As I prepare to start my research I have become increasingly frustrated trying to understand the hazard-independent and hazard-dependent parameters that affect the locations I will be researching.
Over the past week, I have been studying the work of Schneinderbauer and Ehrlich looking for answers, looking for insights to determine how parameters can be useful when there is no confirmed data.
In a few weeks I will be leaving to Fiji, where I will be working with the United Nations Development Programme in order to gain a better insights of hazard-independent parameters that make the South Pacific resilient (or not) to extreme weather.
Focusing on poverty reduction and gender, I will work with UNDP in order to determine how the existent social and administrative systems of the south pacific (or the status quo) may influence the ability of the communities in the South Pacific to prepare for increased extreme-weather events. I will be trying to understand how gender and poverty, and their related indexes
and indicators, might be able to help us understand how vulnerable a community is. If the female population of a giving township suffers of political discrimination, economic disadvantage, limited infrastructure and resources accessibility, lack of civil protection, limited participation in decision-making or simple cultural oppression, this community (I hypothesize) would be less likely to respond effectively to extreme weather events. Similarly, the well-being of a national/regional/communal
farming system and the related land-tenure policies should allow me to get insights of the vulnerability of rural communities. In other words, understanding the hazard-independent parameters of the communities I will be visiting will require me to understand an interdisciplinary approach to link what we know to that we don’t know.
Perhaps, the most challenging aspect of understand our increased global vulnerability to climate change is finding common denominators when our understanding of vulnerability is strongly tied to context-dependent political, cultural, and socio-economic factors. For now, I shall continue thinking of water as a common denominator.