Active Engagement
Asynchronous Session
Ecology as Method: Meinung Yellow Butterfly Festival and Community-based Environmental Activism View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Meiqin Wang
Meinung Yellow Butterfly Festival (MYBF) is a community-based ecological festival launched in 1995 at Meinung, a southern rural town of Taiwan known for Hakka cultural traditions. A by-product of the anti-dam campaign that began in 1992, the annual festival originated from concerns of ecological degradation and has continuously focused on environmental protection, ecological education, and sustainable development. In recent years, it has taken upon the identity of an environmental art festival that is locally based with a global vision and has adopted the format of a biennial starting in 2015 with serial preparatory activities starting several months before its core programs, which usually take place in July and August. Overtime, MYBF has fostered a vibrant local community culture centering on environmentally-friendly agricultural practice, alternative lifestyle experiment, and public art production, among others, in Meinung town and its various rural villages. This study looks into the history of MYBF and discusses its major stages of evolutions. Specifically, it analyzes MYBF’s effort in the interrelated domains of environmental activism, ecological literacy, community building, public art production, and sustainable lifestyle experiment. Combining field research, online observation, and literature review, the article illuminates how this long-living ecological festival foregrounds local traditions and aspirations while addressing environmental and social issues of increasing global relevance. It intends to argue that the Meinung experience revealed in the making and continuing of MYBF has much to share with the world when it comes to producing a sustainable, holistic, and beneficial relationship between human living, nature, and art.
Registry of Citizen Participation and Actions in the Face of Natural Phenomena in Casitas Municipality Tecolutla Veracruz View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Reyna Parroquin, Marco Montiel, Miriam Remess Pérez
It is through the design and application of a qualitative and quantitative approach that measures prevention, reaction and repair capacity in front of natural phenomena in the localities of Casitas, Veracruz that this study presents how citizen participation must be fundamental in planning and management of risks for disasters in coastal resilient localities. The paper presents, as an argument to present the adequate approach and sample calculus suitable for an application that will result in data backing the idea of the power and necessities for a society to be capable of managing their own hydrometeorological dynamics.
Climate Change and the Vulnerability of National Economies: The Case of Egypt and Vietnam View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dimitrios Anastasopoulos, Costas Synolakis
The study attempts a comparative analysis of the economic implications of climate change in two developing countries; Egypt and Vietnam. This study pursues a descriptive, “literature review” approach of identifying, collecting and analyzing data from credible reports and research studies. The analysis is based on methods in order to evaluate costs and hazards on each country separately, followed by a comparison of the prospective effects. It is also supported by a wide range of evidence regarding the impacts of climate change and the incurred economic expenses. It concludes that Egypt and Vietnam are one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change impacts and face substantial economic consequences. Both countries will witness de- escalate growth rates and reduction in GDP. More specifically, climate change will affect Egypt and Vietnam as regards housing and property values, tourism sector, agriculture sector, transportation and health. Furthermore, the study provides some general adaptation strategies to deal with the climate change impacts. Energy efficiency and energy generation choices, public transport and sustainable mobility, promotion of ecological industry, agriculture, fishing, and livestock farming, tax fossil fuel, safer and more sustainable buildings are some mitigation strategies that all countries should incorporate to combat climate change’s effects. Any activity that will support production under a changing climate and safeguard less emissions should be considered. From all of these perspectives, the evidence gathered by the present work leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of solid and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting.
