Seventeenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

All over the world, cities and their surrounding regions – exemplified by Mexico City Region - are already experiencing major impacts of climate change, and these will intensify in the future. They include impacts to water supply and sanitation, food and agriculture, energy systems, critical infrastructure, the economy, livelihoods, property, and other drivers of human health and wellbeing. Not only are these impacts inter-related in complex ways, they vary spatially across populations and landscapes, over time, and tend to magnify existing socio-economic injustices. How can we gauge these impacts? How can we build societal capacity to understand such complex problems and respond to them to mitigate risks, buffer impacts, and reveal and confront inequities/injustices? Using the case of climate change impacts and adaptations for Mexico City region, we present an interdisciplinary, engaged approach to sustainability/climate change resilience research and practice, sharing preliminary findings, processes, and methodologies. Themes include: 1) Ecological realities are exemplified by our definition of the regional study area using hydrological data and land use/land cover (LU/LC) data, as well as population densities; 2) the participation process is framed as a socio-technical capacity building enterprise, with co-created education and knowledge networks playing a central role; 3) the economic, social and cultural contexts directly inform the design of the project, as well as being inputs to coupled human-environment models; 4) education, assessment and policy are conceived as shared stakeholder activities that focus the work and give it meaning.

Presenters

Timothy Downs
Associate Professor of Environmental Science & Policy, International Development, Community & Environment (IDCE), Clark University, Massachusetts, United States