Browsing by Author "Quinn, Claire H."

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Assessing Vulnerability to Climate Change in Dryland Livelihood Systems: Conceptual Challenges and Interdisciplinary Solutions
(2011) Fraser, Evan D.G.; Dougill, Andrew J.; Hubacek, Klaus; Quinn, Claire H.; Sendzimir, Jan; Termansen, Mette
"Over 40% of the earths land surface are drylands that are home to approximately 2.5 billion people. Livelihood sustainability in drylands is threatened by a complex and interrelated range of social, economic, political, and environmental changes that present significant challenges to researchers, policy makers, and, above all, rural land users. Dynamic ecological and environmental change models suggest that climate change induced drought events may push dryland systems to cross biophysical thresholds, causing a long-term drop in agricultural productivity. Therefore, research is needed to explore how development strategies and other socioeconomic changes help livelihoods become more resilient and robust at a time of growing climatic risk and uncertainty. As a result, the overarching goal of this special feature is to conduct a structured comparison of how livelihood systems in different dryland regions are affected by drought, thereby making methodological, empirical, and theoretical contributions to our understanding of how these types of social-ecological systems may be vulnerable to climate change. In introducing these issues, the purpose of this editorial is to provide an overview of the two main intellectual challenges of this work, namely: (1) how to conceptualize vulnerability to climate change in coupled social-ecological systems; and (2) the methodological challenges of anticipating trends in vulnerability in dynamic environments."
Climate Science, Development Practice, and Policy Interactions in Dryland Agroecological Systems
(2011) Twyman, Chasca; Fraser, Evan D.G.; Stringer, Lindsay C.; Quinn, Claire H.; Dougill, Andrew J.; Ravera, Federica; Crane, Todd A.; Sallu, Susannah M.
"The literature on drought, livelihoods, and poverty suggests that dryland residents are especially vulnerable to climate change. However, assessing this vulnerability and sharing lessons between dryland communities on how to reduce vulnerability has proven difficult because of multiple definitions of vulnerability, complexities in quantification, and the temporal and spatial variability inherent in dryland agroecological systems. In this closing editorial, we review how we have addressed these challenges through a series of structured, multiscale, and interdisciplinary vulnerability assessment case studies from drylands in West Africa, southern Africa, Mediterranean Europe, Asia, and Latin America. These case studies adopt a common vulnerability framework but employ different approaches to measuring and assessing vulnerability. By comparing methods and results across these cases, we draw out the following key lessons: (1) Our studies show the utility of using consistent conceptual frameworks for vulnerability assessments even when quite different methodological approaches are taken; (2) Utilizing narratives and scenarios to capture the dynamics of dryland agroecological systems shows that vulnerability to climate change may depend more on access to financial, political, and institutional assets than to exposure to environmental change; (3) Our analysis shows that although the results of quantitative models seem authoritative, they may be treated too literally as predictions of the future by policy makers looking for evidence to support different strategies. In conclusion, we acknowledge there is a healthy tension between bottom-up/qualitative/place-based approaches and top-down/quantitative/generalizable approaches, and we encourage researchers from different disciplines with different disciplinary languages, to talk, collaborate, and engage effectively with each other and with stakeholders at all levels."
Coping with Multiple Stresses in Rural South Africa
(2011) Quinn, Claire H.; Ziervogel, Gina; Taylor, Anna; Takama, Takeshi; Thomalla, Frank
"In this paper, we aim to investigate how local communities cope with and adapt to multiple stresses in rural semiarid South Africa. In semiarid regions water scarcity is one of a number of stresses that shape livelihood vulnerability. With climate change, it is predicted that rainfall in South Africa will become more uncertain and variable in the future, exposing more people to water insecurity. At the same time, the impacts of disease, a lack of institutional capacity, and limited livelihood opportunities can combine to limit adaptive capacity. Therefore, adaptation to changing climate should not be viewed in isolation but instead in the context of social, economic, and political conditions, all of which shape local community vulnerability and peoples ability to cope with and adapt to change. This study uses a qualitative-quantitative-qualitative framework, including the use of a stated preference survey, to identify the drivers of agroecosystem change, to understand the capacity of households to cope with droughts, and to determine the ability of local institutions to respond to crises. The analysis suggests that the capacity of the agroecosystem to remain productive during droughts is decreasing, individual/household adaptive capacity remains low, and institutional capacity faces considerable barriers that prevent it from supporting households to adapt to multiple stresses. This research adds weight to the claim that vulnerability reflects multiple forces and processes, and that multiple stresses, that are agroecological, socioeconomic, and institutional in nature, need to be examined to understand vulnerability and to prevent maladaptation."
Property Rights in UK Uplands and the Implications for Policy and Management
(2008) Quinn, Claire H.; Reed, Mark; Hubacek, Klaus
"Understanding the property rights regimes that govern resource management in uplands is key to developing environmental policy that supports sustainable rural livelihoods and encourages the delivery of important ecosystem services in the face of change. The UK uplands are important for the range of ecosystem services they provide, from biodiversity, recreation and carbon storage, to the provision of food, fibre and water, as well as flood prevention. Upland environments are subject to a complicated system of property rights regimes. While land might be in private ownership, rights of withdrawal, access and management of different resources on that land may be afforded to different stakeholders. In many areas this can result in private property regimes, common property regimes and state control overlapping as they seek to manage resources in the same landscape for different objectives, sometimes leading to conflict between the different rights holders. At the same time climate change, economic development and changes to agricultural and other policy drivers means that the relative importance of different ecosystems services is changing along with the balance of power between different stakeholders. "This research explores the property regimes in three upland areas: the Peak District National Park, the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and the uplands of Dumphries and Galloway. Using data from a range of qualitative and quantitative interviews and participant observation this paper examines the extent to which the current property regimes lead to conflict, influence decisions about land management for different ecosystem services, and act as a barrier to sustainable management. Recommendations are made for national policy, and the wider implications are explored for future environmental policy development under complex tenure regimes."