Mershon Center for International Security Studies: Cornelia Flora, Mary Emery and C.K. Shum

Climate change poses major challenges to local communities throughout the world as to how best to adapt and innovate.  This panel draws on a team of experts that have done community-level climate adaptation research in multiple ecological settings in North America, Latin America and Southeast Asia to identify methods that can work in terms of successful adaptation.   Drawing on the community capitals framework for talking about community organization, the panel will address how natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial and built capital are affected by climate change and how different groups can mobilize these different resources to proactively respond.   This includes looking at gender, income, age and other social differences in terms of both vulnerabilities and the resources needed for change and adaptation.   The panel will discuss how different groups can respond collectively as a community to increase their overall repertoire of adaptions and become more resilient to various water security challenges.

 

J. Craig Jenkins, professor of sociology, political science and environmental science at Ohio State, will serve as panel moderator.

 

Cornelia Butler Flora is Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Iowa State University (Ph.D., Cornell University, specializing in the sociology of development and population studies) and research professor at Kansas State University. She served as director of the Population Research Laboratory at Kansas State University, chair of the Technical Committee of the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program, head of the Department of Sociology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, and a member of the board of directors of CONDESAN (Council for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Region) and Winrock, International, past president of the Rural Sociological Society, Community Development Society, and Agriculture and Human Values Society, and consultant for international organizations and foundations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States and Canada. Her primary research interests are the intersections of human communities and agro-ecosystems, and sustainable intensification in the context of climate change. She has taught courses and done research on rural development and in Spain and Uruguay (including periods as a Fulbright Professor), as well as Argentina and Peru.

 

C.K. Shum is professor and Distinguished University Scholar, Division of Geodetic Science, School of Earth Sciences, at The Ohio State University. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a fellow of the International Association of Geodesy. He received numerous awards including the 2012 Vening Meinesz Medal from the European Geociences Union. He was a lead author in 2007 Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group 1 Fourth Assessment Report, which contributed to the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to IPCC and Al Gore Jr. He and his group focused on scientific research related to the quantification of 20th century and present-day global sea-level rise due to various geophysical sources, including anthropogenic climate-change. Shum specializes in satellite geodesy, precision satellite orbit determination, temporal gravity field and tide modeling, and their cross-disciplinary science and applications to oceanography, hydrology, geodynamics, ice mass balance, GNSS meteorology and space physics. He has published more than 215 refereed journal articles and book chapters. His work has been covered by The New York Times, Physics Today, Sky & Telescope Radio Show, Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science TV, Science News, Science Daily, Scientific American, Soundings magazine, Deccan Chronicle, La Figaro, MSNBC.com, Tomorrow Focus Portal GmbH, Axel Springer AG, Televisión Española, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich, Columbus Dispatch, and other news organizations.

 

Mary Emery focuses on rural and community development research and practice including using the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) in evaluation, research on community change, and program planning. She is also a co-author of the Field Guide for Community Coaching. In addition to teaching in the Great Plains IDEA transdisciplinary multi-university distance degree in community development, she is head of the Department of Sociology and Rural Studies at South Dakota State University.

 

This event is a part of the Mershon Center Climate and Security Initiative and is co-sponsored by the Global Water Initiative, Department of Sociology, Center for Latin American Studies, and Division of Geodetic Sciences in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State.