BGU Lecturer Takes Part in Critical Climate Change Research

Dr Sarah Hemstock, Programme Leader for Geography at Bishop Grosseteste University (BGU), has contributed to a new multi-disciplinary book on climate change: A Critical Approach to Climate Change Adaptation: Discourses, Policies and Practices.

Drawing on examples from across the world the book explores how adaptation measures are interpreted, transformed, and implemented at grassroots level and how these measures are changing or interfering with power relations, legal pluralism and local (ecological) knowledge. Its mission is to challenge established perspectives of climate change adaptation by taking into account issues of cultural diversity, environmental justice and human rights, as well as feminist or intersectional approaches.

Dr Hemstock’s chapter focuses on improving the prospect for climate change adaptation in the Pacific Islands Region (PIR) via formal education along with the increasing recognition by practitioners and policy makers working across the globe of the importance of bringing together disaster risk management (DRM) and climate change adaptation (CCA).

For Dr Hemstock contributing to the book offered a great opportunity to bring together her academic work at BGU with her personal research interests:

"With two of our Geography undergraduates involved in a research project looking at the inclusion of marginalised groups in decision making around climate change adaptation in the Pacific small island developing states, the publication of this book is very timely.

"It is the result of research collaboration over around five years and I am very happy to have contributed to a project that explores a diverse range of themes relevant to successful climate change adaptation.

"My work on development projects has led to my interest in the role of education to improve the resilience of Pacific island communities; this publication will put this approach to climate change adaptation into a wider multidisciplinary context."

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