McKinley, "Providing Basic to achieve higher efficiency, expanded Utilities in Sub-Saharan Africa: Why Has Privatization Failed?" Environment 49, no. 3 (2007): 26.; Nyangena, access, and improved service quality, Kenya "Privatization,” 118. has joined many other countries in pursuing 9 R. Quentin Grafton, James Horne, and Sarah Ann a form of water privatization through the Wheeler, "On the Marketisation of Water: Evidence from the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia," Water Resources commercialization of public water entities. Management 30, no. 3 (2015): 923-924.; Owiti A. With the imposition of structural K'Akumu, "Sustainability Prospects for Water Utilities adjustment programs by the World Bank and Privatization in Kenya," International Journal of Technology Management & Sustainable Development 5, no. 3 (2006): 272-273.; Nyangena, "Privatization,” 128. 5 Tove A. Larsen et al., “Emerging Solutions to the Water 10 Naren Prasad, "Privatisation Results: Private Sector Challenges of an Urbanizing World.” Science 352, no. Participation in Water Services After 15 6288 (2016): 930. Years," Development Policy Review 24, no. 6 (2006): 669- 6 Kenneth O. Nyangena, "Privatization of Water and 670.; Bayliss and McKinley, "Providing Basic Utilities,”26. Sanitation Services in Kenya: Challenges and 11 Nyangena, "Privatization,” 118. Prospects," Africa Development 33, no. 4 (2008): 121. 12 Calvince Onditi, “Community Water Supply 7 “Data,” World Bank, 2016, Management Case Study: Nyasare Water Supply http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.H2O.SAFE.ZS?loca Association in Migori County” (B.S. dissertation, 10 tions=KE. University of Nairobi, 2015), 2. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 10 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

safe, reliable water through the work of and non-public funds, such as those from small, community-based water systems. development partners. In addition, the Water National water policy was revised in 1999 to Appeals Board adjudicates appeals of those establish municipal water and sewerage aggrieved by the decisions of actors in the departments (WSDs) that would be water economy. To ensure public responsible for supporting localized water participation, the Water Act calls for a services.13 Although subject to major National Water Services Strategy that political interference and competing claims enables underserved communities to express to management and authority, WSDs in their needs; National Monitoring and municipal governments were, at least in Information Systems to manage and theory, accountable to local people through publicize information on water services; the elections. formation of Catchments Area Advisory Beginning with the Water Act of 2002 Committees; and public consultation on and the subsequent Transfer of Water water-related decisions.16 Services Plan, the Kenyan government adopted a water privatization scheme that Major Challenges for Water Management maintained public ownership but commercialized services through the To understand some of the major adoption of private-sector business practices, challenges to effective and equitable water such as market pricing.14 The Act developed distribution, it is necessary to examine the the Water Resources Management Authority state of water governance, both formal and to generally oversee and regulate allocation informal, in Kenya. There is a lack of of water resources. In this system, the Water coordination and data sharing between Services Regulatory Board (WSRB) issues government bodies; inadequate monitoring licenses to and sets pricing guidelines for and enforcement of water quality laws; Water Services Boards (WSBs), which are insufficient technical capacity for water local and regional state institutions with quality testing in rural areas; scarce financial ownership of water infrastructure. WSBs are resources; and inadequate administrative and handpicked by the local water Minister, technical management over water systems.17 allowing significant personal discretion. The Government appointments based on political WSBs in turn rely on Water Service connections rather than merits and Providers (WSPs) to operate water competency can lead to corruption, infrastructure as their agents. manipulation, restricted autonomy, job Although this legal framework does insecurity, and uncertainty in water not guarantee water as a basic right to all, it institutions.18 In Kenya, these challenges are includes a statement recognizing water as a compounded by rapid population growth, human right not to be subordinated to the urbanization, political instability, dictates of economic principles.15 In order to unemployment, and ever-increasing water ensure public welfare, the Water Services

Trust Fund extends water services to those 16 Ibid 275.; Nyangena, "Privatization,” 122-123. that are not financially or geographically 17 Georgia L. Kayser et al., "Drinking Water Quality favored. It does so by drawing upon public Governance: A Comparative Case Study of Brazil, Ecuador, and Malawi," Environmental Science & Policy 48 (2015): 186.; Larsen et al., “Emerging Solutions,” 929-930. 18 Ernest Nti Acheampong, Mark Swilling, and Kevin 13 K'Akumu, "Sustainability Prospects,” 272.; Nyangena, Urama, "Sustainable Urban Water System Transitions "Privatization,” 119. through Management Reforms in Ghana," Water Resources 14 K'Akumu, "Sustainability Prospects,” 274. Management 30, no. 5 (2016): 1835-1849.; Nyangena, 11 15 Ibid. "Privatization,” 125-127. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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demand across many sectors.19 Lastly, there stakeholders and the degree of trust between is low awareness of water management law, them. However, the failures of government little enthusiasm for partnering with civil efforts, the rise of privatization, and a society organizations, insufficient expertise systemic bias against the poor create a sense to negotiate with private companies, and of fear, distrust, and resentment.25 In a water loss from leakage and illegal model of distributive justice, the water diversion.20 Public water utilities too often system should seek to provide the greatest find themselves in a vicious cycle of benefit to the least advantaged, rather than deteriorating infrastructure, high system hoping that benefits will eventually trickle losses, high costs, low revenue, and low- down to the poor.26 Instead, the decision- quality services in recent decades.21 makers, influencers, primary beneficiaries, Governance can also fail at the and corporate actors in water policy are household and individual level. The mainly men, and further divergences occur capability of poor households to connect to relating to class, ethnicity, wealth, political water can be undermined by fee policies, voice, age, education, and location.27 transaction costs, housing and residency Women and children are the most vulnerable status, insecure water supply, and to unintended consequences, yet the most perceptions of water quality.22 A culture of constrained to participate in the economy nonpayment for water services is prevalent and policymaking. in rural settings, as well as some urban areas Across sub-Saharan Africa, the rural and even among some government entities.23 water sector remains particularly In the end, governance failures can create underdeveloped. Rural areas typically have disincentives both “for the water supply lower access to financial and technical utility to connect poor households and for resources and greater problems collecting poor households to choose to connect to the data, coordinating with national actors, water supply system.”24 carrying out maintenance and treatment, and Successful policy implementation learning from peers.28 Like the most depends on alignment of objectives of disadvantaged urban areas, rural areas also struggle with monitoring and enforcement of

19 water standards due to insufficient resources Emmanuel Manzungu et al., "Bulk Water Suppliers in 29 the City of Harare-An Endogenous Form of Privatisation of and training. A clear bias for urban Urban Domestic Water Supply in Zimbabwe?" Water populations is evident in the separation of Alternatives 9, no. 1 (2016): 57.; Abu Shiraz Rahaman, Jeff services, with more private sector Everett, and Dean Neu, "Trust, Morality, and the Privatization of Water Services in Developing participation in urban areas and government Countries," Business and Society Review 118, no. 4 (2013): 561.; Larsen et al., “Emerging Solutions,” 928.; Nyangena, "Privatization,” 125. 20 Nyangena, "Privatization,” 125. 21 Bayliss and McKinley, "Providing Basic Utilities,” 28- 25 Rahaman, Everett, and Neu, "Trust, Morality,” 568.; 30.; Prasad, "Privatisation Results,” 686-688. Nyangena, "Privatization,” 126. 22 Karen Bakker et al., "Governance Failure: Rethinking the 26 Rahaman, Everett, and Neu, "Trust, Morality,” 553. Institutional Dimensions of Urban Water Supply to Poor 27 Ibid 564.; Lydia Osei et al., "The Paradox of Water Households," World Development 36, no. 10 (2008): 1891.; Accessibility: Understanding the Temporal and Spatial Maggie A. Montgomery, Jamie Bartram, and Menachem Dimensions of Access to Improved Water Sources in Elimelech, "Increasing Functional Sustainability of Water Rwanda," Journal of Water Sanitation and Hygiene for and Sanitation Supplies in Rural Sub-Saharan Development 5, no. 4 (2015): 553-564. Africa," Environmental Engineering Science 26, no. 5 28 Kayser et al., "Drinking Water,” 191.; Montgomery, (2009): 1019-1020.; Larsen et al., “Emerging Solutions,” Bartram, and Elimelech, "Increasing Functional 930. Sustainability,” 1018.; Osei et al., "The Paradox of Water,” 23 Kayser et al., "Drinking Water,” 191-193. 553-564. 12 24 Bakker et al., “Governance Failure,” 1893-1894. 29 Kayser et al., "Drinking Water,” 191-192. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 12 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

provision to rural areas.30 To combat low private sector involvement in water, and 70 rural water access, NGOs funded by percent do not consider community international sources have multiplied and management to be appropriate for rural areas. helped build water infrastructure.31 Unlike in In addition to this place-based variation in cities, where informal actors fill gaps in government views, the needs of service, government-by-NGO has become a communities can be subject to the whims of growing trend in rural areas, sometimes election cycles and their relative political pressuring local governments to mimic influence within a county. NGO approaches for local participation and accountability.32 Through their position of Performance of Privatized Water influence, NGOs have made governance of water service provision more complex and Water privatization is often seen as a intertwined by blurring the lines between central area of debate regarding water policymaking and implementation roles. solutions in developing countries. Thanks to At times, there are mismatches a wealth of research beginning in the 2000s, between the priorities of county scholars have come to agreement that governments and the needs of the poor. A privatization of water theoretically should study of all county-level water policy but does not always lead to improved choices revealed that the water budget performance in terms of profitability, consistently ranks fourth after health, productivity, efficiency, and service transport, and education.33 County water quality.34 In fact, private sector participation ministries believe the fair tariff for water in has been shown to negatively affect rural areas is 29 percent higher than in urban performance in some countries through areas, while the fair level of provision is 12 raising the cost of capital, reducing long- liters lower per person per day (at just 31 term investment in infrastructure repair and L/person/day) than for urban dwellers. Most replacement, and increasing corruption.35 counties prefer to separate the Partial privatization in Kenya has been responsibilities for water services, sanitation, accompanied by a lack of commitment to and resource management, despite the low-income consumers, inequity in the interconnected nature of water problems. quality of service based on the ability to pay, About 40 percent of counties believe and service cut-offs.36 consumers should pay the full cost of water provision, and 43 percent of those in favor

of subsidies do not believe it is the county 34 Colin Kirkpatrick, David Parker, and Yin-Fang Zhang, government’s financial responsibility. About "An Empirical Analysis of State and Private-Sector 30 percent of county water ministries favor Provision of Water Services in Africa," The World Bank Economic Review 20, no. 1 (2006): 143-144.; Godwin K. Vondolia and Francis Mensah AsensoBoadi, "Private Sector Participation in the Provision of Quality Drinking 30 Acheampong, Swilling, and Urama, "Sustainable Urban Water in Urban Areas of Ghana: What Do Households Water,” 1849.; Rahaman, Everett, and Neu, "Trust, Want and Can Afford?" South African Journal of Morality,” 558-561. Economics 84, no. 2 (2015): 245-246.; Bakker et al., 31 Jennifer N. Brass, "Blurring Boundaries: The Integration “Governance Failure,” 1893.; Larsen et al., “Emerging of NGOs into Governance in Kenya," Governance 25, no. 2 Solutions,” 932.; Prasad, "Privatisation Results,” 672. (2012): 209. 35 Valentina Okaru-Bisant, “Promoting Private Water 32 Kayser et al., "Drinking Water,” 190.; Rahaman, Everett, Investments and Preventing Corruption and Consumer and Neu, "Trust, Morality,” 560. Risks,” Sustainable Development Law Journal 14, no. 1 33 Johanna Koehler, “Water Policy Choices in Kenya’s 47 (2011): 2-3.; Bakker et al., “Governance Failure,” 1893.; Counties,” University of Oxford, 2016, Rahaman, Everett, and Neu, "Trust, Morality,” 563. http://www.smithschool.ox. 36 Bayliss and McKinley, "Providing Basic Utilities,” 29- 13 ac.uk/research-programmes/water- 30.; Montgomery, Bartram, and Elimelech, "Increasing Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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A survey of households in the city of groups.39 Participatory rural appraisal (PRA), Kisumu paint a vivid example of the an approach that took hold in the 1970s and limitations of Kenya’s privatization solution 1980s, invites community members to co- thus far. As of 2010, the survey revealed that design projects, but does not necessarily only 25 percent of households in Kisumu, arise from or result in citizen-led initiatives. Kenya’s third largest city, access the World PRA can perpetuate the emphasis on needs Bank’s minimum recommended daily and limitations and take place alongside “the requirement, which is 50 liters per capita for subliminal belief that outside institutions drinking, cooking, and personal hygiene exclusively hold the expertise, resources, within a reasonable distance from the and power to resolve issues.”40 The home.37 Low- and middle-income sustainable livelihoods approach (SLA) households generally access less than 50 integrates PRA methodologies to ensure the percent of the basic water requirement.38 relevance of economic development It has become clear that water pricing and programs to communities. Introduced in privatization does not necessarily improve early 1990s, SLA departs from PRA by the poor’s access to clean water in Kenya, inviting communities to identify their assets unless it is accompanied with good and allies. ABCD expands the conversation governance, sufficient financing, equitable beyond economic activities to consider pricing and distribution policies, and social capital, as well as networks that are participatory approaches. Despite the inclusive for women and other marginalized immense challenges to clean water access groups. Overall, the conversation is moving and the flaws of privatization, certain steps from carrying out development for people or can be taken to improve access to clean with people, to by the people themselves. water in Kenya, including the empowerment ABCD is oriented toward citizens and of community-based water management communities as the primary producers of strategies for more rural areas. internal development solutions. ABCD draws upon local residents’ insights, skills, Community-Based Management: A Path and resources, thereby increasing the Forward effectiveness of outside support.41 Typically, ABCD involves participatory and inclusive Asset-based community development mapping and planning exercises in which is an evolution of community development residents locate, connect, and build upon the thinking, which was first grounded in a assets of the community as a whole. Strong rights-based approach. Generally, to build social capital results in a greater sense of an enabling environment to promote and responsibility towards others (including protect human rights, this approach to marginalized groups) and a better likelihood development explicitly pursues of reaching internal solutions to local accountability, participation, non- problems. Government agencies, NGOs, discrimination, and attention to vulnerable community-based organizations, faith communities, and businesses can be strong partners in ABCD. Functional Sustainability,” 1017-1019.; Nyangena, The ABCD approach can still suffer "Privatization,” 117. 37 George G. Wagah, George M. Onyango, and Jacob K. from some of the broader challenges to Kibwage, "Accessibility of Water Services in Kisumu Municipality, Kenya," Journal of Geography and Regional Planning 3, no. 5 (2010): 114.; Vondolia and Asenso 39 Russell and Smeaton, “From Needs to Assets.” Boadi, "Private Sector Participation,” 245. 40 Ibid. 14 38 Wagah, Onyango, and Kibwage, "Accessibility,” 118. 41 Mathews, “Asset–Based, Community-Driven.” Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 14 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

water management in rural Kenya and Association are two such examples. While unique challenges to community-based only a handful of publicly-available case approaches. One study of a community studies are considered in this paper, they water project in Kisayani community in demonstrate multiple strategies for Kathyaka Location, Makueni County, for successful long-term community water example, revealed challenges to sustainable projects taken to scale. water supply, regulatory policy, and local management after 10 years of operation.42 Case Study: Nyasare Water and Changing rainfall patterns, increasing Sanitation Company withdrawals, resistance to water sector reforms, reduced cohesion between Nyasare Water and Sanitation community and management, and Company (NYAWASCO), formerly the insufficient supportive external relationships Nyasare Water Supply Association (NWSA), are some of the limitations that this project offers a strong model of ABCD principles in may share with others like it. Another study action. The project was designed and is of five community water projects in the managed by residents of the rural Nyasare upper Ewaso Ng’iro River basin of Mount community, located along the Nyasare River Kenya also points out the pressures of Valley to the north and west of Migori Town hydroclimatic change and population growth, in Migori County, Kenya.45 The project was as well as water inequality and institutional initiated in 1989 largely in response to the homogeneity across the different water catalytic leadership of Reverend Peter projects.43 Indalo of the local Oyani Christian Rural Just as the major challenges to water Service Church, who assisted in the creation management in Kenya have created a of a self-help group to improve water access vicious cycle, small adjustments in various and safety.46 Residents of Nyasare sought to areas of water governance can spur a increase their resilience to water shortages feedback loop that builds effectiveness.44 A and waterborne diseases. NWSA began greater degree of community participation, official operation in 1994, was designed to with the aspiration to reach ABCD, is one serve 10,000 people, and has since expanded such adjustment. In order to build trust, the to cover more than 30,000 people across government and private-sector partners must rural areas and Migori Town. In response to encourage participatory approaches to better reforms of the water sector in the new understand local preferences and facilitate Kenyan Constitution of 2010, NWSA knowledge-sharing opportunities between transformed into a water company neighboring areas and communities with (NYAWASCO) and is recognized as a strong examples of ABCD. The Nyasare community-managed WSP. Water and Sanitation Company and The organizational structure of Makutano Community Development NYAWASCO gives ultimate power to an Assembly of local residents. This Assembly

42 Harry Spaling, Geoffery Brouwer, and Jesse Njoka, is composed of approximately 1,200 “Factors Affecting the Sustainability of a Community registered community members that enjoy Water Supply Project in Kenya,” Development in Practice the benefits of the company.47 The members 24, no. 7 (2014): 797-799. 43 Jampel Dell’Angelo et al., “Community Water can vote at annual meetings, submit Governance on Mount Kenya: An Assessment Based on Ostrom’s Design Principles of Natural Resource Management,” Mountain Research and Development 36, 45 Onditi, “Community Water,” 3. no. 1 (2016): 102. 46 Onditi, “Community Water,” 25. 15 44 Kayser et al., "Drinking Water,” 192. 47 Ibid 42. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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proposals, and be appointed to leadership Figure 1. NYAWASCO’s organizational chart roles within the organization. Members reveals its accountability to the Assembly of community members. participate in external events, fundraising Source: Adapted from Onditi, “Community Water,” activities, and direct outreach to the larger 32-37. community. The Assembly elects members The Management Committee convenes of the Executive Committee every three an Executive Committee, Zonal Committee, years, as well as approves all plans and and Management Staff. The Executive activities of NYAWASCO. Such activities Committee is composed of eight elected include outreach, tree planting, and leaders, and the Zonal Committee brings participation at the Migori Agricultural together elected representatives from the six Show. The Assembly approves all financial zones of the water supply area.48 The Zonal commitments, such as those relating to Representatives support community operations, maintenance, and salaries. Lastly, mobilization, awareness, implementation, the Assembly can work with the Executive and relay the perspectives and concerns of Committee to engage with the Water residents to the Executive Committee. Also Services Trust Fund, the local WSB, and the at the grassroots level, NYAWASCO WRMA to improve services. established a Communal Water Committee that convenes a Catchment Protection Committee and a Water Outlets Committee. These committees take responsibility for the following activities: catchment area land purchase and fencing; monitoring and tree planting in catchment zones; training on sustainable farming practices; and outreach through local associations to raise awareness about catchment area management. To build awareness about catchment protection, NYAWASCO specifically engages with schools, assemblies of local chiefs and elders, and women’s groups. Water is distributed at communal drawing points (at a weekly rate), water kiosks (at a rate per cubic meter, half of which is paid to NYAWASCO), or through individual metered connections (at a tiered rate per cubic meter based on total volume). Ground- level management staff, called caretakers, are local residents that are trained and employed by NYAWASCO. Community participation was a key component for making collective decisions about water sources and pricing. In addition to a borehole, NYAWASCO has developed springs and shallow wells in the community. After community meetings, eight

16 48 Onditi, “Community Water,” 43-46. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 16 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

community members voluntarily donated Austrian church, he forged an external link land to NYAWASCO in order to protect and with the Austrian Development Co- develop springs in exchange for free water operation, which provided funding during supply.49 The community was also the early stages of the project.52 Up until mobilized to discuss water provision at 2007, NYAWASCO invited local and higher elevations not served by the gravity- international consultants and implementing based distribution system. NYAWASCO partners to provide technical and dug five shallow, hand-pumped wells to administrative assistance. However, provide this water, after discussing NYAWASCO shifted to full self- appropriate solutions and locations with management in the past decade, achieving residents of these areas. The community financial stability and greater community allocated three wells to primary schools and participation. one well to a health center. Community Due to its ongoing success despite its members came to agreement that this water obstacles, NYAWASCO has become a would be free, but these institutions would regional role model and collaborator, contribute to maintenance, when needed, sharing best practices with a self-help group conducted by the shallow well committee. based nearby in Nyamira County. The group, NYAWASCO has major achievements called the Hopewell-Keroka Alliance, in addition to upholding community shared a similar path with NYAWASCO, governance. Although unprotected water including its founding through a prominent sources are still available to residents, community member, a resident-led approach, NYAWASCO has helped reduce the and a partnership with a foreign funding prevalence of waterborne diseases like partner, in this case a sister community in cholera and typhoid, while making the the United States. The Hopewell-Keroka distance to water sources far shorter.50 Alliance is pursuing the creation of a local During its operation for more than two water company modeled after NYAWASCO. decades, NYAWASCO has grappled with enormous challenges that range from water Case Study: Makutano Community supply seasonality, catchment area Development Association degradation, infrastructural vandalisms, unpaid water bills, water quality issues, The Makutano Community incapacity to expand water facilities to meet Development Association (MCDA), located the growing demand, and lack of finances.51 in the Ikombe Division of Yatta District, Nonetheless, the Association has sustained offers a model of ABCD on a larger scale. reliable water supply since its inception, and Spurred by Raphael Masika, a local resident the community has witnessed increased with experience in community-based groundwater recharge, vegetation cover, and development, a group of 60 people from water table levels. neighboring villages met in 1995 to discuss NYAWASCO has shifted away from community associations.53 Already having an approach that relied heavily on outside assistance. Initially, Reverend Indalo catalyzed the community to leverage outside 52 Ibid 25. 53 Halima Mahomed and Brianne Peters, “The Story funding. Through religious ties with an Behind the Well: A Case Study of Successful Community Development in Makutano, Kenya,” Global Fund for Community Foundations and the Coady International 49 Onditi, “Community Water,” 28. Institute, 2011, 50 Ibid 57. http://www.coady.stfx.ca/tinroom/assets/file/StoryBehindT 17 51 Ibid 62-65. heWell.pdf. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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the precedent of community burial societies, typically provide their own local monetary the residents registered as a self-help group contributions, labor, expertise, and materials. and then as a community-based organization When outside experts are required, MCDA (CBO) the following year. Also in 1996, the ensures that local residents receive a first indigenous philanthropic institution in comprehensive training on the relevant topic. the country, the Kenya Community Moreover, MCDA’s operating expenses are Development Foundation (KCDF), began funded by membership fees for individual operation. Both MCDA and KCDF residents, which enables members to vote committed early on to ABCD principles, for their representatives and enjoy working to harness local assets and build the preferential pricing for some programs. capacity of local people to guide their own Rather than pursuing NGO status, MCDA development. By 1998, MCDA approached chose to remain a CBO in order to uphold KCDF for a grant to establish an office, hire the ownership, engagement, and staff, and conduct training, as well as initiate contributions of members. an in-depth planning process. Over three years, more than 20 villages elected liaisons MCDA Organizational Structure Patron to work with local consultants and host open meetings with immediate community Board of Trustees members. The result was a collective action plan to address various priorities, which has Board of Directors (Management Board) served as the compass of MCDA for more than a decade. Director/Coordinator At the foundation of MCDA’s structure are local CBOs, village Programme Officer

development committees, and general Community Mobilizers ßà Water Technicians community members. MCDA’s membership grew from 10 informal associations to 84 CBOs – VDCs – General Community independent CBOs and 210 villages representing more than 77,000 people.54 Figure 2. MCDA’s organizational chart reveals its Trained volunteer community mobilizers accountability to its affiliated CBOs, VDCs, and members. liaise between communities and MCDA’s Source: Adapted from Mahomed and Peters, “The two staff members, unpaid elected board Story Behind the Well.” 55 members, and a volunteer patron. Each affiliated CBO runs independently, with its The unanimous top priority identified own elections and finances, and may initiate by residents in the 1998 baseline survey was or respond to broader MCDA initiatives. water. During the planning process, MCDA The MCDA provides CBOs with technical, created a map of 26 future water points.56 coordination-related, or financial assistance. Since then, MCDA has constructed 9 A strong theme in MCDA’s work is tapping community-managed dams and 17 into local resources. MCDA may distribute sub‑service wells, as well as supported larger grants among CBOs, but the CBOs supplementary household-level water harvesting. Each of these 26 water points is 54 Ibid.; Mary Nthambi Kisingu, “Factors Influencing overseen by a water management committee Community Based Organizations’ Performance in Yatta that is elected by local users and operates as District, Machakos County, Kenya: A Case of Makutano Community Development Association” (B.A. dissertation, an independent CBO. MCDA assists with University of Nairobi, 2012), 35. 18 55 Mahomed and Peters, “The Story Behind the Well.” 56 Mahomed and Peters, “The Story Behind the Well.” Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 18 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

management and accounting training, as MCDA is committed to sustainable well as ensures gender equity in committee development across sectors. Among membership. Similar to MCDA, each CBO numerous other programs, MCDA has built covers maintenance costs through an annual 162 pit latrines, a 23-kilometer road, a or daily user fee. Where communal land is secondary school, and an extensive food not available, members of the water point security and preservation initiative.58 The negotiate for donated land from the group shared vision for MCDA developed by its and volunteer to clear the land. MCDA members in 1998 set in motion a community works with the local authorities to conduct effort that has leveraged and nurtured an Environmental Impact Assessment and significant social capital. helps pair CBOs with partners for A study of MCDA and the factors management and accounting training, influencing its performance reveals the key planning, design, and funding. In the case of role of the operational style and mission the water points, AusAid and the Irish developed by community members. Surveys government through Concern Universal of MCDA and its 84 affiliated CBOs were major donors. Once constructed, water revealed that the mission, organizational point members rotate in supervising the competency, political capital, and funding wells, hire a permanent dam caretaker, and resources all play a major role, accounting follow their own maintenance plan. MCDA for 63.2 percent of the variation in CBO assists with water testing in Nairobi on an performance.59 Performance is considered a annual basis. Most households in the area, CBO’s contribution to building residents’ whether MCDA members or not, now access to financial, physical, and human belong to a water point. resources, as well as economic opportunities To support this work and MCDA’s and political power. In particular, other projects, KCDF, in alignment with its organizational mission had the strongest own practice of matching external funds positive relationship with performance. with local sources, began offering Respondents noted the importance of a clear, community-level endowment funds. In 2006, specific, and tangible mission statement that MCDA established a community fund that is reflects clients’ needs and is tied to a invested and matched 1:1 by KCDF.57 participatory strategic decision-making MCDA’s members contributed process. Organizational competency, which approximately $6,500, which grew to more includes staff experience, stable and active than $23,000 by 2010. Once the fund leadership, and mutual trust, had the next doubles to $56,000, a committee of elected strongest effect on building an environment members will begin drawing on the proceeds that improves CBO performance. for MCDA initiatives. MCDA embodies ABCD in multiple Role of Outside Actors regards, including its structure, holistic approach, and vision. MCDA’s structure and The ABCD approach does not processes are unique in how they promote disregard the importance of outside distributed decision-making, accountability, assistance, but calls for outside partners to and transparency, which further builds play a support role to citizen-led community community cohesion, trust, mutual-help behaviors, collective action, and pooling of resources. In addition to its water projects,

58 Mahomed and Peters, “The Story Behind the Well.” 19 57 Ibid. 59 Kisingu, “Factors Influencing Community,” 46. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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development.60 Often, ABCD does not occur increasing trust, communication, and mutual spontaneously within a community. A respect.64 Outsiders might also have the helpful approach is for outside actors to unique opportunity to attract government regard themselves and their work as attention. In a win-win situation, outside catalysts for community development. This funding for a community could encourage external stimulus can and should be minimal, elected officials to also dedicate or match to avoid any sense of dependence. Catalysts funding and technical assistance to local such as NGOs can help facilitate a process projects. Therefore, there is higher of mapping assets and eventually leveraging accountability, a greater diversity of funding external resources, rather than directly sources, and political empowerment of implementing solutions.61 Outsiders can also residents. promote inclusion by helping convene a Meanwhile, the Kenyan government more representative group of residents, and private water suppliers can also play an instead of summoning a small number of important role in catalyzing ABCD. For leaders.62 Critically, outside organizations example, they can set benchmarks for equity seek to build trust and understanding: and report regularly on them, in order to Catalysts are accountable to local increase the attention paid to the most communities. They are there, in some vulnerable consumers. In addition to sharing form or another, only at the more information overall, the government invitation of the community. But as and private sector can promote shared outsiders, they are upfront about motives with stakeholders and create room their role and intentions so everyone for communities to engage in decision- in can see their purpose and making.65 Instead of applying a uniform understand their motives. In doing so, pricing system across the country, Kenya a creative sense of ‘obedience’ to the could increase flexibility and transparency community is established. Catalysts in matching tariffs and subsidies to the are consistent: they do what they say specific economic characteristics of they are going to do. They are communities.66 The government and outside transparent: they are forth-coming partners can help train local leaders about about their actions and are open to community water and sanitation governance, being questioned about them.63 as well as offer ongoing support in the areas of monitoring, planning, capacity-building, Until the financial capacity of local and specialized technical assistance. Lastly, organizations and governments are sufficient the government can help communities to take over, international funding for water leverage outside funding, especially through projects will remain critical. Nonetheless, NGOs and external donors can shift their goals toward community-building and local 64 Peter A. Harvey and Robert A. Reed, "Community- ownership of development projects. In this Managed Water Supplies in Africa: Sustainable or Dispensable?" Community Development Journal 42, no. 3 way, outside partners can assist with funding (2007): 365-378.; Brass, "Blurring Boundaries,” 228. and technical expertise, while also 65 Bakker et al., “Governance Failure,” 1893-1894.; Nyangena, "Privatization,” 128-129.; Okaru-Bisant, 60 “Promoting Private,” 11-12.; Rahaman, Everett, and Neu, Russell and Smeaton, “From Needs to Assets.”; "Trust, Morality,” 552-553. Mathews, “Asset–Based, Community-Driven.” 66 61 Peter A. Harvey, "Cost Determination and Sustainable Russell and Smeaton, “From Needs to Assets.”; Bergdall, Financing for Rural Water Services in “Reflections.” Sub-Saharan Africa," Water Policy 9, no. 4 (2007): 373- 62 Bergdall, “Reflections.” 63 391.; Bayliss and McKinley, "Providing Basic Utilities,” 20 Ibid. 31-32. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 20 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

the Kenyan diaspora and innovative Bergdall, Terry. “Reflections on the international crowdfunding mechanisms. Catalytic Role of an Outsider in Asset-Based Community Development.” ABCD Institute. 2012. Accessed January 3. Conclusion http://www.abcdinstitute.org/publications/do wnloadable/index.html. Given a strong level of engagement, Brass, Jennifer N. "Blurring boundaries: The capacity-building, and political will, Kenya integration of NGOs into governance in can leverage its semi-privatized water Kenya." Governance 25, no. 2 (2012): 209- system and tradition of community-based 235. projects to make water available, accessible, adequate, safe, and affordable for more “Data.” World Bank. 2016. Accessed underserved communities. NYAWASCO January 12. and MCDA provide strong models of ABCD http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.H2O. approaches for water management in rural SAFE.ZS?locations=KE. Kenya. By empowering local organizations in other communities, the country can Dell’Angelo, Jampel, et al. “Community continue to diversify approaches to sustain Water Governance on Mount Kenya: An healthy communities and work to effectively Assessment Based on Ostrom’s Design channel limited resources, combat Principles of Natural Resource corruption, leverage outside funding, and Management.” Mountain Research and achieve equitable water systems. Development 36, no. 1 (2016): 102-115.

“Founders.” Asset-Based Community Works Cited Development (ABCD) Institute. 2017. Accessed December 20, 2016. Acheampong, Ernest Nti, Mark Swilling, http://www.abcdinstitute.org/about/founders and Kevin Urama. "Sustainable Urban /index.html. Water System Transitions through Management Grafton, R. Quentin, James Horne, and Reforms in Ghana." Water Resources Sarah Ann Wheeler. "On the marketisation Management 30, no. 5 (2016): 1835-1849. of water: evidence from the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia." Water Resources Bakker, Karen, et al. "Governance Failure: Management 30, no. 3 (2015): 913-926. Rethinking the Institutional Dimensions of Urban Water Supply to Poor Harvey, Peter A., and Robert A. Reed. Households." World Development 36, no. 10 "Community-Managed Water Supplies in (2008): 1891-1915. Africa: Sustainable or Dispensable?" Community Bayliss, Kate, and Terry McKinley. Development Journal 42, no. 3 (2007): 365- "Providing Basic Utilities in Sub-Saharan 378. Africa: Why Has Privatization Harvey, Peter A. "Cost Determination and Failed?" Environment 49, no. 3 (2007): 25- Sustainable Financing for Rural Water 33. Services in

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Sub-Saharan Africa." Water Policy 9, no. 4 Community Development in Makutano, (2007): 373-391. Kenya.” Global Fund for Community Foundations and the Coady International K'Akumu, Owiti A. "Sustainability Institute. 2011. Prospects for Water Utilities Privatization in http://www.coady.stfx.ca/tinroom/assets/file Kenya." International Journal of /StoryBehindTheWell.pdf. Technology Management & Sustainable Manzungu, Emmanuel, et al. "Bulk water Development 5, no. 3 (2006): 271-280. Suppliers in the City of Harare-An Kayser, Georgia L., et al. "Drinking Water Endogenous Quality Governance: A Comparative Case Form of Privatisation of Urban Domestic Study Water Supply in Zimbabwe?" Water of Brazil, Ecuador, and Alternatives 9, no. 1 (2016): 56-80. Malawi." Environmental Science & Policy 48 (2015): 186-195. Mathews, Sebastian. “Asset–Based, Community-Driven Development (ABCD) Kirkpatrick, Colin, David Parker, and Yin- in South Fang Zhang. "An Empirical Analysis of Africa: Rebuilding Communities from the State and Inside Out.” Paper presented at the Private-Sector Provision of Water Services University in Africa." The World Bank Economic of Johannesburg Centre for Small Business Review 20, no. 1 (2006): 143-163. Development Conference, 2013. https://www.uj.ac.za/faculties/humanities/D Kisingu, Mary Nthambi. “Factors epartment-of-Social- Influencing Community Based Work/Documents/Sebastian%20Mathews.pd Organizations’ f. Performance in Yatta District, Machakos County, Kenya: A Case of Makutano Montgomery, Maggie A., Jamie Bartram, Community Development Association.” B.A. and Menachem Elimelech. "Increasing dissertation, University of Nairobi, 2012. Functional Sustainability of Water and Sanitation Supplies in Rural Sub-Saharan Koehler, Johanna. 2016. “Water Policy Africa." Environmental Engineering Choices in Kenya’s 47 Counties.” University Science 26, no. 5 (2009): 1017-1023. of Oxford. http://www.smithschool.ox.ac.uk/research- Nyangena, Kenneth O. "Privatization of programmes/water- Water and Sanitation Services in Kenya: programme/Policy%20Brief_Water%20Poli Challenges and Prospects." Africa cy%20Choices_JKoehler_Feb2016.pdf. Development 33, no. 4 (2008): 117-131.

Larsen, Tove A., et al. “Emerging Solutions Okaru-Bisant, Valentina. “Promoting to the Water Challenges of an Urbanizing Private Water Investments and Preventing World.” Corruption and Consumer Risks.” Science 352, no. 6288 (2016): 928-933. Sustainable Development Law Journal 14, no. 1 (2011): 3-34. Mahomed, Halima, and Brianne Peters. “The Story Behind the Well: A Case Study of Successful 22 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 22 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

Onditi, Calvince. “Community Water in Urban Areas of Ghana: What Do Supply Management Case Study: Nyasare Households Want and Can Afford?" South Water African Journal of Economics 84, no. 2 Supply Association in Migori County.” B.S. (2015): 245-259. dissertation, University of Nairobi, 2015. Wagah, George G., George M. Onyango, Osei, Lydia, et al. "The Paradox of Water and Jacob K. Kibwage. "Accessibility of Accessibility: Understanding the Temporal Water and Spatial Dimensions of Access to Services in Kisumu Municipality, Kenya." Improved Water Sources in Journal of Geography and Regional Rwanda." Journal of Water Sanitation and Planning 3, no. 5 (2010): 114-125. Hygiene for Development 5, no. 4 (2015): 553-564.

Prasad, Naren. "Privatisation Results: Private Sector Participation in Water Services After 15 Years." Development Policy Review 24, no. 6 (2006): 669-692.

Rahaman, Abu Shiraz, Jeff Everett, and Dean Neu. "Trust, Morality, and the Privatization of Water Services in Developing Countries." Business and Society Review 118, no. 4 (2013): 539-575.

Russell, Cormac, and Ted Smeaton. “From Needs to Assets: Charting a Sustainable Path Towards Development in Sub-Saharan African Countries.” Paper presented at the Global Sustainable Development Conference, 2009. Accessed January 3. http://www.abcdinstitute.org/publications/do wnloadable/index.html.

Spaling, Harry, Geoffery Brouwer, and Jesse Njoka. “Factors Affecting the Sustainability of a Community Water Supply Project in Kenya.” Development in Practice 24, no. 7 (2014): 797-811.

Vondolia, Godwin K., and Francis Mensah Asenso‐Boadi. "Private Sector Participation in the Provision of Quality Drinking Water 23 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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OUR

ENVIRONMENT: Introduction A HEALTH CRISIS AND Our environment has no shortage of WHAT WE MUST enthusiastic defenders. Propositions for oil pipelines arouse thousands of demonstrators; DO TO HEAL IT an ad to save the polar bears will always strike at hearts; the appointment of a JUSTIN MCCARTNEY science-denier to a federal Cabinet position can bring out the full force of activists and Abstract non-profit advertising campaigns. Yet, this still is not enough if we are to actualize the As efforts across the globe to curb the future large-scale change we so fervently advocate destruction of climate change continue to for in regards to mediating environmental evolve, it is important to recognize that we change. The most basic reason, in simplest are already seeing the dangerous effects of a terms, is that we need everyone. We need damaged environment. Our health and every single person to care as passionately mental well-being are being threatened as about saving our planet as the most inspired we continue to release harmful chemicals activist. This, of course, is impractical; at into our atmosphere. Studies have suggested least under the current framing of this that millions more people across the world environmental crisis we care so much about. are in danger of environmental-related This is essentially because we frame the health crises in the coming decades unless issue of climate change and environmental there is dramatic and meaningful change in degradation as just that: an issue area. It is the way we approach protecting our one of many to be tacked on to the political environment. Policy endeavors are being speeches of progressive candidates, or a made at the international level, as seen with specialization area for a legislative aide. It is the Paris Agreement and recent UN limited in such a framework. This article Environmental Assembly negotiations, as will not go deep into the social aspects of well as at the Congressional and state how or why this is so; however, I hope to legislature level here in the United States offer one perspective on why framing the and elsewhere; however, the continued crisis we face in such a manner is, literally, struggle against a powerful lobby has yet to deadly. yield the type of drastic resolutions that have Our neglect for our natural been proposed in order to successfully environment, manifested through increasing combat the threat of climate change and effects of climate change and the destruction rapid environmental degradation. This of our ecosystems and atmosphere, has led article will more deeply examine exactly to an unimaginable degree of both explicit how the pollution of our air and negligence and implicit health problems on human in valuing green spaces is harming human populations around the globe. While the health; and what needs to be done to stop connection between climate change and our health is often overlooked and not fully 24 these processes and save lives. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 24 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

understood, the impacts are widespread and communities across the world. The pose dangerous omens for our future. An intersections of health and environmental unhealthy environment can mean anything change support this proposed inherent link, from increased likelihood for Lyme’s and our work to promote protection of the disease to skin cancer to depression. Nearly environment should internalize this critical 23% of all deaths globally can be attributed connection. The following sections describe to some kind of environmental factor.1 This just how our environment influences various fact itself should inspire nothing less than an aspects of our health. urgent call to action against the harmful effects of climate change and environmental Disease destruction. The remainder of this article will examine a wide variety of health effects One of the major fields of impact on due to the environment, as well as offer a health from environmental change is that of look at some ways in which we can reframe proliferating various diseases. Per the World the crisis into successful action towards a Health Organization, the attributable sustainable future. fraction of a risk factor is the percentage decline in disease or injury due to changing Section One: Health Effects of Climate conditions for the risk.1 So, for example, the Change and Environmental Degradation attributable fraction of the environment on malaria is 42%; meaning that 42% of cases In building the argument for radical of malaria could be prevented if the action to combat climate change, one has to environmental conditions were changed in a commit to getting creative in constructing way that reduced the risk.1 The sheer degree narratives which will spur such action. That to which the environment can statistically be is precisely why former EPA Administrator, shown to influence diseases such as malaria Gina McCarthy, made it a special priority to serves as a poignant snapshot into just how emphasize the health implications of climate much overlap there is between the change and environmental degradation environment and infection; and these effects during her time in the Agency. She visited are, in fact, discriminatory: more developing health schools, encouraging medical countries, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa, students to consider joining the EPA rather are disproportionately affected due to than pursue a traditional medical career.2 environment-related disease.1 The goal was to transform the image of the Agency, and, effectively, the movement Water-Related Diseases itself to be more than a “tree-hugger” cause and into an intersectional profession of The climate influences growth, social justice and medical necessity.2 In her expansion, survival, transmission, and own words, “I’ve always thought of myself virulence of various water-borne pathogens as a public health person, I still do”.2 which lead to diseases such as diarrhea.3 As McCarthy believed that this mission of temperatures become increasingly public health was in fact central to the fluctuating, precipitation rates change, water Agency and was infused into every bit of its salinity is altered from runoff, the disease’s work, even if that tended to be lost on the spatial and temporal range are affected; this general public. After all, the work of means the possibility for increased exposure environmentalism, just as in public health, is rates. Some other diseases that can be to build up the quality of life for 25 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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amplified by these factors are diarrhea, algal blooms. Algal blooms are formed by schistosomiasis, cholera, and salmonella.3,4 an increase in algae or cyanobacteria in The disease most profoundly affected bodies of water, which often lead to a by environmental factors is diarrhea. depletion of oxygen and decline in life in Approximately 94% of the global disease those bodies. They also pose a threat to burden of diarrhea is attributable to the human health. The cyanobacteria present environment.1 Diarrhea is a water-related from algal blooms can release toxins which illness, and therefore is sensitive to changes cause liver, neurological, digestive, and skin in water quality and sanitation.4 This disease.4 Additionally, diatoms, a type of explains the degree of burden associated algae which contribute to this depletion of with environmental factors for this particular oxygen in marine environments, produce disease, as environmental destruction often domoic acid, a potent neurotoxin which can affects the quality of water for the bioaccumulate in shellfish and finfish, and surrounding region. Additionally, rising later impact human health as these temperatures and increased humidity, as organisms are consumed.3 Algal blooms well as invariability of rainfall contribute to have been an acute effect of environmental the spread of diarrheal disease; these factors degradation, as increasing temperatures and alone have been estimated to cause a pollution have disturbed the equilibrium in possible 8-11% spike in cases globally.4 A many marine ecosystems across the world. prime case study of this phenomenon can be seen in the Ganges River region, where Vector-Borne Diseases hundreds of cities upriver are dumping raw sewage into a source of drinking water for Another pathway for a changing over 400 million people farther down the environment to influence the spread of river, endangering the drinkability of the disease is through vector-borne disease. water and greatly risking infection.4 Vector-borne diseases are primarily Schistosomiasis affects hundreds of transmitted by “blood-sucking arthropods,” millions of people a year, and leads to also known as mosquitoes and ticks.3 malnutrition, stunting of growth, and Diseases transmitted in this fashion include subsequent loss of productivity in the malaria, ebola, dengue fever, and workplace or at school.4 It can also lead to Chikungunya fever.3 The risk for this type of the spread of HIV/AIDS. This disease is disease is affected when the conditions for influenced by factors like the increase in the vectors become more favorable, or freshwater snails resulting from river interaction between human populations and fragmentation and biodiversity loss, as well vector populations are forced into closer as eutrophication and overfishing, all proximity. This occurs with forest loss and resulting from human-induced changes to loss of plant diversity, along with changes in the environment.4 The examples of both temperature, humidity, and rainfall.3 For diarrhea and schistosomiasis speak to the example, outbreaks of ebola have been multiplicity of ways that environmental suggested to be linked to intense change, whether it be from lack of safe deforestation in Africa, which has destroyed drinking water or damage to biodiversity, the habitat for bats, the natural hosts of the can have substantial negative effects on disease. Because of this habitat destruction, health in quite potent ways. Another the bats were forced to alter their migration situation of disease from water-related patterns which put them in closer proximity climate change effects stems from harmful with human populations, and increased 26 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 26 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

likelihood of outbreaks.4 Separately, Our human health can also be affected mosquito populations can increase in areas by pollution, whether it be directly from air which experience a period of drought pollution or indirectly from consequences of followed by a period of rewetting; this chemical pollutants. Pollution historically affects the water table, vegetation, and has been a major human-induced threat to aquatic predators. Therefore, the highest risk environmental health; now, we are finding area for infection is where human population that not only has it been a detriment to our is high, there is ongoing ecological natural ecosystems, but it persists as a potent disruption such as changes in land use or threat to human health in a variety of ways agricultural practices, and where the human as well. and mosquito populations overlap.4 As the climate changes, different areas will become Air Pollution more suitable for these vectors; for example, tick populations will likely be able to Air pollution is an increasingly expand northward in North America.4 The significant direct agent of danger to human Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change health as we continue our pollutive habits projects that 200 million more people will at and fall short in cleaning up our atmosphere. risk for exposure to malaria with current Pollution of our atmosphere damages both expectations under climate change.4 human and environmental health. As rainfall increases in various areas Concerning human health, it can manifest of the globe, and hotter and drier conditions itself in a few different ways. The first way afflict others, the potential for these types of is through indoor air pollution. This comes diseases to spread and infect new about as a result of incomplete combustion populations from Chicago to Botswana of solid fuels, most prominently in increases in dangerous ways.3 One of the developing nations where coal, wood, and chief actions which should be taken in the charcoal make up a greater percentage of effort to prevent such a catastrophe would energy sources.4 The specific health effects be to learn more about the relations between resulting from indoor air pollution include these diseases and effects of climate change respiratory infections, chronic obstructive or environmental destruction. Many of the pulmonary disorder, stroke, and heart studies currently suggest what are disease.4 Between 2.6 and 4.4 million people oftentimes nonlinear and only “likely” die per year from indoor air pollution, most influences. A degree of this speaks to the of whom are women and children.4 Over 2.8 complex ways in which environmental billion are exposed. As a relatively under- factors impact disease agents, but other appreciated subset of pollution effects, reasons include a simple lack of research indoor air pollution continues to have into the subject. The gap speaks to the dramatic impacts on human health. Once absence of overlap between environment again, lack of understanding and connection and health professional fields; research between inefficient energy sourcing and continues to be siloed. A better regular causes of death or illness have understanding of the causes would allow us proven an obstacle to confronting this issue. to more intelligently combat their effects. Air pollution is also a danger when it is in the open atmosphere. Ground level Pollution ozone is one example: methane emissions can cause the photochemical reactions which produce ozone to occur in the 27 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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troposphere, the lowest dimension of Earth’s world should be willing to pay at least that, atmosphere.3 This leads to cardiopulmonary to prevent economic losses; however, we are mortality, along with crop reduction and still facing a growing threat from air decreased forest growth which can further pollution, one which has far-reaching effects affect health.3,4 It is suggested that nearly on health across the globe. half of the deaths from the historic 2003 heatwave in Europe could actually have Toxic Chemicals been caused by ozone exposure, intensified by the increased temperature and sunlight, Pollution does not just equate solely to rather than directly heat-related causes.3 air pollution, however. Exposure to toxic Aeroallergens are another cause of human chemicals is another important health issue. health effects under the umbrella of air This can become a problem through either pollution, specifically affecting individuals inhaling, eating, or drinking polluted with asthma and exacerbating those substances, especially as chemicals become conditions. These allergens, like fungal bioaccumulated along a food chain.4 spores or plant pollen, increase with warmer Chemicals such as pesticides from weather and earlier flowering of some agricultural runoff, heavy metals used in grasses.3 Droughts in particular can cement, electronics recycling, exacerbate allergen effects by spreading dust pharmaceutical pollution, mercury and and pollen or spores. This specifically can heavy metals in coal and oil combustion, expand the reach of these allergens, as winds and more all factor into a global crisis of carry the agents to new populations. exposure to dangerously unhealthy toxins as China provides a useful, if tragic, a result of careless waste.4 What this looks example when examining health effects of like across the world includes lead poisoning, air pollution. According to a study from the especially in low-income countries, illness University of California-Berkeley, air from pesticides due to exposure during pollution kills around four thousand people a agricultural work, and mercury poisoning day in China, in the form of heart, lung, from aquatic food sources.4 Some of the stroke, or other complications.5 One in six effects of these pollutants range from premature deaths in the country are due to endocrine disruption to cancer risk, to air pollution, and approximately 38% of the neurobehavioral disorders.4 Another population lives in conditions where the air component to this issue is, once again, the is considered “unhealthy” by U.S. EPA absence of certifiable information. Of 300 standards.5 The smog is visible and very chemicals which are currently in produced evident for people concerned with China’s in high quantities, only about half have pollution problem; the degree of the sufficient info on toxicity and health underlying health effects it is having on the impacts.4 With this dire information lack, we Chinese people is much less obvious and cannot even know the full extent to which much more critical to understand if urgency dangerous chemicals that have been is going to be stressed in addressing the carelessly disposed of in our natural country’s polluting problem. environment are affecting our health. If we When translating the disability- are to properly address the root cause of adjusted life years due to particle air these health impacts, it is critical to have a pollution, this epidemic costs approximately deeper awareness of precisely what the most $1.9 trillion a year, or 2.7% of the global effective actions will be in future policy. economy.3 It would make sense that the 28 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 28 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

Food Security and Nutrition Besides crop yield, another issue surrounding food security is the threat to Threats to adequate food access have fisheries. Overfishing, warming waters, and been exacerbated under climate change. acidification negatively affect marine life. With land degradation and development for Ocean acidification, which has risen agriculture and soil erosion, we are left with substantially since the Industrial Revolution, a loss of pollinators and increased exposure causes shellfish like mussels and clams, and to pesticides.4 Soil itself is becoming corals, to grow softer shells and skeletons unsuitable for crop growing as it is overused which have greatly impacted their ability to and the nutrients are depleted; this affects survive.4 This means less food, especially not only food production but increases for the growing number of people who are likelihood of flooding, destroys biodiversity, living near coastlines and derive much of and eliminates a critical carbon sink to offset their food stock from the oceans. emissions of greenhouse gases.4 Crop yields A particular issue with negative are vulnerable to changing temperatures, environmental effects on food availability is especially temperature variability which we the fact that demand is, in fact, increasing. are seeing increasing cases of in various Roughly 40% of the global population is parts of the world.4 The shift in rainfall projected to be living in river basin regions patterns as a result of climate change has which are under severe stress.4 Agriculture affected crop yield and changed in what and the raising of livestock intensify this regions certain crops can grow as well. This pressure, which can not only lead to food leads not only to overall scarcity from shortages but a lack in basic water decreased yield but also to nutrient availability and economic impacts as well. deficiencies as a result of lost crops. With The situation now, therefore, is an this critical threat to crop yield and nutrition, intensifying threat from climate change and human populations are facing a barrage of environmental destruction coupled with a health effects. Lack of overall food growing stress on the global food stock in availability implicates a range of further historically unprecedented levels.4 health consequences, as does lack of proper nutrient intake. Climate Change and Weather - Direct Diminishing freshwater availability is Effects another factor to be considered. A combination of overdrawing from Direct effects of climate change on underground aquifers and climate change human health include heat related effects, has led to massive losses in crops.4 extreme weather events, and exposure to Persistent droughts have played a large role increased radiation. These impacts are in this loss. Water usage is also highly unique because they can be felt as a direct dependent on which type of food source is result of a changing climate, even if they are being produced. For example, beef requires often not attributed to such a cause. Many eleven times the irrigation water per calorie direct effects are not simple to attribute than does poultry, eggs, or pork.4 Water specifically to climate change. However, scarcity in itself is a dire threat to trends and changes in normal expectations communities as well; like food insecurity, it help us to monitor approximately the degree can mean subsequent health complications of the effect that climate change is wreaking in addition to the threat from lack of water on human health. itself. 29 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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First, there is the issue of heat related As the ozone layer of our atmosphere is incidences. A study in Australia showed the threatened by our growing emissions, direct ratio of summer to winter deaths in the effects from sun exposure have been found country has steadily risen between 1968 and to increase. Radiation caused by this 2010.3 This figure certainly does not prove deterioration contributes to more cases of any type of causality, but it does begin to skin cancer and cataracts.3 In a US study, hint at a trend. Climate change can affect cases of squamous cell carcinoma rose 5.5% health through heat exhaustion (where the for 1°C of average temperature rise.3 What body temperature rises above 38°C) which this equates to is essentially an additional 2% can cause physical and cognitive impairment, dose of UV radiation for every single degree or heat stroke (where the body temperature Celsius in average temperature rise.3 Going rises above 40.6°C) which can result in outdoors in summertime has become more organ damage, unconsciousness, and even of a threat than in previous times as heat death.3 Another factor in this is the threats increase and the strength of UV vulnerability of certain populations. First of radiation creates increasingly greater risks to all, with milder winters, there is a general health. higher likelihood of being impacted by heat, as seen during the 2003 European heat wave, Mental Health which was preceded by a markedly mild winter.3 Urban populations are also under Mental health may be a particularly increased threat to heat-related incidences, overlooked and underappreciated result of as cities experience enhanced temperature increasing climate change impacts, but this rises. Finally, age, gender, and physical perception is certainly not for lack of activity are also all characteristics which tangible effect. One of the most significant may exacerbate a heat wave’s effects on relations of environmental change and health. mental health is displacement and Another direct impact of climate destruction of one’s home. Leaving one’s change on human health comes in the form home and familiar surroundings, loss of of natural disasters. For every one person possessions, breaking social ties, absence of killed in a natural disaster, an estimated mental health services, and the difficulty of additional one thousand are negatively resettlement are all additional factors which affected.4 Floods are the most common and could negatively impact mental health for deadly natural disaster, and are increasing in peoples displaced or otherwise affected by frequency due to the effects of climate environmental disaster.4 While the total change on our planet.3 Floods cause not only degree of displacement due to climate drowning, but hypothermia and are often change and related causes is unknown, the spread infectious diseases. These sorts of adverse mental health effects are more clear. events not only impact immediate health and Depression and post-traumatic stress wellness, but can lead to long-term change. disorder are common results of natural For example, floods often lead to disaster and conflict related to contaminated drinking water due to environmental factors. Sexual violence is overflowing sewage, fostering an another tragic effect of conflict and disaster environment for vector-borne diseases, and which can be attributed to climate in certain loss of livelihood and assets causing mental situations. distress.3 30 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 30 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

The distress associated with environmental enhanced approach to soil-crop system impacts, from displacement to losing one’s management has been adopted which draws home, has been studied a bit further: on knowledge of individual crop solastalgia means specifically the distress ecophysiology and soil biogeochemistry to resulting from environmental change.4 It maximize yields of rice, wheat, and maize, includes aspects like the loss of familiar improving overall efficiency.4 It is going to environment as natural disasters destroy take creative solutions such as aquaponics, homes and people are forced to abandon growing plants in a soil-free fashion; this their homes due to unlivable conditions. At practice utilizes aquariums of fish to supply the core of solastalgia is an undercurrent of plants with nutrients, which in return filter powerlessness and lack of control frequently the water and keep the fish healthy.2 To present in contemplation when considering combat overfishing we must examine the future for our world under the threat of sustainable aquaculture options, where fish climate change. This commonly results in can be bred and “harvested” for the sole increased cases of depression, anxiety, and purpose of being supplied as a food source. even suicide.4 Another aspect to this Human lifestyles will also need to change as scenario is the question of empowerment to we socially internalize the dangerous health affect some degree of change. Engaging effects that a changing environment can local communities in efforts to combat have. This includes dramatically reducing climate change and respond to natural food waste, and altering our diets to one that disaster is one possibility in alleviating the is lower-impact.4 We must harmonize our negative mental health impacts of those health and environmental policies at all changes. levels, and resist the urge to compartmentalize each of them into separate Section Two: Building Resilience, issue areas. Protection, and Adaptation with a Special Throughout this next section of the Concern for Safeguarding Human Health article, we will examine some case studies and further detailed examples of options we Understanding just how a changing have for transforming our lifestyles, our environment impacts human health is a policies, and our relationship with the necessary first step if we are to combat the environment in a way that minimizes our causes of those changes. Drawing on these contributions to destruction of the natural understandings, we now may begin to environment and, in turn, protects our explore a few possible theories for solutions. collective human health from the dangerous First, there are some outstanding effects of anthropogenic changes in our contradictions which must be reconciled. environment. For instance, between the growing demand for food and the increasing threat to food Regulation security and environmental limits to production: it is crucial that we seek out One of the more popular attempts to sustainable intensification practices, such as combat climate change in the hope of drip-irrigation or genetically-modified minimizing its effects is through legislative organisms (GMOs).4 Achieving adequate regulation. Regulation can have positive global food production for an increasing impacts, but is often accompanied by population will take advanced scientific dissension at the idea of government application. In China, for example, an infiltration into private business practices. 31 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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Nonetheless, it has historically played a which are more eco-friendly than single significant role, and continues to do so today. person cars; however, they also concentrate To highlight this, we can look at an example significant amounts of pollutants into one of a proposed (but ultimately unsuccessful) area and are warmer on average than piece of U.S. legislation aimed at reigning in suburban or rural areas which exacerbates pollutive practices and protecting the heat-related events; both of the latter American people from harmful effects of scenarios often lead to many health climate change problems.4 Despite these complicated The Super Pollutants Act of 2015 was realities, there is a high degree of potential aimed at reducing short-lived climate for cities to become beacons of sustainable pollutants, including black carbon, methane, living. By incorporating green spaces into and hydrofluorocarbons, all of which are city life, air pollution and carbon emissions significant contributors to both climate can be reduced and rising temperatures can change and other more direct effects on be regulated.4 Not only does this assist in human health; in fact, the reduction of these alleviating threats of heat or pollution pollutants could result in an estimated related health ailments, but it contributes to prevention of two million premature deaths, improved mental health as well.4 Overall, as according to the UN Environmental population trends point to increasing Program.6 The Act sought to effectively populations in urban areas, cities small and accomplish this mission through a variety of large are going to be pressed to transform integrated measures. It called on a into sustainability centers. Thankfully, we combination of federal agencies and global have some existing models to build off of partnerships from the Arctic Council, to for inspiration. USAID, to the EPA, to the US Export and The city of Burlington, capital of the Import Bank to initiate practices and state of Vermont, was the first U.S. city to implement policies which were tailored to transform its energy intake to 100% each agency’s portfolio and touched on the renewable energy.7 The city of 42,000 has wide reaching roots of the pollution been pointed to as a sustainability success problem.6 Through a multi-pronged story, mainly for its transition from a approach which ranged from logging port on Lake Champlain to an recommendations on conditional financing international model for sustainable policy of sustainable energy projects to prioritizing and livelihood. The city generates its energy international development projects which from a combination of locally (and included provisions for black carbon sustainably) harvested wood, a hydroelectric mitigation, this bill had the potential to spur plant, a few wind turbines on a nearby hill, action across the necessary spectrum of and an array of solar panels at its small factors which have a hand in contributing to airport.7 On top of this, they have not had to the super pollutant emissions. raise energy prices in nearly eight years; a feat accomplished in large part due to the Sustainable Cities investment in state-of-the-art scrubber technology which was implemented at the Cities are often extra-vulnerable to Burlington Electric station, allowing the city environment related health effects. They to earn the state’s highest energy credits by also play a complex role in relation to selling their emission rights out of state.7 climate change and pollution. On one hand, The city, though, offers a full picture of they offer opportunities for travel methods what a sustainable urban area can look like: 32 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 32 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

in addition to Burlington’s impressive comprehensive solution where all aspects of energy generation statistics, the city gets its the issue are solved in the most appropriate food from a non-profit owned plot of 300 and efficient of manners. acre reclaimed floodplain land. The non- profit got its startup funds from the Integrated Landscape Management municipal government as part of an effort to support local entrepreneurship under the Solutions which include integrated mayorship of a certain contemporary name land use techniques oftentimes can be in sustainability policy, Bernie Sanders, in optimal platforms for implementing policies his earliest days of public service. The food and practices which will interrupt the causes is now harvested and sold as part of a of climate change and mediate its effects. member-owned cooperative market located Integrated landscape management (ILM) is in the downtown.7 more of a philosophy to approaching this Although Burlington offers a glorious broader issue than a specific policy platform. example of sustainable living, other efforts The idea behind it is to achieve multiple can easily fall short in ways that have targets in sustainability in the most efficient, detrimental effects on the natural eco-friendly, and human-friendly way. environment. For example, a new Through the harmonization of planning, development in southwest Florida is aiming implementation, and monitoring, integrated to be the world’s first solar-powered town.8 landscape management offers an alternative Those designing the town traveled across the to the siloed approach which plagues many globe in search of the best practices to shape of our national and international efforts in their vision of what a futuristic municipality the fields of health, development, and should look like in a world increasingly sustainability. In an oversimplified word, it affected by climate change. Despite their is all about “synergy.”9 For example, it can successes in designing an impressive solar look as simple as accomplishing the grid, integrated green space, and a locally reduction of cases of Lyme’s disease by sourced food system, the simple overlook of reducing transmitter agents through their local ecosystem could throw an ugly protecting habitats by residential zones.4 In stain on the acclaimed development. The protecting these ecosystems, we also prevent city’s location threatens to cut off transit of biodiversity loss and maintain a critical one of the last remaining panther carbon sink, all while keeping to the original populations in the state.8 While the goal of reducing cases of Lyme’s disease. development itself poses no direct threats to This is a prime example of how the health the critically endangered species according and environmental field of policy can and to Fish and Wildlife Services, the proximity should be integrated, in order to maximize can cause enough damage on its own. The effectiveness of proposed solutions. increased traffic, possibility of illegal A particularly useful framework for hunting, and pollution all factor into the illustrating this integration of the two fields well-being of the panther population. The can be found in the United Nations’ development is also in a possible projected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), area of expansion for the panther which were adopted in 2015 as part of the population.8 This example demonstrates the 2030 Agenda.10 These seventeen goals are crucial necessity of careful, integrated broken down further into 169 specific planning methods when designing targets. The philosophy behind these goals sustainable cities; and the importance of a and targets was to design them in such a 33 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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way so as to implicitly promote breadth of the targets. Critics pointed to the collaboration and integration of solutions. SDGs as being too aloof, lacking in the For instance, the Lyme’s disease example tangible community-level actionables which given above can easily be considered to would ultimately need to come about if incorporate aspects of Goal 3, “Good Health these grandiose Goals were to be anything and Well-Being,” Goal 13, “Climate Action,” close to accomplished. What ILM offers is and Goal 17, “Life on Land.”10 The very landscape-scale solutions to a global design of these types of projects gives hope agenda.9 Although the Goals can be applied and vision for what future approaches to a to varying degrees of unique issues facing wide variety of global challenges can look communities in all corners of the globe, ILM like. ILM empowers local communities, dissects these Goals into meaningful actions promotes transboundary cooperation to be undertaken at the most grassroots level between industries, and reduces costs by all across the globe. making solutions efficient.9 To provide a real-world case study Conclusion example, we will look to the Imarisha Naivasha Board in the Lake Naivasha Basin The changing environment we are of Kenya. This Basin includes national parks, experiencing today poses an unprecedented bird sanctuaries, is home to over 700,000 breadth of threats to our livelihoods, most people, and is the epicenter of the country’s poignantly to our human health. While lucrative flower export industry.9 However, causality between environmental causes and due to poor agricultural practices, over health effects is often difficult to prove extraction of water, and uncoordinated because of lack of information and the fact resource management, the local environment that this is very much a new phenomenon, became heavily strained. Not only were the with conditions changing every day and natural ecosystems in the region under throughout seasons, there is a substantial duress, but the floriculture, agriculture, and degree of studies which show wide-ranging ecotourism industries were also placed in a areas of correlation which has meant direct line of threat by the environmental travesty for the health of whole populations damage.9 The solution to this environmental in every corner of the globe. We as crisis incorporated the philosophy of inhabitants of this unique planet have failed integrated landscape management to gather to conscientiously self-regulate our waste, the multiple stakeholders together and our emissions, and our destruction on the organize a unified plan to save the region’s natural environment. For too many in our natural environment. In establishing the societies today, the insight into the crisis Imarisha Naivasha Board, a combination of nature of this issue is dulled, or intentionally local government, NGOs, small-scale overlooked in favor of profit, the status quo, farmers, community groups, commercial or fear of what acknowledging this flower growers, and others developed the intimidating reality means. “Lake Naivasha Integrated Management Ignoring the realities of climate change Plan” to properly address the variety of today must be understood to equate to threats to their environment, local economy, risking hundreds of thousands of lives which and ways of life.9 have been shown to be at the mercy of a When the UN first came out with its changing environment and its harmful seventeen new SDGs, many were frustrated effects. Anything less than this dims the at the evident vague language and ambitious brutality of the crisis and lulls us into apathy 34 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 34 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

and inaction. It is dangerous, deadly, and Integrated Landscape Management. unacceptable. Our response, therefore, must Publication. The Landscapes for People, be bold and it must be comprehensive. As I Food and Nature Initiative. have demonstrated above, when solutions are designed in an integrated fashion, Neuhauser, Alan. "A New Focus on Health." incorporating a variety of stakeholders, and U.S. News & World Report. May 6, 2016. not overlooking any component of the Accessed January 24, 2017. broader environmental situation, we have http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016- seen success and hope for a sustainable 05-06/gina-mccarthy-climate-change-is-a- future. It is through initiatives under this public-health-issue. philosophy, and only in this resolute and meticulously premeditated fashion can we Preventing Disease Through Healthy hope to alleviate the health burden of our Environments. Report. Accessed January 24, human-induced environmental change. 2017. http://www.who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/ publications/preventingdisease.pdf. Bibliography Purdy, Jedediah. "Environmentalism Was Boesch, Donald F. "Pfiesteria and the Once a Social-Justice Movement." The Chesapeake Bay | BioScience | Oxford Atlantic. December 07, 2016. Accessed June Academic." OUP Academic. October 01, 12, 2017. 2001. Accessed June 25, 2017. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/ /2016/12/how-the-environmental- 51/10/803/245202/Pfiesteria-and-the- movement-can-recover-its-soul/509831/. Chesapeake-Bay. Rhode, Robert A., and Richard A. Muller. Brodish, P. H., and K. Singh. "Association "Air Pollution in China: Mapping of Between Schistosoma haematobium Concentrations and Sources." Plos One 10, Exposure and Human Immunodeficiency no. 8 (2015). Virus Infection Among Females in doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0135749. Mozambique." The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene. May 04, "SDGs: Sustainable Development 2016. Accessed June 4, 2017. Knowledge Platform." United Nations. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2697 Accessed January 25, 2017. 6893. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs.

Helmore, Edward. "The solar-powered town: Shah, Sonia. "Climate’s Strong Fingerprint a dream for the environment – or a wildlife In Global Cholera Outbreaks." Yale E360. nightmare?" The Guardian. December 25, February 17, 2011. Accessed July 31, 2017. 2016. Accessed January 25, 2017. http://e360.yale.edu/features/climates_strong https://www.theguardian.com/us- _fingerprint__in_global_cholera_outbreaks. news/2016/dec/25/solar-powered-town- babcock-ranch-environmentalist-panther. Smith, K.R., A. Woodward, D. Campbell- Lendrum, D.D. Chadee, Y. Honda, Q. Liu, Landscape Partnerships for Sustainable J.M. Olwoch, B. Revich, and R. Sauerborn, Development: Achieving the SDGs Through 2014: Human health: impacts, adaptation, 35 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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and co-benefits. In: Climate Change 2014: Anthropocene epoch: report of The Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. on planetary health." The Lancet 386, no. Contribution of Working Group II to the 10007 (2015): 1973-2028. Fifth Assessment Report of the doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(15)60901-1. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Field, C.B., V.R. Barros, D.J. Woodard, Colin, Erick Trickey, Karl Sharro, Dokken, K.J. Mach, M.D. Mastrandrea, T.E. Garrett M. Graff, and Maria Konnikova. Bilir, M. Chatterjee, K.L. Ebi, Y.O. Estrada, "America’s First All-Renewable-Energy R.C. Genova, B. Girma, E.S. Kissel, A.N. City." Politico.com. November 17, 2016. Levy, S. MacCracken, P.R. Mastrandrea, Accessed January 25, 2017. and L.L. White (eds.)]. Cambridge http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/201 University Press, Cambridge, United 6/11/burlington-what-works-green-energy- Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 214463?cmpid=sf. 709-754.

Super Pollutants Act of 2015, S. S. 2076, 114th Cong. (2015).

Whitmee, Sarah, Andy Haines, Chris Beyrer, Frederick Boltz, Anthony G. Capon, Braulio Ferreira De Souza Dias, Alex Ezeh, Howard Frumkin, Peng Gong, Peter Head, Richard Horton, Georgina M. Mace, Robert Marten, Samuel S. Myers, Sania Nishtar, Steven A. Osofsky, Subhrendu K. Pattanayak, Montira J. Pongsiri, Cristina Romanelli, Agnes Soucat, Jeanette Vega, and Derek Yach. "Safeguarding human health in the

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COP22 have not yet had significant impact THE IMPACT on the status of current and potential CDPs, and that vulnerable communities require (OR LACK additional legal and political frameworks to ensure dignified migration. THEREOF) OF RECENT Introduction

ENVIRNMENTAL On October 17th, 2016, Anote Tong, the NEGOTIATIONS former President of the Republic of Kiribati (“Kiribati”), delivered a set of remarks at ON CLIMATE Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. During his speech, President Tong focused INDUCED on climate induced displacement, one of the manifestations of climate change that is DISPLACEMENT increasingly under the international microscope: AARON SILBERMAN Weather and climate are without a doubt Abstract the most popular ice-breakers between unfamiliar people trying to establish As the effects of climate change on the some kind of a connection. And today, human condition become increasingly climate change has also become the apparent, a growing body of literature has hottest topic of discussion in the been authored concerning climate induced international arena. But what do climate displacement. While desertification, sea change and recent international level rise, extreme weather events, and other negotiations on this issue mean for climatic factors have increased the number countries in different parts of the world, of climate displaced persons (CDPs), especially for those most vulnerable, like political and legal frameworks have been Kiribati? The brutal reality is that, for slow to respond to the burgeoning crisis. those of us living on low-lying atoll Despite its unprecedented nature and islands, our future survival as a people significant accomplishments, the 2015 Paris and a culture is very much in question. Agreement includes little mention of The scenarios projected by the displacement, migration, or refugees; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate same is true of the resolutions adopted at the Change (IPCC) indicate that, even if the second session of the United Nations pledges on emissions made in Paris are Environment Assembly and the 22nd fully delivered, my homeland will still Conference of the Parties. This paper offers be underwater well within the century.1 an analysis of the COP21, UNEA II, and COP22 environmental negotiations and specifically focuses on how the language of the aforementioned gatherings have, or have 1 Tong, Anote. 2016. The global challenge of climate- not, affected the nexus of climate change induced migration. Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.: and displacement. This evaluation yields the https://globalfutures.georgetown.edu/responses/the-global- 37 following: that COP21, UNEA II, and challenge-of-climate-induced-migration. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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President Tong’s remarks at Georgetown that can legitimately lay claim to being University, much like the speeches he has displaced by climate change range exist in made throughout a lengthy career in public Kiribati,3 the People’s Republic of service, were an attempt to analyze the Bangladesh,4 the State of Alaska,5 and many phenomenon of people being displaced from more countries. their homes and/or countries by various It is worth briefly noting that, manifestations of climate change (e.g., rising throughout this article, those who are or will sea levels, desertification, extreme weather be displaced by climate change will be patterns). This article seeks to provide referred to as climate displaced persons context for the urgency behind many of (“CDPs”). This terminology captures both President Tong’s claims and delve into the those who are displaced by climate change impacts that recent, international and remain within their country of origin environmental negotiations have had on and those who are forced to cross national climate induced displacement. Specifically, borders. This article is not unique in this article will examine the results of the utilizing such terminology, as is following international environmental demonstrated by the work of Rosemary negotiations: the 21st Conference of the Lyster and others.6 However, by making use Parties to the United Nations Framework of the term CDPs, this article seeks to avoid Convention on Climate Change (COP21); entering into any discussion regarding the the Second United Nations Environment merits of such phrases as “climate refugees” Assembly (UNEA II); and the 22nd or “climate migrants.” While some, such as Conference of the Parties to the United François Gemenne, argue that it is vital for Nations Framework Convention on Climate CDPs to referred to as “climate refugees” in Change (COP22). In order to properly order to acknowledge the fact that many evaluate the aforementioned Conferences displaced persons will come from and Assembly, this article will provide an developing countries that have historically overview of the history of international contributed fewer greenhouse gas emissions environmental negotiations as well as a (“GHG emissions”) than developed review of legal code and political countries,7 the Nansen Conference on convention insofar as they pertain to climate

induced displacement 3 Farbotko, Carol. 2010. Wishful sinking: Disappearing The issue of climate induced islands, climate refugees and cosmopolitan experimentation. displacement is increasingly germane at Asia Pacific Viewpoint (51): 47. 4 Chaturvedi, Sanjay. 2010. Geopolitics of fear and the such negotiations given recent studies that emergence of ‘climate refugees’: Imaginative geographies have been published and contain estimates of climate change and displacements in Bangladesh. of the number of people who may be Journal of the Indian Ocean Region 6 (2): 206. 5 Marino, Elizabeth. 2012. The long history of potentially forced from their homes by environmental migration: Assessing vulnerability climate change. According to one such study construction and obstacles to successful relocation in conducted by the International Organization shishmaref, alaska. Global Environmental Change 22 (2): 374. for Migration, between 50 million and 350 6 Lyster, Rosemary. 2015. Protecting the human rights of million people could be displaced by climate climate displaced persons: The promise and limits of the change by 2050.2 The scope of this issue united nations framework convention on climate change. In Research handbook on human rights and the environment., extends throughout the world: communities eds. A. Grear, L. Kotze. UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. 7 Haley-Benjamin, Vanessa, Carl Bruch, François Gemenne, Michael B. Gerrard, W. Chris King, and Benjamin 2 Laczko, Frank, and Christine Aghazarm. 2009. Migration, Schachter. 2016. The debate: Can the world community environment and climate change: Assessing the evidence. handle environmental refugees? The Environmental Forum 38 Switzerland: International Organization for Migration. Nov./December 2016 : 52. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 38 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

Climate Change and Displacement in the with the most recent edition having been 21st Century acknowledged that no held in Marrakech, Morocco. Different terminology referring to persons displaced committees have been created over the by climate change has yet been universally history of the COP (e.g., an Adaptation acknowledged or adopted.8 Given this Committee), and leadership of the COP is ambiguity vis-à-vis the propriety and coordinated by the Secretariat of the commonness of certain terms, this article UNFCCC and a rotating chair of the COP will attempt to steer clear of vocabularic that is selected from the membership of the debate as best as is possible by exclusively Conference.11 As Ramakrishna described in utilizing the CDP designation. the late 1990s, one of the main functions of the UNFCCC is to coalesce and support Relevant History efforts to aid developing countries that have contributed fewer GHG emissions to climate A Review of the History of the COP change than developed countries; have access to fewer resources than developed The COP, which occurs on an annual countries; and are often geographically basis and rotates between different party disadvantaged insofar as they are more nations within the Conference, is the likely to suffer the consequences of climate decision making body of the United Nations change earlier than developed countries.12 Framework Convention on Climate Change (“UNFCCC”). According to the website of A Review of the History of the UNEA the UNFCCC, “All States that are Parties to the Convention are represented at the COP, The UNEA first occurred in June 2014 at which they review the implementation of in Nairobi, Kenya, the headquarters of the the Convention and any other legal United Nations Environment Programme instruments that the COP adopts and take (“UNEP”).13 The UNEA is part-governing decisions necessary to promote the effective council, part-forum: it is attended by all implementation of the Convention, United Nations member states (either by including institutional and administrative governmental representatives and/or arrangements.”9 The COP works to develop members of respective countries’ civil policies that further the mission of the societies) and assists in the contemplation UNFCCC, per Article 2 of the Convention, and drafting of policy pertaining to the to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions in global environment. The UNEA was order to avoid harmful, anthropogenic mandated into existence at the 2012 Rio+20 effects within the climate system.10 Since it United Nations Conference on Sustainable began in 1995, the COP has met 22 times, Development in order to augment the

11 Consolidated historical membership charts. 2016. 8 Hantscher, Sinja. 2016. The united nations high Accessed: 2017. Available from commissioner for refugees' discourse on environmentally http://unfccc.int/files/bodies/election_and_membership/app displaced persons: A double-edged sword? In lication/pdf/consolidated_historical_membership_charts.pd Organizational perspectives on environmental migration., f. eds. Kerstin Rosenow-Williams, François Gemenne. 1st ed., 12 Kilaparti, Ramakrishna. 2000. The UNFCCC - history 93. New York: Routledge. and evolution of the climate change negotiations. In Climate change and development., ed. L. Gómez Echeverri, 9 Conference of the parties (COP). 2014. Accessed: 2017. 47. New Haven: Yale School of Forestry and Available from http://unfccc.int/bodies/body/6383.php. Environmental Studies. 10 Egenhofer, Christian, ed. 2008. Beyond Bali: Strategic 13 First united nations environment assembly. 2014. issues for the post-2012 climate change regime. Brussels: Accessed: 2017. Available from 39 Centre for European Policy Studies. http://www.unep.org/unea1/en/. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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operational efficiency of the UNEP and its in one of the definitive accounts of climate Governing Council, which had been meeting induced displacement’s history, puts it: regularly since 1973.1415 The first UNEA had a thematic focus on the Sustainable [El-Hinnawi’s paper’s] effectiveness in Development Goals (“SDGs”), whereas raising the profile of the 'environmental UNEA II’s main theme was “Delivering on refugee' was that El-Hinnawi provided the Environmental Dimension of the 2030 the first formal definition of the term Agenda for Sustainable Development.”16 [“environmental refugee”]. This was According to official UNEA documentation important for operationalizing it, which and the website of the UNEA, 17 resolutions in turn allowed for a blossoming of were adopted at the first UNEA,17 and 25 work that focused on both documenting resolutions were adopted at UNEA II.18 the existence of migration forced by environmental crises, and on Relevant History and Context of Climate formulating numerical projections of Induced Displacement future 'environmental refugees'.21

For much of the 20th and 20st Following the 1985 UNEP report, the pace centuries, the predominant term used in of research being conducted on climate debates regarding climate induced induced displacement and the potential displacement was “environmental refugees.” number of CDPs increased throughout the The earliest deployment of that term is most 1990s and early 2000s. One of the most correctly credited to Lester Brown, the influential authors of this era, Norman founder of the World Watch Institute, in Myers, was particularly known for his writings published in the early 1970s.19 claims that enormous numbers of CDPs did However, “environmental refugees” did not exist and would grow at an exponential rate enter into common parlance until the mid-to- in the early to mid-2000s: in one of his most late 1980s with a UNEP report written by recent publically-available works, Myers Essam El-Hinnawi.20 As James Morrissey, asserts that “As far back as 1995 … environmental refugees totaled at least 25 million people,” and that as many as 200

14 Sahba, Naysán. 2014. OurPlanet. Nairobi, Kenya: United million CDPs could exist in an unspecified 22 Nations Environment Programme. near future. While Myers’ work is laudable, 15 United Nations Environment Programme. 1973. Paper insofar as it has likely increased the amount presented at Report of the Governing Council on the work of its first session, New York. of attention that policy and lawmakers have 16 United Nations Environment Programme. About UNEA. paid to climate induced displacement, his 2016. Accessed: 2017. Available from estimates are often outliers relative to other http://web.unep.org/unea/about-unea. 17 United Nations Environment Programme. 2014. studies, and his predictions have been Resolutions and decisions adopted by the united nations environment assembly of the united nations environment programme at its first session on 27 june 2014. Nairobi, Kenya. 18 United Nations Environment Programme. List of minimalists' to 'proponents and critics'. Journal of Political resolutions adopted at UNEA-2. 2016. Accessed: 2017. Ecology 19 : 36. Available from http://web.unep.org/unea/list-resolutions- 21 Ibid. adopted-unea-2. 22 Myers, Norman. 2005. Contribution by prof. norman 19 Saunders, P. 2000. Environmental refugees: The origins myers, green college, oxford university, U.K., of a construct. In Political ecology: Science, myth and "environmental refugees: An emergent security issue". power., 218. London: Oxford University Press. Paper presented at 13th Economic Forum, Organization for 20 Morrissey, James. 2012. Rethinking the 'debate on Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) , Prague, 40 environmental refugees': From 'maximalists and Czech Republic. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 40 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

publicly questioned by peers and media CDPs.26 Securitizing rhetoric, or outlets.23 ‘problematizing rhetoric,’ is best understood Though there is consensus among as being any language that is applied to an experts working in both climate change and issue or group of people (in this case, migration studies that the number of climate induced displacement and CDPs) displaced persons will be substantial, and typically classifies said issue or group as estimates range from 50 million to 1 billion being likely threats and/or threat- in the coming decades.24 Given such a wide augmenting factors. The reason that such range, this article will seek to avoid language might be employed is to shock predicating itself on more specific estimates governmental officials, large financial that may prove to be inordinately inaccurate donors, or others into taking action on an in the near future. An example of a guiding issue that might otherwise be perceived as document for this article would be a recent being relatively slow moving.27 Additional discussion paper published by the Office of examples of the securitization of CDPs Conflict Management and Mitigation that abound and include, but are not limited to, a acknowledges the likelihood of some tens of 2015 Department of Defense Report that millions of CDPs while also opening the evoked and focused on the likelihood that, door for a larger number that can be clarified unchecked, climate induced displacement at a later date.25 would augment pre-existing security threats Policymakers, military leaders, and and exacerbate the development of new legal experts have been interpreting and security threats.28 responding to the work of climate induced Before effectively analyzing the displacement researchers for close to three impacts of COP21, UNEA II, and COP22, decades. Often, it is common for one must briefly examine the United Nations policymakers in both national (e.g., the U.S. Convention Relating to the Status of Army) and international organizations (e.g., Refugees (“1951 Refugees Convention”). the United Nations) to frame climate The 1951 Refugees Convention is the induced displacement in security terms and fundamental, international legal depict CDPs at potentially destabilizing underpinning of what countries should do, factors. As Nash deftly examines, even the individually and collectively, in response to United Nations High Commissioner for refugees. Ratified by 145 nations, the 1951 Refugees (“UNHCR”), the arm of the UN Refugees Convention provides for a that is most centered around quantifying and definition of refugees, describes the supporting refugees and migrants, has obligations of states to care for said refugees, demonstrated a predilection for ‘securitizing’ and attempts to quell any potential discontent with said obligations that could emerge and weaken the ties that bind states 23 Barnes, Hannah. 2013. How many climate migrants will there be? BBC, 3 September 2013. Accessed 2016. 24 Ferris, Elizabeth. 2015. Climate change, migration and the incredibly complicated task of influencing policy: Conference on ‘Human Migration and the Environment: 26 Nash, Sarah. 2016. Towards an ‘environmental migration Futures, Politics, Invention.” Durham University, Durham, management’ discourse: a discursive turn in environmental UK migration advocacy? In Organizational Perspectives on 25 Null, Schuyler, and Lauren Herzer Risi. 2016. Environmental Migration., eds. Kerstin Rosenow-Williams, Navigating complexity: Climate, migration, and Conflict in François Gemenne. 1st ed., 198. New York: Routledge. a changing world. Washington, D.C.: Office of Conflict 27 Ibid. Management and Mitigation; United States Agency for 28 Department of Defense. 2015. National security International Development; Woodrow Wilson International implications of climate-related risks and a changing 41 Center for Scholars. climate. Department of Defense, 8-6475571. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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to each other and their duties.29 For the purposes of this article, it is worth carefully Given that the COP21, UNEA II, and highlighting the Convention’s parameters COP22 negotiations have all occurred in the for who may, and may not, constitute a recent past, as well as the fact that it is refugee: difficult to accurately extrapolate the longitudinal impacts that said negotiations [The term “refugee” shall apply to will have on climate induced displacement those who,] owing to well founded fear politics and law, this article exclusively of being persecuted for reasons of race, analyzes the three negotiations based on the religion, nationality, membership of a formal and informal language that they particular social group or political adopted vis-à-vis CDPs. Whereas the typical opinion, is outside the country of his COP and UNEA produce numerous nationality and is unable or, owing to resolutions that pertain to various, disparate such fear, is unwilling to avail himself subjects, COP21 was unique because of its of the protection of that country; or almost singular focus on an all- who, not having a nationality and encompassing goal: the finalization of the being outside the country of his former so-called Paris Agreement. Therefore, with habitual residence as a result of such the Paris Agreement dominating the results events, is unable or, owing to such fear, of COP21 to a near-exclusive degree, is unwilling to return to it.30 analysis of the impacts of COP21 on climate induced displacement necessarily focuses on This foundational, internationally-agreed the Agreement. upon document does not include reference to Given this, a simplistic search environmental or climatic factors that might mechanism was applied to the Paris justify benefits being allotted to those who Agreement in order to ascertain whether it are displaced by phenomena unrelated to addressed climate induced displacement race, religion, nationality, and other such and/or CDPs. For searches of the Paris factors. Therefore, the majority of CDPs, Agreement, as well as other documentation unless other factors complicate their produced during COP21, UNEA II, and displacement, do not currently receive any COP22, pertinent synonyms for the term international protection via the 1951 “displacement” were searched for in order to Refugee Convention. This fact has bedeviled ensure that no mention of the subject would advocates and the lawyers of CDPs for years, go overlooked. Such terms included and all recent international environmental “refugee(s),” “migrant(s),” “migration,” negotiations that have attempted to contend “movement,” “resettle,” and other, similar with the issue of climate induced variations. Applying these search parameters displacement have been forced to address, in to the Paris Agreement yielded only one one way or another, the limitations imposed result, found in the Preamble (emphasis by the 1951 Refugees Convention. added): Acknowledging that climate change is Effects of the Paris Agreement and post- a common concern of humankind, Paris Negotiations Parties should, when taking action to address climate change, respect, promote and consider their respective 29 Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of obligations on human rights, the right Refugees, (2010): Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/3b66c2aa10. to health, the rights of indigenous 42 30 Ibid. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 42 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

peoples, local communities, migrants, existence and rights of CDPs.34 However, in children, persons with disabilities and an accompanying document that was agreed people in vulnerable situations and the upon in order to facilitate the adoption of the right to development, as well as gender Paris Agreement, more specificity was given equality, empowerment of women and to the climate induced displacement issue. In intergenerational equity…31 the document, the COP calls for the development of a task force that would be This allusion to climate induced entrusted with the creation of displacement in the Paris Agreement was recommendations for how the international significant for several reasons. The first was community can best “avert, minimize and the historic nature of the Agreement itself: address” climate induced displacement.35 following on the years of civil society calls Inasmuch as a relatively short amount of for an overarching, international treaty on time has passed since the conclusion of climate change, the final text of the Paris COP21, it is difficult to objectively and Agreement was greeted in some corners conclusively determine which of the two with joy and others with something closer to aforementioned documents has had a more despair.32 As Jacquet and Jamieson describe significant impact on the state of affairs it, the Paris Agreement, by virtue of its regarding climate induced displacement. largely-voluntary and non-binding set of However, given the more concrete nature of principles, relies on civil society more than the Adoption of the Paris Agreement versus previous international agreements for its the Paris Agreement itself, the former has, own effective implementation.33 Given this, and will likely have, a greater effect on the Agreement’s official acknowledgement CDPs and their affairs. With that being said, of climate induced displacement, and more it is clear that COP21 was focused on specifically the rights that CDPs should be international and national emissions targets accorded, functions as a clarion call for to the extent that it was unable to devote a advocates and policymakers to push their significant portion of time to climate national governments in order to proactively induced displacement, thus handicapping its address the thorny issue. ability to include impactful reference to The second, more disquieting reason is CDPs in its final texts.36 the fact that the language included in the Following the December, 2015 final documentation was altered from earlier conclusion of COP21 in Paris, France, draft language that was much more forceful. UNEA II occurred in Nairobi, Kenya, in As Savaresi notes, a climate induced May 2016. According to the official website displacement “coordination facility” was of the UNEA, a total of 25 resolutions were acknowledged in early drafts of the formally adopted by the Assembly’s end.37 Agreement: by the time COP21 concluded, that concrete language had been erased in favor of a more nebulous affirmation of the 34 Savaresi, Annalisa. 2016. The paris agreement: A new beginning? Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law 34 (1):16. 35 Adoption of the Paris Agreement, (2015): , http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/eng/l09.pdf. 36 Warren, Phillip. 2016. Evaluating the 'climate change displacement coordination facility': How the UNFCCC can 31 United Nations. Paris Agreement (12/12/2015). address forced migration after paris COP21. Columbia Law 32 Jacquet, Jennifer, and Dale Jamieson. 2016. Soft but Review Forthcoming. significant power in the paris agreement. Nature Climate 37 List of resolutions adopted at UNEA-2. 2016. Accessed: Change 6 : 643. 2017. Available from http://web.unep.org/unea/list- 43 33 Ibid. resolutions-adopted-unea-2. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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In order to ensure the analysis of these (“2/24”), included language that posited that resolutions was uniform with the review sustainable, proactive land management conducted on COP21’s documents, the same practices could help ameliorate the search terms and parameters were utilized in likelihood of displacement occurring; with both cases. that being said, 2/24, much like 2/15, did not Upon application of the explicate or investigate the plight of CDPs aforementioned search parameters to the in its own terms; rather, it did so in the official resolutions adopted at UNEA II, it contexts of desertification and land was found that only two contained any degradation.40 Beyond 2/15 and 2/24, no language that pertained to climate induced other official UNEP or UN documentation displacement. The first resolution, that originated during UNEA II could be Protection of the Environment in Areas found that related to climate induced Affected by Armed Conflict (“2/15”), displacement. predominantly focused on the intersection The final, recent international between environmental degradation and environmental negotiation that this article armed conflict; specifically, the resolution evaluates is COP22, which concluded in sought to reaffirm pre-existing initiatives December 2016 in Marrakech, Morocco. that pertained to environmental Perhaps the most well-known document to peacebuilding and support the development have been generated at COP22 is the of new endeavors that might be able to Marrakech Action Proclamation For Our address needs that are not presently being Climate And Sustainable Development met by the international community.38 2/15 (“Marrakech Proclamation”), which acknowledged the causal links between organizations and media outlets in some environmental degradation (e.g., as might be corners interpreted as a rebuttal to the then- caused by armed conflict) and displacement; President Elect Donald Trump’s having cast additionally, 2/15 recommended that the aspersions on the science and policy Executive Director of the UNEP provide endeavors of the UN.414243 However, in additional assistance to those countries that applying the same search parameters that may be affected by armed conflict, were applied to COP21 and UNEA II to the displacement, and environmental Marrakech Proclamation, it is revealed that degradation.39 However, neither 2/15’s the document contains no mention of acknowledgement nor its recommendation migration, displacement, refugees, the explicitly addressed climate induced movement of people, or CDPs.44 Though the displacement outside of the lenses of environmental degradation and environmental peacebuilding. 40 United Nations Environment Programme. 2/24. Combating Desertification, Land Degradation and Drought and Promoting Sustainable Pastoralism and The other UNEA II resolution that Rangelands(05/23-27/2016, 2016). referred to climate induced displacement, 41 King, Ed. 2016. Marrakech call decoded: UN sends drumpf its climate demands. Climate Home, 15/11/2016, Combating Desertification, Land 2016. Degradation and Drought and Promoting 42 Editorial. 2016. Marrakech: Climate conference in grim Sustainable Pastoralism and Rangelands political weather. Katoikos.eu, 11/22/2016, 2016. 43 Venkat, Vidya. 2016. Marrakech action proclamation sends out a strong signal on climate. The Hindu, 18/11/2016, 2016. 38 United Nations Environment Programme. 2/15. 44 Marrakech Action Proclamation for our Climate and Protection of the Environment in Areas Affected by Armed Sustainable Development (2016). Conflict(5/23-27/2016, 2016). https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/marrakech_nov_2016/appli 44 39 Ibid. cation/pdf/marrakech_action_proclamation.pdf Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 44 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

document is short and broad, it does mention International Mechanism Decision is a several facets of climate change and goals Decision, adopted by all UN member states, with specificity (e.g., a goal of $100 billion that clearly evinces the challenge that CDPs for developing countries’ mobilization and face and seeks to provide specific research sustainable development); given the fact that and assistance into climate induced the document was signed by all attendees at displacement without such research and COP22, it is fair to surmise that climate assistance being interpreted through a induced displacement did not draw the same secondary (e.g., environmental level of consensus that renewable energy peacebuilding, sustainable development) deployment, sustainable development, and lense. other topics did.45 One additional, distinct but interrelated At COP22, 35 official ‘Decisions’ document presented at COP22 is worth were adopted by the COP and two other, noting: the Report of the Executive related governing bodies.46 The Committee of the Warsaw International preponderance of these decisions, upon Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated review, does not contain language or with Climate Change Impacts (“Report of allusion to climate induced displacement the Executive Committee of the Warsaw and/or CDPs. Only one Decision, entitled Mechanism”). The Executive Committee of Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss the aforementioned International and Damage associated with Climate Mechanism presented this report to Change (“Warsaw International Mechanism UNFCCC member states during COP22’s Decision”), pertained to climate induced proceedings. In the Report, both migration displacement; however, unlike the two and climate induced displacement are resolutions discussed above that were specifically mentioned over two dozen adopted at UNEA II, the Warsaw times.49 The Report of the Executive International Mechanism Decision’s Committee of the Warsaw Mechanism is language regarding CDPs indicates both predominantly a review of the work of the precision and an apprehension of the Warsaw International Mechanism in the 12 remarkable challenge that is climate induced months following COP21; therefore, it does displacement.4748 That is to say, the Warsaw not contain much new information, research, or pledges to action. However, there is one 45 Ibid. exception to that rule: 46 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Decisions adopted by COP 22 and CMP 12 and CMA 1. 2017. Accessed: 2017. Available from http://unfccc.int/2860.php#auv. 47 Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage Associated with Climate Change, (2016): , climate induced displacement and other manifestations of http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/marrakech_nov_2016/applic climate change that explicitly involve damages incurred on ation/pdf/auv_cop22_i7_wim1.pdf. both developed and developing countries. Reference: 48 In order to avoid confusion, it is worth clarifying that this United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. decision is named after an organization called the Warsaw Warsaw international mechanism for loss and damage International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated associated with climate change impacts. 20162017]. with Climate Change Impacts (“Loss and Damage Available from Mechanism”). The Loss and Damage Mechanism was http://unfccc.int/adaptation/workstreams/loss_and_damage/ established at COP19 in Warsaw, Poland, and is dedicated items/8134.php. to investigating and promoting methodologies by which 49 Executive Committee of the Warsaw International loss and damage caused by climate change can be properly Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate accounted for by the international community. The Loss Change Impacts. 2016. Report of the executive committee and Damage Mechanism has, until this point, proved to be of the warsaw international mechanism for loss and one of the main channels that the UN and its member states damage associated with climate change impacts. UNFCCC, 45 have utilized in order to officially appraise the nature of GE.16-17845(E). Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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The task force [on climate induced on climate induced displacement, when it displacement underneath the Warsaw occurs in 2018.51 International Mechanism] is to deliver its recommendations [viz. climate Conclusion induced displacement] no later than at COP 24 and it may assist the In conclusion, this article’s objective Executive Committee in guiding the was to analyze the impacts that COP21, implementation of the Warsaw UNEA II, and COP22 have had on the state International Mechanism, in an of global, climate induced displacement by advisory role, specifically on activities reviewing all official documentation related to enhancing the understanding generated during those negotiations. Despite of and expertise on how the impacts of numerous positive developments within the climate change are affecting patterns official, UN-sponsored environmental of migration, displacement and human negotiations sphere (e.g., the Paris mobility, and the application of such Agreement’s acknowledgement of the rights understanding and expertise.50 of CDPs, UNEA II’s two resolutions and their allusions to climate induced The significance of this section of the displacement, the COP22 announcement of Report of the Executive Committee of the a deadline for international Warsaw Mechanism is that it attaches a hard recommendations on climate induced deadline to international recommendations displacement), it is fair to assert that an regarding climate induced displacement. insufficient amount of work has been Insofar as can be stated after review of the accomplished in these recent conferences body of work created during COP21, UNEA and assembly in order to bridge the gap II, and COP22, this Report breaks new created by a lack of political and legal ground by establishing an end date for the protection for CDPs. The efforts of first phase of the process by which participants of COP21, UNEA II, and recommendations on how to respond to COP22 are likely to be viewed as important CDPs would be created and subsequently by future historians who themselves will be implemented. It could be argued that the looking over the history of climate most significant outcome of COP22 vis-à- displacement policy. However, by COP22’s vis climate induced displacement was the conclusion, CDPs were in approximately the presentation of this Report and its same standing as they were at the opening assurances that, by COP24, gavel of COP21. recommendations for how nations should respond to CDPs will be up for public consideration. This presentation will likely Works Cited take place in the Polish city of Katowice, where the Republic of Poland and the Barnes, Hannah. 2013. How many climate UNFCCC announced COP24 will take place. migrants will there be? BBC, 3 September Efforts to bring COP24 to Poland were 2013. Accessed 2016. spearheaded by Polish Environment Minister Jan Szysko, who will likely help to oversee the conference, and the presentation 51 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Katowice Announced as Host Venue of UN Climate Change Conference COP 24 in 2018. Accessed: 46 50 Ibid. 2017. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 46 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

Chaturvedi, Sanjay. 2010. Geopolitics of Environmental Forum Nov./December 2016 : fear and the emergence of ‘climate refugees’: 52. Imaginative geographies of climate change and displacements in Bangladesh. Journal of Hantscher, Sinja. 2016. The united nations the Indian Ocean Region 6 (2): 206. high commissioner for refugees' discourse on environmentally displaced persons: A Department of Defense. 2015. National double-edged sword? In Organizational security implications of climate-related risks perspectives on environmental migration., and a changing climate. Department of eds. Kerstin Rosenow-Williams, François Defense, 8-6475571. Gemenne. 1st ed., 93. New York: Routledge.

Editorial. 2016. Marrakech: Climate Jacquet, Jennifer, and Dale Jamieson. 2016. conference in grim political weather. Soft but significant power in the Paris Katoikos.eu, 11/22/2016, 2016. agreement. Nature Climate Change 6 : 643.

Egenhofer, Christian, ed. 2008. Beyond Bali: Kilaparti, Ramakrishna. 2000. The Strategic issues for the post-2012 climate UNFCCC - history and evolution of the change regime. Brussels: Centre for climate change negotiations. In Climate European Policy Studies. change and development., ed. L. Gómez Echeverri, 47. New Haven: Yale School of Executive Committee of the Warsaw Forestry and Environmental Studies. International Mechanism for Loss and Damage associated with Climate Change King, Ed. 2016. Marrakech call decoded: Impacts. 2016. Report of the executive UN sends trump its climate demands. committee of the Warsaw international Climate Home, 15/11/2016, 2016. mechanism for loss and damage associated with climate change impacts. UNFCCC, Laczko, Frank, and Christine Aghazarm. GE.16-17845(E). 2009. Migration, environment and climate change: Assessing the evidence. Switzerland: Farbotko, Carol. 2010. Wishful sinking: International Organization for Migration. Disappearing islands, climate refugees and cosmopolitan experimentation. Asia Pacific Lyster, Rosemary. 2015. Protecting the Viewpoint (51): 47. human rights of climate displaced persons: The promise and limits of the united nations Ferris, Elizabeth. 2015. Climate change, framework convention on climate change. In migration and the incredibly complicated Research handbook on human rights and the task of influencing policy: Conference on environment., eds. A. Grear, L. Kotze. UK: ‘Human Migration and the Environment: Edward Elgar Publishing. Futures, Politics, Invention.” Durham University, Durham, UK Marino, Elizabeth. 2012. The long history of environmental migration: Assessing Haley-Benjamin, Vanessa, Carl Bruch, vulnerability construction and obstacles to François Gemenne, Michael B. Gerrard, W. successful relocation in shishmaref, alaska. Chris King, and Benjamin Schachter. 2016. Global Environmental Change 22 (2): 374. The debate: Can the world community handle environmental refugees? The 47 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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Morrissey, James. 2012. Rethinking the ecology: Science, myth and power., 218. 'debate on environmental refugees': From London: Oxford University Press. 'maximilists and minimalists' to 'proponents and critics'. Journal of Political Ecology 19 : Savaresi, Annalisa. 2016. The Paris 36. agreement: A new beginning? Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law 34 (1):16. Myers, Norman. 2005. Contribution by prof. norman myers, green college, oxford Tong, Anote. 2016. The global challenge of university, U.K., "environmental refugees: climate-induced migration. Georgetown An emergent security issue". Paper University, Washington, D.C. presented at 13th Economic Forum, Organization for Security and Co-operation Convention and Protocol Relating to the in Europe (OSCE) , Prague, Czech Republic. Status of Refugees, (2010): Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, Nash, Sarah. 2016. Towards an http://www.unhcr.org/en-us/3b66c2aa10. 'environmental migration management' discourse: A discursive turn in United Nations Environment Programme. environmental migration advocacy? In 2/15. Protection of the Environment in Organizational perspectives on Areas Affected by Armed Conflict(5/23- environmental migration., eds. Kerstin 27/2016, 2016). Rosenow-Williams, François Gemenne. 1st ed., 198. New York: Routledge. United Nations Environment Programme. 2/24. Combating Desertification, Land Marrakech Action Proclamation for our Degradation and Drought and Promoting Climate and Sustainable Development Sustainable Pastoralism and (2016). Rangelands(05/23-27/2016, 2016). https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/marrakech_ nov_2016/application/pdf/marrakech_action United Nations Environment Programme. _proclamation.pdf About UNEA. 2016. Accessed: 2017. Available from Null, Schuyler, and Lauren Herzer Risi. http://web.unep.org/unea/about-unea. 2016. Navigating complexity: Climate, migration, and Conflict in a changing world. List of resolutions adopted at UNEA-2. Washington, D.C.: Office of Conflict 2016. Accessed: 2017. Available from Management and Mitigation; United States http://web.unep.org/unea/list-resolutions- Agency for International Development; adopted-unea-2. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. First united nations environment assembly. 2014. Accessed: 2017. Available from Sahba, Naysán. 2014. OurPlanet. Nairobi, http://www.unep.org/unea1/en/. Kenya: United Nations Environment Programme. United Nations Environment Programme. 2014. Resolutions and decisions adopted by Saunders, P. 2000. Environmental refugees: the united nations environment assembly of The origins of a construct. In Political the united nations environment programme 48 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 48 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

at its first session on 27 June 2014. Nairobi, Kenya. Consolidated historical membership charts. 2016. Accessed: 2017. Available from United Nations Environment Programme. http://unfccc.int/files/bodies/election_and_m 1973. Paper presented at Report of the embership/application/pdf/consolidated_hist Governing Council on the work of its first orical_membership_charts.pdf. session, New York. Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss United Nations Environment Programme. and Damage Associated with Climate List of resolutions adopted at UNEA-2. Change, (2016): , 2016. Accessed: 2017. Available from http://unfccc.int/files/meetings/marrakech_n http://web.unep.org/unea/list-resolutions- ov_2016/application/pdf/auv_cop22_i7_wi adopted-unea-2. m1.pdf.

United Nations Framework Convention on Adoption of the Paris Agreement, (2015): , Climate Change. Decisions adopted by COP http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2015/cop21/e 22 and CMP 12 and CMA 1. 2017. ng/l09.pdf. Accessed: 2017. Available from http://unfccc.int/2860.php#auv. United Nations. Paris Agreement (12/12/2015, 2015). United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Warsaw international Conference of the parties (COP). 2014. mechanism for loss and damage associated Accessed: 2017. Available from with climate change impacts. 2016. http://unfccc.int/bodies/body/6383.php. Accessed: 2017. Available from http://unfccc.int/adaptation/workstreams/los Venkat, Vidya. 2016. Marrakech action s_and_damage/items/8134.php. proclamation sends out a strong signal on climate. The Hindu, 18/11/2016, 2016. United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Katowice Announced as Warren, Phillip. 2016. Evaluating the Host Venue of UN Climate Change 'climate change displacement coordination Conference COP 24 in 2018. Accessed: facility': How the UNFCCC can address 2017. Available from forced migration after Paris COP21. http://newsroom.unfccc.int/unfccc- Columbia Law Review Forthcoming . newsroom/katowice-announced-as-host- venue-of-un-climate-change-conference- cop-24-in-2018/.

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Indeed, these are all potent ENGAGING mechanisms for addressing such complex NARRATIVES: problems, yet they only tell part of the story. Beyond considerations of political economy, ENVIRONMENTAL governance, data, and technology, there are the narratives, perspectives, and livelihoods ESSENTIALISM of multitudes of people around the world AND who experience these issues and challenges in direct and concrete ways. Exploring and INTERSECTIONAL validating the interior and emotive domains of coping with profound environmental JUSTICE challenges—including motivations, deprivations, reflections, accommodations, PROFESSOR RANDALL AMSTER and resistances—can inform the PROFESSOR YUKI KATO policymaking sphere in critical ways. The adaptation of these narratives could itself Introduction reproduce, rather than challenge, the power dynamics that underlie the causes of environmental injustices if applied When we consider environmental uncritically. The native voices could be challenges, especially in a policy-oriented coopted in ways that cast these people and context, there is an understandable places as symbolically valorized others or predisposition to be analytical and strategic powerless victims that are in need of in the pursuit of viable political and protection by us. However, by recentering economic solutions. There is a basic these narratives, a critical stance is being recognition at work in most quarters that the cultivated in helping to unpack the potential mounting crises in our midst—from pitfalls of an increasing tendency to toxification and degradation to resource highlight personal stories as a means of conflicts and climate destabilization—are asserting greater technical control. In some monumental in scope, and that they require cases, these patterns go so far as to affirm coordinated, multilayered efforts in order to historical identity constructions that raise be remediated. Governmental fundamental issues of justice.1 This article representatives, private sector entrepreneurs, critically explores these issues, striving to civil society organizations, and on-the- investigate the narrative terrains of ground practitioners generally converge environmental engagement as a means of around the core idea that environmental cultivating more robust policies, in the belief issues are escalating, and a confluence of that durable solutions to profound crises political, economic, technological, and must address issues at the political and informational mechanisms are required in personal levels alike. order to address them meaningfully. As such, In this work, we are guided by the the scope of environmental engagement realization that the political and personal largely resides in the technical and political spheres are inherently interconnected, and realm, yielding a policy-driven framework defined mainly by diplomatic negotiations and bilateral agreements. 1 Dickinson, Elizabeth. 2012. Addressing Environmental Racism Through Storytelling: Toward an Environmental Justice Narrative Framework. Communication, Culture & 50 Critique 5 (1): 57-74. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 50 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

are continually being shaped by each other; and explores how power and social it is precisely this dialectical relationship relationships manifest in written or spoken that leads us to an inquiry into how language. Using this approach, we examine narratives reflect our understanding of both terms such as “victims” or “heroes” not realms. As such, narratives of empowerment simply as a description of someone’s can be coopted by the larger political forces inherent status, but as an embodiment of that created conditions of exploitation in the who has the power to ascribe status to first place, necessitating a critical re-reading others. Our intention is to frame these issues of both the narratives and the power of power, representation, and legitimation dynamics involved in creating and for further exploration, highlighting communicating them. In mapping this examples of how personal narratives of terrain, we draw upon materials from policy potential environmental empowerment can and academic spheres, as well as be utilized by powerful actors for divergent publications from advocacy and purposes, and how these forces mirror entrepreneurial sectors, with a specific focus patterns found vis-à-vis the role of women on how gender shapes or gets shaped in in many developing regions of the world. In these narratives. In particular, the order to do so, we draw upon examples of identification of “stakeholders” in texts and publications gleaned from the field, environmental governance forums at the and interrogate their linguistic choices and global scale often devolves upon a top-down the power dynamics within their model in which decisions are taken by state presentation. We conclude by connecting or corporate actors, leaving individuals and these issues to larger struggles in the communities in bystander (or even environmental justice milieu. demonstrator) role. The implications for women in this dynamic are especially Interior and Emotive Terrains of problematic, since “a sensitive approach to Environmentalism addressing gender-specific vulnerability and resilience … is still lacking in policy on the Environmental issues can be expressed environment and conflict.”2 through technical, scientific, and data-driven Here, we seek to encourage a more means, but they can also be thought of in participatory process by straightforwardly more humanistic and even emotional terms. bringing voices that are often excluded to One can clinically analyze the loss of the fore, through a critical discourse analysis biodiversity or the poisoning of waterways of current policymaking and marketing in a manner that creates distance between trends within environmental efforts. Critical ourselves and the living things (including discourse analysis examines “social people) impacted by these precipitous inequality as it is expressed, constituted, transformations; such interventions resonate legitimized, and so on, by language use,”3 impressively on Powerpoint slides and in legislative drafting sessions, yet they omit 2 Reid, Alex. 2017. Understanding Gender, Conflict, and equally critical factors of compassion, the Environment. Toxic Remnants of War Project (June 5). interconnection, empowerment, trauma, loss, Accessed 2017. Available from http://www.trwn.org/understanding-gender-conflict-and- and more. In short, it might be said that the the-environment/ analytical approach oftentimes prioritizes the workings of the mind as against those of 3 Weiss, Gilbert, and Ruth Wodak, eds. 2003, 15. Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and Interdisciplinarity. London, the heart. This is perhaps understandable in UK: Palgrave Macmillan. managing parliamentary-type proceedings, 51 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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but there may be unintended consequences numerous presentations and publications including the further separation of humans (which we analyze in more detail below) from the biotic systems of the planet. will include an invocation of someone’s This is a complex subject to broach, “story” (often a woman from the developing because (among other things) it plays into world) as a means to highlight the efficacy stereotypes of environmentalists as “tree of their innovative technology or the utility huggers” and threatens to cloud sober of their policy platform. Needless to say, judgment with sentimentalism. Public those whose stories are featured in this way displays of emotion can create an impression rarely, if ever, attend the forums to convey of vulnerability and weaken one’s position these narratives themselves. at the bargaining table. By keeping the “The story of…” is thus a popular discussion at the analytical level—for entry point for highlighting an array of instance, in representing lost habitats, technological innovations (e.g., solar lights; species, or even human casualties as data clean stoves) and policy proposals (e.g., points on a graph, or by discussing human microfinance; mediation). The virtues of rights issues such as refugeeism or negative flexibility, mobility, on-demand and sharing health consequences in purely quantitative economies, and sociopolitical empowerment terms—one can perhaps enhance the impact may be touted through these “stories” but and strength of their argument while at the they are likely to be told about rather than same time losing an important part of its by those featured in them. In fact, some of texture. When the presentation of critical these innovations are premised on a pay-as- issues remains at the strictly technical or you-go business model that provides access political level, it can serve to obscure the to them with little or no upfront costs—but actual people and ecosystems being with the caveat that they can also be impacted. In this sense, the magnitude of removed promptly for nonpayment. The concern over environmental issues can at empowerment of women (generally women times be displayed without showing as much of color) may be invoked as a selling point, concern for those directly impacted. as may be the benefits for students and, of It is this context that we are oftentimes course, the overall greening of the presented with information about people environment. However, if these technologies being uprooted en masse by desertification are positioned to empower women, open up and climate disruption, about the imminent educational opportunities for children, and submersion of island nations, about the mitigate environmental harm, then turning severe long-term health impacts of post- them off for nonpayment might be more conflict environmental contamination, or heartless than not providing them in the first even about the myriad frontline place. What is needed are effective solutions environmental defenders who have paid that integrate minds and hearts equally, as with their lives to confront patterns of we move from centralized models to more degradation and despoliation. Clinical collaborative ones, and ultimately as human assessments and data-driven presentations beings attempting to cope with the urgent are important, yet there is a concomitant responsibility of transforming our need to hear from impacted communities environmental relations. directly. Interestingly, some stakeholders In this spirit, environmental discourse grasp this integrative dynamic, even as the at times does include the direct (and even method used to address it may serve to heartfelt) stories of people struggling to further exacerbate the problem. Thus, mitigate and adapt to a rapidly changing 52 Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 52 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

world. Thus, the former president of Kiribati, implications of such constructions. In Anote Tong, poignantly describes the essence, the argument is that due to their imminent submersion of his island nation by close connection to the material bases of life rising ocean levels without rancor or in many locales—including procuring food, recrimination, imploring people everywhere fuel, water, and other essentials—women to embrace a spirit of ethical engagement have a unique perspective and capacity to and common humanity.4 Human rights address environmental challenges in advocates communicate the compelling important ways. While this can be stories of ordinary people who become empowering, it also potentially reifies activists by necessity and work to transform historical associations of gender and nature conditions in their communities as well as that are problematic, as well as running up our understanding of how change works— against a core tenet of environmental sometimes paying with their lives for these justice stating that people who contribute the efforts, as with the case of Honduran activist least to crises are often impacted the most by Berta Cáceres.5 Engaging these narratives in them—and further that it should not then fall a meaningful manner, without further upon them to be primarily responsible for “otherizing” or exploiting their progenitors, remediating those crises. We engage these is a fundamental challenge for matters without resorting to either environmental movements and policymakers. victimization or valorization by cultivating A critical analysis of the role that gender in pathways toward collaborative ecological particular plays in these processes can help engagement, emphasizing policy inform the wider discussion of these core frameworks and lived experiences equally in issues. seeking tenable and durable solutions. In order to do so, we need to unpack Gendered Lenses and Environmental some of the strands that have brought us Essentialism here. From a historical perspective, there is the sensibility expressed by Sir Francis In the annals of environmentalism, the Bacon advocating the “torture of nature for role of gender is central yet often her secrets.” While this precise quote is underexplored. While there have been many likely apocryphal, Carolyn Merchant investigations of the differential impacts of observes that its intent is wholly consistent ecological challenges on women, as well as with the rationalist/scientific paradigm, for the intersections of these patterns through which “the rack exemplified the constraint lenses such as ecofeminism,6 less considered of nature in a closed, controlled system, in the analysis is the nascent view of women responding to questions posed by an as “sustainability saviors” and the inquisitor before witnesses—the very core 7 of experimentation itself.” This paradigm is 4 Tong, Anote. 2016. The Global Challenge of Climate- reflective of an impetus to correlate gender Induced Migration. Global Future(s) Initiative, and nature, which is operationalized, as Georgetown University (November 11). Accessed 2017. Available from Greta Gaard contends, in “the ways that the https://globalfutures.georgetown.edu/responses/the-global- feminized status of women, animals, nature, challenge-of-climate-induced-migration and feminized others … have been 5 Watts, Jonathan. 2016. Berta Cáceres, Honduran Human Rights and Environment Activist, Murdered. The Guardian conceived of as separate and inferior in (March 4). Accessed 2017. Available from order to legitimate their subordination under https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/03/honduras -berta-caceres-murder-enivronment-activist-human-rights 6 Mies, Maria, and Vandana Shiva, eds. 1993. Ecofeminism. 7 Merchant, Carolyn. 2006. The Scientific Revolution and 53 Zed Books. The Death of Nature. Isis 97 (3): 513. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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an elite and often violent and militarized agency and action” as a tool of sustainability male-dominant social order.”8 Bringing this (passages noted below). analysis into contemporary issues, Gaard While this isn’t inherently problematic, offers this historical backdrop as a basis for the larger context of the discourse is reconsidering the mounting challenges in illustrative of the potential pitfalls and how our midst: “The global crises of climate historical patterns of gender essentialism can justice, food security, energy justice, be replicated, even with ostensibly positive vanishing wildlife, maldevelopment, habitat intentions—as the following linked passages loss, industrial animal food production, and illustrate (emphases added): more have simultaneously social and “This is a project intended to celebrate ecological dimensions that require both the role of women in science, ecological and feminist analyses.”9 technology, sailing. Not only does it Today, however, this lens often looks break down gender stereotypes, but it more like depicting women as either victims also harnesses the power of them.”11 or saviors in the environmental policy “Women are not merely passive discourse. Thus it is stated that “women’s victims of climate change and knowledge, agency and collective action has environmental degradation…. Women huge potential to improve resource are a driving force for the new, more productivity, enhance ecosystem equitable and more sustainable model conservation and sustainable use of natural of growth.”12 “[Women’s] knowledge, resources, and to create more sustainable, innovation, action and agency is low-carbon food, energy, water and health central to finding, demonstrating and systems. Failure to capitalize on this would building more economically, socially be a missed opportunity. Women should not and ecologically sustainable ways to be viewed as victims, but as central actors in manage local ecologies, adapt to moving towards sustainability.”10 As we climate change, produce and access elaborate below, there are numerous ways in food and secure sustainable and which this discourse is framed and promoted, appropriate water, sanitation and with myriad examples that seek to cast energy services.”13 “Energy prosperity women—due to their “special” roles and has a female face…. There is a strong skills in many developing societies—as case for what women can do to expand nascent environmental heroines. clean energy access and to fight on the Constructions of empowerment are often front lines against climate change.”14 invoked, linking “the causes and underlying Even within this same body of literature drivers of unsustainability and gender there is a recognition of the potential inequality,” advocating for giving women problems with these constructions, including “greater voice and participation” as a means how they potentially reify historical patterns. to generate more sustainable outcomes, and The self-reflective nature of these claims setting a premium on “women’s knowledge,

11 UNEP. 2014, 36. Gender Heroes: From Grassroots to Global Action. United Nations Environment Programme (booklet). 8 Gaard, Greta. 2011. Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting 12 UNEP. 2015, 5-6. Gender Equality and the Environment. Essentialism and Re-Placing Species in a Material Feminist United Nations Environment Programme (report). Environmentalism. Feminist Formations 23 (2): 26. 13 UN Women. 2014, 16. World Survey on the Role of 9 Ibid. Women in Development: Gender Equality and Sustainable 10 UN Women. 2014, 7. World Survey on the Role of Development. New York: United Nations (report). Women in Development: Gender Equality and Sustainable 14 UN. 2015. Sustainable Energy for All: Empowering 54 Development. New York: United Nations (report). Women. UN Chronicle 52 (3), December. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 54 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

and critiques is worth presenting in some are especially close to nature. Women- detail (emphases added): environment connections, especially in “Policy responses that view women as domestic and subsistence activities ‘sustainability saviors’ draw upon and such as collecting fuelwood, hauling reinforce stereotypes regarding water and cultivating food, were often women’s roles in relation to the family, presented as if they were natural and the community and the environment. universal, rather than as the product of Such responses often add to women’s particular social and cultural norms already heavy unpaid work burdens and expectations. Ensuing projects and without conferring rights, resources policies often mobilized and and benefits…. [P]erspectives that instrumentalized women’s labor, skills view women narrowly as and knowledge, thereby adding to ‘sustainability saviors’ are evident in their unpaid work without addressing many areas, from the conservation of whether they had the rights, voice and biodiversity, water and soils to power to control project benefits. A building socially and environmentally number of useful lessons emerge from sustainable services. Yet viewing this history for policymaking. First, women as sustainability saviors carries policymakers should avoid making dangers.… Policies that are based on broad and stereotypical assumptions stereotypical assumptions regarding about women’s and men’s women’s caring role in the family, relationships with the environment. community and environment treat Rather, policies should respond to the women as a homogeneous category. specific social context and gender [I]ntensifying women’s workloads to power relations. For instance, benefit the community and the women’s close involvement in environment can entrench and worsen gathering wild foods and other forest gender inequalities…. Responses to products might reflect labor and land climate change that address gender tenure relations and their lack of issues tend to view women as victims access to income with which to of climate impacts, or entrench purchase food, rather than reflecting stereotypes and roles of women as their closeness to nature.”16 natural carers keeping their communities resilient or adopting low- Intersections of (In)justice carbon options.”15 A particular passage is worth quoting more Against this backdrop, then, we fully in assessing the discursive impacts of observe a perverse tendency to look to those this approach to policymaking, which we with ostensibly less power for signs of will analyze more closely in the following innovation and resilience. A clear example section (emphasis added): of this is the aforementioned view of women “[T]he view that women should be as “sustainability saviors” or “gender heroes” harnessed as sustainability saviors [is] and the implications thereof. At root, the based on the assumption that women argument is that due to their closer connection to the material bases of life in many locales—including procuring food, 15 UN Women. 2014, 13, 24, 29. World Survey on the Role fuel, water, and other basic goods—women of Women in Development: Gender Equality and Sustainable Development. New York: United Nations 55 (report). 16 Ibid. 28-29. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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have a unique capacity to address larger critical, and whatever sense of environmental challenges. While perhaps empowerment that may flow from these this can be empowering on some level, as choices can be self-selected rather than noted, it also potentially reifies historical imposed. Thus, notions of “harnessing the associations of gender and nature that are power” of women (as referenced in the problematic, as well as essentializing the aforementioned 2014 UN publication on “caregiver” roles of women as being Gender Heroes) as paragons of inherent, inevitable, and freely chosen. sustainability raise implications that can These constructions often overlook the more only be harmonized with the tenets of justice structural realms of political economy, if that power is freely given and decision-making power, cultural norms, and contextualized within the unique relative autonomy. By casting women as experiences of individuals—rather than “saviors” or “heroes” for their ostensible being categorically attributed by others: environmental innovativeness and resilience, “Policies that are based on stereotypical it can further reinforce these roles and assumptions regarding women’s caring role increase the burdens on women to perform in the family, community and them. Further, these tendencies within environment … ignore the vital intersections environmentalism raise questions about the with other inequalities that shape women’s power dynamics between those in the role of interests, knowledge, values, opportunities “empowering” the communities at risk and and capabilities. Power imbalances in those “being empowered.” In the context of gender relations, in the exercise of rights, where this analysis began, similar patterns access to and control of resources, or therefore emerge in which the authentic participation in decision-making, determine narratives of those most directly impacted whether women’s actions and work translate are being coopted by other actors. Whether into enhanced rights and capabilities, dignity or not the top-down narratives of women as and bodily integrity.”18 “saviors” and “heroes” fundamentally Despite some conceptual and challenge the intersectionality of their pragmatic gains around these issues in marginalization in the local and global recent years, the role played by factors contexts must be scrutinized to fully including race and gender remains relatively contemplate the potential and the limit of the undertheorized in the annals of “environmental justice frame.”17 environmentalism. The legacy of The question, then, is how to engage environmental racism persists, evident not these pressing environmental issues without only through an analysis of dramatic events resorting to either victimization or such as Hurricane Katrina but likewise in valorization. One starting point is to the accrued impacts of structural violence on acknowledge the differential impacts of economic outcomes, educational environmental issues more deeply and resist opportunities, policing and incarceration, the tendency to universalize the capacity and other critical issues. Ongoing effects of and/or responsibility for remediating them to the colonization of indigenous communities those most acutely impacted. Affording can be seen in patterns of toxification, people the space to define their own terms of desertification, and displacement as engagement with environmental issues is registered in rates of impoverishment and

17 Čapek, Stella M. 1993. “The ‘Environmental Justice’ 18 UN Women. 2014, 24. World Survey on the Role of Frame: A Conceptual Discussion and Application.” Social Women in Development: Gender Equality and Sustainable 56 Problems 40 (1): 5-24. Development. New York: United Nations (report). Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 56 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

negative health consequences. In much of are deeply and unavoidably interconnected the developing world women are challenged across both time and space.22 by environmental degradation, which can Still, while the substantive aspects of heighten the burdens of providing essential such matters may be more widely resources for their families and also serve to understood as intersecting, less attention has increase their exposure to violence. been afforded to the patterns of interlocking Historically, issues ranging from resource injustice that illuminate the disparate lived exploitation to the closure of the commons experiences of environmental crises. In other still reverberate for many peoples and words, a growing consciousness of issue- communities around the globe.19 The list of oriented integration does not necessarily such examples is very long, indicating the equate with a more nuanced understanding centrality of environmental issues to the of how this actually plays out in the lives of search for justice. individuals and their communities: “The Indeed, the confirmation of one of the task now is to create movements that reflect core tenets of environmental justice— not just the complexity of issues, but of namely that those who contribute the least to people’s lives.”23 The emerging paradigm of crises are often impacted the most by them, intersectionality, especially as it applies in skewed along preexisting lines of power and the context of environmental justice, holds privilege—looms prominently in the context promise as a tool to further unpack both the of contemporary ecological problems.20 The impacts of and possibilities for meaningful extant cases of differential impacts appear in engagement with socioecological considerations of food deserts, post-disaster challenges.24 In brief, intersectionality contexts, pipeline constructions, siting of inquires more deeply into how various toxic facilities, substandard living conditions, factors of identity formation and attribution refugee encampments, and more. work together to yield differential frames of Unsurprisingly, environmental issues—from experience in a manner that exceeds the sum the lack of access to healthy food and clean of its parts.25 This is so at the macro and water to resource conflicts and climate micro scales, whereby people who are change—can intensify deeply rooted collectively exposed to an environmental patterns of inequality and injustice that crisis will bear the impacts distinctively vis- render vulnerable and/or marginalized à-vis other communities, and differentially communities even more so as existing within their society based on factors such as challenges mount.21 The decades since the

advent of environmental justice have borne 22 Schlosberg, David. 2013. Theorizing Environmental this out across myriad geographies, fostering Justice: The Expanding Sphere of Discourse. an emerging cognizance of how these issues Environmental Politics 22 (1): 37-55. 23 Moe, Kristin. Get Intersectional! (or, Why Your Movement Can’t Go It Alone). YES! Magazine (April 4). Accessed 2017. Available from http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/getintersectionalwhyyo urmovementcantgoitalone. 19 Ammons, Elizabeth, and Modhumita Roy, eds. 2015. 24 Rodriguez, Majandra. 2015. Facing Climate Change Sharing the Earth: An International Environmental Justice Through Justice and Intersectionality. 350.org (September Reader. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia Press. 3). Accessed 2017. Available from 20 Pellow, David Naguib, and Robert J. Brulle, eds. 2005. https://350.org/facingclimatechangethroughjusticeandinters Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal ectionality/. of the Environmental Justice Movement. Cambridge, MA: 25 Belalia, Henia. 2014. Intersectionality Isn’t Just a Win- MIT Press. Win: It’s the Only Way Out. Waging Nonviolence (May 21 Bullard, Robert D. The Quest for Environmental Justice: 27). Accessed: 2017. Available from Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution. Berkeley, CA: http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/intersectionality-isnt- 57 Counterpoint Press. just-win-win-way/ Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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access to resources, power, education, and and the observed, the word and the flesh.”27 status.26 Thus, from a policymaking perspective, a The core of this intersectional critical question that has not been addressed perspective is twofold, involving a more adequately is whether “progress” as a sophisticated integration of substantive function of development is possible without issues, as well as a more nuanced destroying the environment(s) upon which understanding of differential perspectives we are dependent and to which we are and experiences in navigating those issues. connected. In other words, is “sustainable Likewise, the pursuit of justice as a robust development” feasible at this juncture, or is concept in social and environmental realms it an atavistic concept that has already been alike necessitates more direct contributions coopted by essentialism and from those most impacted in order to realign commercialization? “To break out of these baseline operations of power and cycles,” writes Toban Black, “it is crucial to participation. A potent mechanism for support those who live on the frontlines [and] undertaking these efforts is the cultivation of to tap into their proactive motivations, as pathways for engagement with pressing well as their concrete experiences with issues that highlight the substantive higher risk conditions where environmental complexities and grounded voices of people impacts may be the most apparent.”28 situated in place. Rendering those stories Time may tell the full story about and viewpoints more fully is beyond the whether this will be sufficient to stem the scope of this piece, but the following tide of destabilization, but unfortunately the frameworks may provide points of departure window of time is rapidly closing. What for further explorations. might be said at this juncture is that there are models of more participatory governance Reclaiming the Narrative and development emerging that hold As we consider ways to confront promise to empower people to address environmental crises consistent with this concrete issues in their particular expansive vision of justice—and that do not communities—ones that are centered on the perpetuate the imbalances of power and narratives of those most directly impacted untenable dualisms that have fomented the by environmental crises, and that are crises in the first place—we are cognizant of reflective of trends embracing an the insights gleaned from others who have intersectional view of justice, power, and raised similar queries. As Phoebe Godfrey ecology. As Alex Reid has observed in the and Denise Torres have observed, “we can context of disparate impacts from the no longer continue to destructively enact environmental impacts of conflict: “The Western ‘white’ patriarchal capitalist pervasiveness of women’s responsibility for society’s … conceptualization of a clear environmental management hinges on a boundary between the ideological and the gendered division of labor, in which women material, the social and the environmental, are often disproportionately responsible for the human and the non-human, the observer providing ‘subsistence’ products such as

27 Godfrey, Phoebe, and Denise Torres. 2016, 1. Systemic Crises of Global Climate Change: Intersections of Race, 26 Class and Gender. New York: Routledge. Kaijser, Anna, and Annica Kronsell. 2014. Climate 28 Black, Toban. 2016, 181. Race, Gender, and Climate Change through the Lens of Intersectionality. Injustice: Dimensions of Social and Environmental Environmental Politics 23 (3): 417-33. Inequality. In Systemic Crises of Global Climate Change. 58 New York: Routledge. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 58 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

food, water and fuel…. Where women are emphasizes its urban gardening work as part identified as the primary managers of local of an emerging “Afro-ecology” that is resources, effective management and reform informed by the realities of “African will remain incomplete and ineffective if a Diasporic culture” and that strives to gendered lens is not considered…. [B]oth reconnect “people and the land.” gender and the environment are cross- Situated knowledge: Such cutting issues that need more than fine interventions require understanding the words and inadequate resources.”29 As we context in which the production of consider ways to move discursive overtures knowledge and resources alike are toward tangible outcomes, the following connected to structures of power and politics. spheres may serve as points of engagement “From an intersectional understanding, how with this emerging perspective: individuals relate to climate change depends Desegregating Nature: We cannot on their positions in context-specific power separate environmental issues from the lived structures based on social categorizations experiences of people. “To face the [that] should not be regarded as fixed; they increasingly urgent challenges of global always need to be understood in their climate change, fresh-water shortages, specific historical and spatial context and as persistent fossil-fuel dependence, cascading embedded in power patterns…. [A]n extinctions, and inequities behind the spread intersectional framework must go beyond of poverty and food insecurity will require naming categories to an analysis of how the best of human imagination and they are related to broader power relations, responsibility because, at end, they are to politics and institutional practices and to moral crises…. My intent is not to paint a norms and symbolic representations.”31 simplistic scene of victims and aggressors, Thus, we can discern compelling examples with single proximate factors of cause and of how this looks in practice: “Whether it is effect, but to recognize that the complexities indigenous women in the Amazon fighting and ambiguities of this nation’s corporate polluters and climate change or multicultural past and present, and the ways undocumented Latina domestic workers in which American culture has used or advocating for worker rights and dignity in impacted the Earth, cannot be separated California, women’s groups and networks from underlying values that have fed racism are making links between unbridled and systemic inequality.”30 Numerous capitalism, violence, and the erosion of community-based environmental entities are human rights and destruction of the Earth.”32 cognizant of these realities, sometimes Planting Seeds: A potent illustration— framing their work specifically with regard which brought its founder a Nobel Peace to the historical and contemporary Prize—demonstrates how these factors can landscapes in which these efforts occur. To be leveraged by people toward self- take one such example, Soilful City empowerment: “The Green Belt Movement (www.soilfulcity.com) in Washington, DC, (GBM) is an environmental organization

29 Reid, Alex. 2017. Understanding Gender, Conflict, and 31 Kaijser, Anna, and Annica Kronsell. 2014. Climate the Environment. Toxic Remnants of War Project (June 5). Change through the Lens of Intersectionality. Accessed 2017. Available from Environmental Politics 23 (3): 421-23. http://www.trwn.org/understanding-gender-conflict-and- 32 Chitnis, Rucha. 2016. “How Women-Led Movements the-environment/ Are Redefining Power, from California to Nepal.” YES! 30 Savoy, Lauret. 2011. Desegregating Nature. Terrain.org: Magazine (March 8). Accessed 2017. Available from A Journal of the Built and Natural 27. Accessed 2017. http://www.yesmagazine.org/peoplepower/howwomenledm Available from ovementsareredefiningpowerfromcaliforniatonepal2016030 59 http://www.terrain.org/columns/27/savoy.htm. 8. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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that empowers communities, particularly narratives of the marginalized population as women, to conserve the environment and heroes or victims of climate change and improve livelihoods. GBM was founded by environmental degradation. By intentionally Professor Wangari Maathai in 1977 under and consciously activating local voices, the auspices of the National Council of especially those whose heightened risks of Women of Kenya (NCWK) to respond to environmental hazards stem from structural the needs of rural Kenyan women who injustices, the “engaging narratives” reported that their streams were drying up, approach acknowledges that addressing their food supply was less secure, and they environmental issues must simultaneously had to walk further and further to get tackle the inherent intersectionality and firewood for fuel and fencing. GBM systemic dimensions of the challenges, encouraged the women to work together to including pervasive gender, economic, and grow seedlings and plant trees to bind the ethnic disparities that exist at all scales.35 soil, store rainwater, provide food and The deployment of these narratives thus firewood, and receive a small monetary becomes a way of amplifying the existing token for their work” forces of resistance and struggle, without (www.greenbeltmovement.org). “Then came casting the people and places at the center of the revolution. The women decided to do these issues as agency-less victims waiting away with the professional approach to to be empowered.36 Such forms of forestry and instead use their common “environmental justice storytelling,” as sense! … Twenty years down the road, the Donna Houston observes, can carry “diverse women have gained many skills and … have ideas along together to produce different become self-reliant in tree planting.”33 The environmental imaginaries (both good and work of the GBM has taken place against bad) in and of a damaged world,” by valuing backdrop of colonialism and political storytelling as much as the stories conflict, striving from the outset “to themselves.37 Rather than reinforcing the integrate and advance the causes of storytellers’ innovation or resilience against environmental, women’s, and human environmental injustices as the rights,”34 through synthesized approaches manifestation of their exotic otherness, the that recognized the intersectional nature of critically engaged narratives would these issues. Indeed, as our analysis here illuminate the sense of a shared humanity indicates, the inherently intertwined nature across diverse experiences, and therefore of these spheres counsels that work must be emphasize the collective stake involved in done in all of them simultaneously if true tackling global environmental challenges. gains are to be made in any of them. The engaged narrative approach also serves as a reminder to broader Conclusion

The employment of engaged narratives 35 Reynolds, Kristin, and Nevin Cohen. 2016. Beyond the Kale: Urban Agriculture and Social Justice Activism in in environmental movement work avoids the New York City. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia pitfalls of the simplistic competing Press. 36 Dickinson, Elizabeth. 2012. Addressing Environmental Racism Through Storytelling: Toward an Environmental 33 Maathai, Wangari. 2004, 27-28. The Green Belt Justice Narrative Framework. Communication, Culture & Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience. New Critique 5 (1): 57. York: Lantern. 37 Houston, Donna. 2012. Environmental Justice 34 Nixon, Rob. 2011, 138. Slow Violence and the Storytelling: Angels and Isotopes at Yucca Mountain, Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Nevada. Antipode 45 (2): 433. 60 University Press. Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018 https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/jogc/vol2/iss3/6 60 et al.: Environmental Future(s) Initiative

environmental movements about the and nature’s wholeness’, recognizing that inherent privileges of the North in we cannot attain one without the other.”39 addressing global environmental issues, and As scholar-activist Naomi Klein observes: offers a reflexive moment to acknowledge “Either we fight for a future in which the power dynamics that pervade current everyone belongs, starting with those being dominant environmental movements across most battered by injustice and exclusion the globe. Similarly, we posit that exploring today, or we will keep losing. And there is engaged narratives addresses the broader no time for that. Moreover, when we make gender-environment intersections in the these connections among issues—climate, existing movement narratives that tend to capitalism, colonialism, slavery—there is a situate both as powerless recipients of kind of relief. Because it actually is all violence and exploitation. “The importance connected, all part of the same story.”40 of gender in our understanding of the Connecting these issues, struggles, and environment and conflict is often stories in a non-superficial, non-exploitative camouflaged,” as Reid argues, and “failing manner offers a potential pathway toward to include gender in [policymaking] is a addressing today’s critical challenges of flawed approach from both an environmental justice. environmental and a human rights perspective.”38 Identifying and deploying narratives that counter this tendency can Works Cited become a form of genuine empowerment in which notions of femininity and women’s Ammons, Elizabeth, and Modhumita Roy, roles are fundamentally challenged while eds. 2015. Sharing the Earth: An addressing the overarching environmental International Environmental Justice Reader. concerns. Athens, GA: The University of Georgia The exemplars cited here are more Press. than merely discursive in nature: they are about people situated in place struggling to Amster, Randall. 2015. Peace Ecology. New sustain a viable foothold in this world, and York: Routledge. likewise to point a way forward for all of us Belalia, Henia. 2014. Intersectionality Isn’t at the same time. It is a monumental task, Just a Win-Win: It’s the Only Way Out. spanning the particular and the universal, Waging Nonviolence (May 27). Accessed: but it is, indeed, essential for the future of 2017. Available from our species on this world. In this sense, “our http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/interse demand is not for a return to a pristine past, ctionality-isnt-just-win-win-way/ real or imagined, or for a perfected utopia here and now. We seek the dismantling of Black, Toban. 2016. Race, Gender, and unhealthy, oppressive, destructive Climate Injustice: Dimensions of Social and technologies in favor of new technologies Environmental Inequality. In Systemic that foster autonomy and exist at the appropriate scale…. We seek a world premised on the mutuality of ‘human dignity 39 Amster, Randall. 2015, 189. Peace Ecology. New York: Routledge. 40 Klein, Naomi. 2016. We Are Hitting the Wall of 38 Reid, Alex. 2017. Understanding Gender, Conflict, and Maximum Grabbing. The Nation (December 16). Accessed the Environment. Toxic Remnants of War Project (June 5). 2017. Available from Accessed 2017. Available from https://www.thenation.com/article/intersectionality-is-the- http://www.trwn.org/understanding-gender-conflict-and- only-path-forward-for-the-climate-movement/ 61 the-environment/ Fairfield University | Undergraduate Journal of Global Citizenship | Spring 2018

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