Search

This chapter explores how land tenure impacts households’ resilience and adaptive capacity in the face of a changing climate. Following a review of the ways in which climate change adds pressure to land availability and natural resources, the chapter highlights how land tenure can constrain individuals’ options to adapt to shifting environmental conditions. An exploration of a case study of protracted drought in an agricultural region of Bolivar, Colombia, demonstrates how landlessness, socioeconomic vulnerability, and confusion regarding complicated land tenure policies in a post-conflict environment guided families’ resilience strategies and adaptive capacities. This case demonstrates that it is necessary to nuance understandings of (in)secure tenure to include local knowledge of land policies and precarious tenure claims as predictors of adaptive capacities in vulnerable, climate-stressed regions.

Climate change and land use change are increasing average and extreme temperatures. Hotter temperatures can detrimentally affect workers’ health and their economic productivity and livelihoods, especially in rural areas in industrializing countries that may be more vulnerable and less resilient. A growing literature has examined these factors at large spatial scales, yet few studies have done so at finer scales. Micro-level data from developing regions is needed to understand the extent of heat exposure, as well as current and future adaptation strategies of working, healthy, and rural populations. We fill this gap using objective environmental measurements from 3MTM QuestempTM 46 Heat Stress Monitors, as well as survey data from working, healthy, and rural communities in East Kalimantan, Indonesia. Our data contain two groups: those who work in only open areas, and those who work in both forests and open areas. We document workers’ livelihood strategies, work schedules, perceptions of how temperatures impact their work, and future adaptation strategies for even hotter days. Ambient temperatures are 2.6–8.3 °C cooler in forests compared to open areas, indicating the temperature effects of deforestation can be immediate and significant. Those working only in open areas face up to 6.5 h of exposure to temperatures above the accepted Threshold Limit Value for worker well-being. Workers adapt to hotter temperatures by altering the timing of their work shifts and breaks, indicating our sample is already adapting to increasing temperatures from climate and land use change. We also find differential adaptation strategies between those working only in open areas compared to those working in both forests and open areas, suggesting current acclimatization may be a factor in how people adapt. Our results suggest the need for adaptation and mitigation policies tailored to the unique constraints of rural workers that specifically incorporate extant adaptation strategies.

The rise in U.S. deportations has resulted in a growing number of studies focused on the reintegration experiences of these migrants in their home communities. Based on interviews with deportees shortly after their arrival home, these studies paint a picture of economic gloom, finding that deportees are too frequently stigmatized by governments and employers and consequently unemployed or working on the margins of their home economies. In contrast, our longitudinal and comparative study, which draws on the findings of 93 deported and voluntary migrants in Leon, Mexico, finds convergence in the labor market trajectories and social mobility outcomes of deportees and non-deportees, which reduces initial labor market disparities over time. We found that deportation can stymie migrants' initial labor market re-entry, often relegating former migrants to undesirable jobs in the informal labor market, while they re-familiarize themselves with their local labor markets and identify promising opportunities. Yet, in the long run, successful reintegration depends primarily on the acquisition and mobilization of human and financial capital across the migratory circuit.

This chapter explores an El Nino drought in the subsistence farming region of El Carmen de Bolivar, Colombia. Specifically, families with greater resources migrate temporarily as an adaptation in the early stages of drought while the most vulnerable families adapt in situ, migrating permanently as drought drags on if in situ adaptations fail. These findings nuance our understanding of migration during drought by exploring how families weigh their own adaptive capacities. In El Carmen de Bolivar, households' perceptions of their risks and resources are critical to the adaptation strategies they deploy. For the most vulnerable households, adapting in situ during drought depletes families' capital, thus entrenching existing inequalities. As climate change increases drought frequency and severity, each drought intensifies households' social vulnerability to future environmental stressors. In similar droughts in developing areas, basic humanitarian aid, including potable water and food for consumption, could be key to allaying drastic capital depletion and, in some cases, even preventing desperate migrations of last resort.

With over 11 million undocumented immigrants currently residing in the U.S.A and more attempting to cross the border each day, the responsibility to enforce U.S. immigration law in as fair and huma...