Protecting Knowledge Diversity and Promoting Resilience: Modelling Mexican Marginal Farmers’ Climate Adaptation
Application Deadline:
17 January 2014
Supervised by Dr. Garry Polhill, and Dr B Slee at the James Hutton Institute and co-supervised with Prof. Bruce Edmonds (http://bruce.edmonds.name/) at the Centre for Policy Modelling (http://cfpm.org/), Manchester Metropolitan University (http://mmu.ac.uk/), and Dr. Matt Hare (http://www.seeconsult.org/en/index.php?page=matt-hare).
The Sierra Gorda de Guanajauto, Municipalidad de Xichú region of Mexico features communities of marginal farmers who will have to leverage social and cultural capital in adapting to the effects of climate change and globalisation. With competition for natural resources likely to increase, and the temptation of greater earnings from cities, the region is vulnerable to abandonment. With this will go embedded knowledge of how to make a living from this landscape. With growing interest in High Nature Value (HNV) farming in Europe, partly to protect this kind of knowledge, we are interested in how adaptation strategies can be designed in Mexico to reduce vulnerability in marginal communities whilst maintaining knowledge and cultural diversity. From a theoretical perspective, we are also interested in modelling the effect of the pursuit of economic imperative on long-term resilience: constant change will mean the most economically efficient activity will also change – but if the ruthless pursuit of economic efficiency means knowledge is lost that would otherwise enable greater economic efficiency at later time periods, long-term resilience is threatened.
The student will be expected to pursue their research interests guided by the following questions: (i) What adaptation strategies have the potential to reverse the trend of abandonment and loss of community of practice in farming in the Sierra Gorda de Guanajauto? (ii) What are the implications for landscape-embedded community-based knowledge and community adaptive capacity of a drive for the economic imperative in the context of constant environmental and political stressors? (iii) What are the roles of changing social networks in determining adaptive capacity at the community level and in precipitating or reducing a loss of community knowledge and the trend of abandonment; (iv) How can an agent-based model (ABM) be used to support the integrated analysis of community vulnerabilities in the face of climate change and political stressors; (v) how can ABM be used to support qualitative inferencing of such vulnerabilities from multiple data sources, and associated uncertainties? (vi) How can remote sensing data be used to identify model parameters related to adaptive capacity; (vii) What lessons can be learned from HNV farming in Europe for the potential trajectories of the Sierra Gorda de Guanajauto community?
This project is one of a number constituting this year’s James Hutton Institute/University Joint PhD programme: the final projects awarded are based on the strengths of the applicants. Further information is available on request. Manchester Metropolitan University will contribute the other half of the funds (including stipend, fees and research expenses) for this project, and Prof Bruce Edmonds will be the university supervisor. Dr Matt Hare, of UNAM, Mexico will also supervise. Candidates are urged to apply as soon as possible. Funding is available for European applications, but self-funded applications from outside the EU are also invited.
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