This thesis is an intersectional study of forest rights of forest-dwellers in the tribal territory of Koraput, India. The thesis is developed around a piece of path-breaking legislation, the Forest Rights Act (FRA) of India 2006, under which land titles and resource use rights are being granted to many forest-dwelling households and communities. This work exclusively deals with the individual title holders of forest land under the FRA. It explores three important questions: 1) what is the history of forest-rights delineation in Koraput?, 2) how are the rights of forest-dwelling people being settled under FRA? and, 3) what are the complexities of land use in these tribal forestlands?} The thesis has used a mixed-methods approach to build and connect its three focus areas. Historical aspects of local forest rights have been explored through the lens of colonial and post-colonial forest policy analysis. The investigation of the various aspects of FRA implementation and ground realities combines cross-disciplinary approaches from political and gendered micro geography. The analysis of emerging land use on forest lands allotted under FRA is influenced by the Sen’s theory of entitlements, endowments and capabilities {Sen, 2001}. A multi-approach assessment methodology has been used by analysing a wide range of data streams including historical documents, household surveys, interviews, participatory maps, observations, group discussions and secondary data sets. Key findings that have emerged from this thesis are, 1) the consequences of the implementation of colonial and post-colonial forest policy measures on Koraput's forest-dwellers are substantial and unique geography of Koraput has produced new insights to the existing knowledge of history of forest rights in India, 2) FRA is a promising piece of legislation that has achieved significant political and bureaucratic collaboration in Koraput, but it is marred by major operational inefficiencies, and 3) the newly created FRA-lands will provide opportunities for policy makers and title owners to reconsider many existing norms including legal versus illegal occupation of forest land, forest-farming practices on FRA lands, and a need for renewed forest and land management goals for FRA territories in tribal India.

This research project investigates how a coastal community in the Upper Gulf of Thailand has been dealing with a local ecological crisis, the rapid erosion of their coastline and potential loss of the entire territory of their village. The case study examines the community’s interactions with development agents and their engagement with broader political and economic forces. Empirically, the thesis is based primarily on participant observation of the community, Ban Khun Samut Chin, supported by extensive documentary research. Applying theoretical frameworks from the fields of political ecology, environmental sociology, and sociology of the self and everyday life, the thesis demonstrates some interesting findings. Firstly, rather than passive victims of national economic development and ecological change, many members of the Ban Khun Samut Chin community have proven to be sophisticated strategic actors. Through interactions with researchers and other external stakeholders, Ban Khun Samut Chin villagers have encountered multiple framings of their situation. This has provided them alternatives for self-understanding and self-representation, and allowed for sophisticated adaptation in the face of a challenging ecological and political environment. Articulating their identity as a self-sufficient, close-knit community, they have taken advantage of the romanticized ideas many of their potential supporters have about them, in order to secure resources for adaptation. The community has even found ways to leverage their ecological crisis in order to generate alternative sources of income, for example through “disaster tourism”. The research explores how individual members of the community have negotiated their own somewhat inconsistent beliefs and hopes, and plans for the future. The research finds that despite their sophisticated understandings of different environmental narratives and possible scenarios for the village, most of the villagers continue to rely on their customary social networks and livelihood skills, as they struggle to adapt.

An impending environmental crisis has been predicted by many which has led to an increased awareness and concern regarding the ability of the planet to sustain human development. Furthermore, organisations expected to be leaders in society, such as businesses and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), have been identified as some of the main drivers behind the ever increasing rate of destruction of the natural environment. Business schools have even been singled out as some of the main drivers behind the degradation of the natural environment by not addressing the knowledge gap of managers in this regard. Given this, the problem statement of this research is to determine how effective existing NMMU curricula are at shaping environmentally literate business graduates. The problem will be investigated from two perspectives. Firstly, from a supply side perspective - investigating the pro-environmental behaviours, ecological and business knowledge, „green‟ management skills and environmental values that students registered in the Business and Economics Sciences faculty at NMMU exhibit. Secondly, the problem will be investigated from a demand side perspective – investigating the pro-environmental behaviours, ecological and business knowledge, "green‟ management skills and environmental values that potential employers of NMMU students require. The focus will be on prospective employers in the mining and automotive industries. To address the problem to be investigated in this study a theoretical framework was developed and tested. This theoretical framework was based on the assumption that environmental literacy is measurable in terms of the behaviours of individuals towards the natural environment and that these behaviours are in turn dependent upon the ecological and business knowledge, "green‟ management skills and environmental values that the individual possesses. To test the theoretical framework an online survey was conducted amongst students registered in the Business and Economic Sciences Faculty at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU), while semi-structured personal interviews were used to assess the demand for environmentally literate business graduates in the mining and automotive industries. In total 308 business students participated in the online survey. The findings suggest that students are highly sensitive to moral issues pertaining to the natural environment and have a better understanding of traditional ecological concepts than "green‟ business concepts. It was also found that ecological and business knowledge had the greatest influence on pro-environmental behaviours followed by environmental values and "green‟ management skills. The findings of this study will be used to enhance environmental literacy in the faculty. In terms of the semi-structured personal interviews, the views of eight environmental experts in the South African mining industries were obtained. The general analytical procedure was applied to identify prominent themes which existed in the qualitative data. This involved developing codes and identifying data which related to those specific codes in order to provide a description of and provide some dimension to these codes. Codes were categorised according to their similarity to each other. The different categories identified were ecology, legal compliance, technology, environmental management, sustainable development, pollution and waste management, financial implications and corporate citizenship. Some of these themes were not entirely expected based on the literature review. These additional insights add depth to the analysis of environmental education in South Africa and highlight the gaps in environmental literacy literature. In terms of environmental literacy, these categories had implications for the knowledge, skills, values and behaviours of business graduates. From the findings of this study the researcher concluded that a certain level of enthusiasm for environmental education exists among NMMU students, as well as individuals in the mining and automotive industries in South Africa. However, the level of environmental literacy exhibited by students registered in the Business and Economic Sciences Faculty at NMMU (between nominal and functional) was not considered to be sufficient to operate effectively in the mining and automotive industries.

In an effort to document and monitor the scale and scope of recent conflicts (1998–2004) in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), in conjunction with some of the world’s leading epidemiologists, conducted a series of five surveys in the country over a seven years’ period (2000–2007). Estimates of conflict-related mortality generated from the IRC’s surveys range from 3.3 million between years 1998 and 2002, to 5.4 million excess deaths for the period between 1998 and 2007. Reflecting on the IRC’s work, the current study combines four different data sources – 1984 DRC Population Census, 1995 and 2001 DRC Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) and the 2007 DRC Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) – to derive demographic estimates and assess the extent of population loss associated with the conflict period between 1995 and 2007. Both statistical and demographic techniques are relied upon for this purpose. Findings from this study do not warrant estimates produced by the IRC. The IRC approach may have overestimated the scale of excess deaths associated with the 1998 – 2007 armed conflict period. Because the approach used in the current study is mainly based on selected assumptions, a level of uncertainty is expected to be associated with the derived estimates. For this reason, sensitivity analyses have been conducted to define a range of plausible estimates representing the excess population loss.

Air pollution is a very critical non-natural hazard that adversely affects human health as well as the environment itself in the context of climate change. One of the biggest contributors to air pollution is the transportation industry. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), transportation is the second leading source for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, contributing to GHG emissions by 28%. Researchers and practitioners have been working on developing techniques to estimate and reduce transportation-related emissions by the help of various types of technologies. As such, this study aimed to investigate the effect of vehicle operating modes (i.e., constant running, idling, accelerating, and braking) on vehicle exhaust emissions in order to highlight the importance of occasionally disregarded factors that exacerbate the transportation-related air pollution problem. In order to accomplish this goal, this study adopted an approach involving two frequently used software for estimating emissions, namely VISSIM (a microscopic traffic simulation software) and EPA’s Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator (MOVES). The input data required for these software was collected, processed, and introduced into the models in order to estimate the emissions. First, a corridor was simulated within the VISSIM. This corridor is located in the City of Tallahassee, Florida, which is highly congested during the peak hours, and approximately 7.7 miles long, with 22 signalized intersections. Next, the outputs of VISSIM were collected and provided to MOVES by developing an integration tool. First, average speed and volume data were provided to MOVES only for the whole corridor, and VISSIM and MOVES emissions for carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) were compared. Note that VISSIM provides only emissions for CO and NOx. After observing the massive difference between VISSIM and MOVES emissions, the importance of using operating mode distribution file in MOVES was pointed out. To meet this end, the integration tool was enhanced to compute the vehicle operating mode distribution file based on second-by-second vehicle trajectory output. This was provided to MOVES in order obtain more accurate emission estimation results since only average speed and volume data could not provide accurate emission values disregarding the different vehicle operating modes. For this purpose, an algorithm, named as operating mode calculation algorithm (OMCA), was developed in Python 3.0 to create operating mode distribution input by using second-by-second vehicle trajectory data of VISSIM. This type of analysis focusing on the emissions of individual vehicles provided more accurate emission results. Now that these results were obtained, the focus of the thesis shifted towards analyzing the impact of vehicle connectedness on the air pollution. Two intersections of the selected highway corridor were modelled and simulated with a connected environment using one of the widely used vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication application called Green Light Optimized Speed Advisory (GLOSA). The GLOSA was implemented on the major leg of these intersections only with different Connected Vehicle (CV) penetration rates. One of the selected legs was the most congested link of the corridor. After extensive simulations, second-by-second VISSIM trajectory data were provided to OMCA, which converted them to MOVES operating mode distribution input files. Finally, MOVES was run in order to estimate carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen oxides (NOx), primary exhaust smaller than 2.5 micrometer (PM2.5) and primary exhaust smaller than 10 micrometer (PM10) emissions. Findings of the study can aid researchers in understanding the effect of different operation modes on the exhaust emissions, understanding the effect of smoother and lower number of stop-and-go driving operations in the context of the connected vehicle impact on the exhaust emission, and quantifying the potential operational and environmental benefits of connected vehicles (CV’s). / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester 2019. / March 27, 2019. / Connected vehicle, Emission, GLOSA, MOVES, Simulation, Traffic / Includes bibliographical references. / Eren Erman Ozguven, Professor Directing Thesis; John O. Sobanjo, Committee Member; Ren Moses, Committee Member.

Many states within the U.S., including Florida, have seen steady population growth since the 1950s. While population growth can lead to economic growth, excessive growth of urban areas can lead to negative externalities such as road congestion, air and water pollution, decreased access to open space, habitat loss, and habitat fragmentation. This realization has led to increasing political and stakeholder pressure to more comprehensively assess impacts of land-use planning projects on human-natural systems. The Ecosystem Services Assessment (ESA) approach is a relatively new approach which is described in the peer-reviewed literature as comprehensive and holistic. This dissertation study researched the potential of an ESA approach as a planning tool in Florida by addressing the following research questions: 1) What are the guidelines for best practices in ESAs from the literature? 2) How are ESAs currently used in land-use planning projects in Florida? 3) How is the traditional approach used in land-use planning projects in Florida? 4) What are key differences between the ESA approaches used in the case studies and the guidelines for best practices in ESAs? 5) What are key differences between an ESA approach and a traditional approach as they are currently used in Florida? The research questions were investigated through the use of an online survey, in-depth interviews, and analysis of three Florida case studies. Experts in the field of ecosystem services research were interviewed to assess how ESAs are used in Florida and to gather background information for the online survey and case studies. The target group for the online survey included respondents working for local, state, regional, federal and tribal government agencies, non-profit organizations, research institutes, universities, and other relevant persons who had been involved in projects in which ecosystem services were valuated, quantified, or described. The case studies that were assessed for this research are the Central Everglades Planning Project, the Florida Conservation Lands study, and the Tampa Bay Project. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2015. / May 19, 2015. / Ecosystem Services, Integrated Systems Analysis, Natural-human Systems, Natural Resource Management, Sustainable Development, Valuation / Includes bibliographical references. / Timothy Chapin, Professor Directing Dissertation; Keith Ihlanfeldt, University Representative; Christopher Coutts, Committee Member; Jeffrey Chanton, Committee Member.

Since the start of the 21st century—and mostly in the past five years—Sigur Rós, Dan Deacon, Sō Percussion, and Nick Zammuto actively investigated their homes and found them to be inspiring, if sometimes difficult to confront or articulate. They wrote music resulting from their individual investigations. Certain albums, like Sō Percussion's Where (we) Live (2012) and Dan Deacon's America (2012), candidly explored place, while Nick Zammuto's Anchor (2014) obliquely referenced his family's homestead. In the case of Sigur Rós, Iceland undoubtedly has been an influence, although the band finds place-based descriptions of its music to be problematic. By identifying the musicians' senses of place—their psychological and emotional attachments to specific places—I contextualize the role that place plays in their lives and explore strategies of listening for locality within their music. Using these four groups as case studies, this dissertation explores the relationship of music and place. It also draws parallels between the groups' music and a recent ascendancy of place and public concern for the environment. I argue that the musicians in this study are producing work that coincides with an invigorated attention to location—examples of which include digitization of place, the migration of younger generations away from suburban living, and anxieties regarding anthropogenic climate change. Sigur Rós, Dan Deacon, Sō Percussion, and Nick Zammuto are thus part of both a cohort of place-conscious citizens and a bevy of contemporary musicians and composers who are exploring place. / A Dissertation submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2016. / March 18, 2016. / Dan Deacon, Music, Nick Zammuto, Place, Sigur Ros, So Percussion / Includes bibliographical references. / Denise Von Glahn, Professor Directing Dissertation; Chris Coutts, University Representative; Frank Gunderson, Committee Member; Margaret Jackson, Committee Member.

Many environmental campaigns use threatening messages that feature the severity of the problem and the irreversible consequences to encourage pro-environmental behaviors. However, individuals tend to respond to threatening information defensively. Defensive message processing strategies help people distance themselves from the uncomfortable feeling without actually changing the existing attitudes and behaviors. As a result, people will likely to reject the message, deny the problem, or engage in biased processing of the message instead of changing their behaviors. Thus, how to reduce defensive processing of the message is one of the major tasks in environmental communication. Self-affirmation theory suggests that by affirming alternative sources of self-integrity, individuals will be able to reduce defensive processing of messages and evaluate risks more objectively. Past research has attempted to use individual-level values to achieve self-affirmation manipulations. This dissertation examined the self-affirmation framework at a group level by investigating whether affirming the group that an individual belongs to increases the acceptance of threatening information, risk perception and behavioral intention among college students. By using the group resources, the ultimate goal of this project is to design more practical interventions that can be used in public communication campaigns. The first study tested a new manipulation with group values incorporated into the pro-environmental public service announcements (PSA). Participants were randomly assigned to view either a PSA with group values highlighted or a control PSA. Results demonstrated that exposure to information about group values could influence participants' self-efficacy, but not other variables, such as attitudes toward the PSA, perceived message strength, risk perception, or behavioral intention. Participants' environmental concern moderated the effect of affirmation on perceived message strength. For participants with low environmental concern, affirmed participants reported a significantly higher perceived strength of the message than non-affirmed participants; but for participants with medium or high environmental concern, the group affirming message did not influence participants' perceived strength of the message compared to the control message. The second study tested a more visual-based manipulation. Participants were randomly assigned to view in-group beautiful photos, out-group beautiful photos, in-group not beautiful photos, or out-group not beautiful photos, before they were exposed to view an environmental risk message. Results demonstrated that participants who viewed in-group photos had more positive attitudes towards the message and reported greater on perceived message strength, compared with participants who viewed out-group photos. But the photos' aesthetic quality did not make a difference in the outcome variables. Instead of traditional manipulations, such as essay writing, this dissertation explored two affirmation manipulations, which require no writing from audiences but achieve the goal of affirmation. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed, as well as the suggestions for future research. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2017. / January 23, 2017. / environmental behaviors, group identity, public communication, risk perception, self-affirmation / Includes bibliographical references. / Laura M. Arpan, Professor Directing Dissertation; Betsy Becker, University Representative; Juliann Cortese, Committee Member; Mia Liza A. Lustria, Committee Member.

This book-length manuscript is a collection of poems. They and it examine ecology as a state of being in and outside the body (or how, if at all, there is a secure distinction), species-based boundaries of the body, obsessions with immunity and chronic illness in biopolitical and gendered societal and perhaps inevitably thus linguistic structures, and what it means to participate in close reading while writing to contribute to the question of ecology as poetry. The central questions are in fact questions: what is the relationship between a deconstructive approach to identity creation and erasure through participation in poetry as a medium, a set of forms, and the site of the body's dilemma?

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