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Environmental Vulnerability
The concept of vulnerability emphasizes the
social characteristics and configurations used by communities to face
the challenges of the physical environment. It refers to both, the
susceptibility to the negative socioeconomic impacts of environmental
variability and the degree to which a community is capable of coping
with, resisting, and recovering from the impacts of specific environmental
events. Vulnerability studies carried out by BARA researchers have
a comparative component which offers a more complete picture of how
differences in access to resources, state involvement, class and ethnicity
result in drastically different vulnerabilities within similar biophysical
contexts. We also place an emphasis on the historical context of vulnerability
as a dynamic social process with socioeconomic and environmental consequences.
We use the concepts of buffering and coping to compare adaptations
of different groups that, despite a very similar biophysical context,
face very different vulnerability profiles.
Environmental vulnerability studies carried
out by BARA researchers have focused on rural populations in the
U.S.-Mexico border region of Arizona and Sonora. BARA researchers
have also done research on ranching and agricultural communities
in Northwest Mexico.
Projects
Climate Assessment
for the Southwest (CLIMAS)
©BARA - The Bureau of Applied Research
in Anthropology |
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