This thesis examines the evaluation of the economic, environmental and social effects of dams, and lessons learned from previous dams. It then focuses on cost benefit analysis as a decision-making tool pre-project for evaluating the potential gains and losses of building a dam; and as a framework for evaluating dams in operation. It reviews the basic assumptions required for a legitimate cost benefit analysis, and the inherent limitations of this method. It uses the Sardar Sarovar dam as a case study for the use and abuse of cost benefit analysis in decision-making, interstate politics, propaganda and activism. It also illustrates the difficulties in dividing costs and benefits in an equitable manner at national, state, and grassroots levels.

Commercial fisheries on the West Coast are traditionally managed under large-scale management and conservation plans implemented by state and federal agencies. This scale of management can present obstacles for fishing communities. This thesis examines emerging cases of attempts to define and implement sustainable management of commercial fisheries under a community-based co-management model. In Port Orford, Sitka, San Diego and Santa Barbara, preliminary community-based co-management models are enabling fishing communities to pursue social sustainability through preserving access, participating in local science, and direct marketing for fish products. These communities are actively reshaping traditional models of conceptualizing and managing common-pool resources like fisheries.

The purposes of this study are: (1) to consider factors that influenced the creation of Nolin Reservoir, and the selection of its recreation sites, (2) to consider the growth and the variations in attendance and participation in activities as a function of quantity and quality of available facilities and accessibility, and (3) to trace the changes that the creation of the reservoir has brought on the surrounding land use, value and ownership. Through the use of questionnaires, interviews and field investigations, the purposes were accomplished. Nolin Reservoir was constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers. After extensive study, the cost and availability of materials for construction were found to be the major factors in selecting the dam site and public use areas. Attendance and participation at the reservoir and at particular recreation sites were found to vary. Such factors as the physical setting, accessibility, quantity and quality of facilities, and distance of each center to an urban area were found to have played significant roles in the analysis. Tracing the changes in land use, value and ownership, it was determined that agricultural use has been converted into recreational use. This change has brought about other changes. Land values began to rise. In eleven years (1964-1974), land values have increased about 500 percent. The increase in land value had induced many types of land ownerships in the basin. Developers became active, and subdivisions were introduced in 1964. By 1974, there were 75 subdivisions in the basin. Many farmers converted their arable land into housing development and commercial uses of land have also developed.

Sustainability is a buzzword covering a variety of fields and subjects. For the purposes of my research sustainability is “the ability to keep going over the long haul. As a value, it refers to giving equal weight in your decisions to the future as well as the present” (Gilman 1). The sustainability movement refers to activists, educators and researchers who are dedicated to finding high quality ways of living in the world that are environmentally benign for all who are now living as well future generations to come (Gilman 1). This research focuses on three women who engage in voluntary simplicity— “simplicity that is voluntary-consciously chosen, deliberate, and intentional- [and] supports a higher quality of life” (Elgin 4). The complexity of the subject of sustainability is why I chose to narrow my focus to such a worldview and because much of my educational background is in Gender and Women’s Studies I specifically focus on women. Feminist ethnographic methods of participant observation are utilized as well as rhetorical analysis. I examine the attentive roles that have afforded these women the ability to form intimate social as well as ecological relations in their community. The observations are recorded in a narrative form and contribute to the growing knowledge base of sustainability as well as resilience studies. The lack of sustainable practices on a large scale in our country affects every citizen who lives here through environmental problems like climate change and peak oil. The narrative form allows the research I have collected to maintain an accessible language which is important in reaching a greater audience beyond that of academia. The narrative shows easy, manageable sustainable choices and changes that can be applied at the micro as well as macro level. These choices and changes are not exhaustive or all inclusive; rather they are suggestions for those who are interested in joining the sustainability movement.

This study examined the process of gender policy reform. It sought to explain how and when gender policy reform has taken place in Venezuela across time. The study entailed observations of gender policy reform during specific periods of Punto Fijo democracy (1958-1998) characterized by democratic consolidation and deconsolidation, and during the transition towards a new type of hybrid democracy, the Chávez era (1999-2007). The policies considered were the ones addressing women’s equality at home and at work, reproductive rights, women’s economic rights, and political participation. The analysis showed that the likelihood of gender policy reform depends on the combination of certain institutional configurations that provide women access to the decision-making process of the state, but most importantly to women’s groups’ capacity to organize a broad coalition of women from civil society and from within the state apparatus behind to push for a reform by using frames based on international agreed norms that legitimized their struggle. In addition, the analysis reveals the negative influence of religious groups with decision-making power on the process of gender policy reform.

As the human population increases, it becomes increasingly more important for society to understand the impact of humans on the environment. Preserving fixed resources by engaging in sustainable practices is necessary to ensure those resources are available for future generations. Since the early 1960s, policy makers and educators alike have sought to ensure that students graduate environmentally literate. Previous research has identified a multitude of barriers that limit classroom teacher’s ability to integrate environmental education into their curriculum. The purpose of this study was to investigate how teachers overcome those barriers that restrict the integration of action based environmental education into the public school classroom. This was a three case study of public high school teachers. Data were gathered for this qualitative study through observations, interviews, and the collection of documents. Constant comparative method was utilized to analyze data. The researcher conducted a within-case analysis for each case and a cross-case analysis as well. Through the use of coding, the researcher identified patterns and themes across cases. Barriers identified by participants included resources, time, and risk. The primary factors uncovered by this study, which potentially affect teacher efficacy, are personal and educational background, the availability of mentors, and support of outside agencies. The implications for policy makers and institutions of higher education that can be drawn from this study are that, through the course of teacher undergraduate and graduate education, teachers should be provided with field experiences in the area of environmental education. In addition to providing field experiences, finding ways to link teachers to outside environmentally focused agencies and mentors increases teacher efficacy by providing support and resources.

Geographers researching cinema have predominantly been interested in how geographic meaning is constructed and negotiated within film, but have been less productive in accounting for how these constructs are received by viewers. Using the method of observational online ethnography, I therefore investigate how fans in online reviews have interpreted the nature/society binary in the film Dersu Uzala. Working from a social constructionist view of nature I begin by deconstructing the binary as it appears in Dersu Uzala before proceeding to illustrate the way this constitutive absence is made up for by the visuality of the film’s landscapes and techniques of geographic realism. Turning to the fan reviews I find that, rather than challenge the historical and constructed division between nature and society, many fans accept the binary as inevitable and consistent with their ideas about contemporary reality. More than passive consumption however, this concurrence is actively rearticulated in the ways that the fans incorporate the binary into their own lives and in the new discursive practices of the internet. In so doing I make headway into the exploration of audience analysis by geographers and continue to advance geography’s foray into cultures of the internet.

This thesis is a theoretical and empirical inquiry into ‘deliberative peacebuilding’, seeking to explain the ‘failures’ and ‘successes’ of peacebuilding in East Timor and Somaliland. While warfare has increased globally since the end of the Cold War, the UN has made efforts to build peace (e.g. Boutros-Ghali 1992). While peacebuilding has become an internationally applied set of ideas and practices, one of the theoretical gaps is deliberation. This research thus conceptualises ‘deliberative peacebuilding’, and associates this with peacebuilding in the non-Western, post-colonial, and (post-)conflict context. This research identified East Timor and Somaliland as its case studies. Despite similarity in the ‘legitimation problem’ with vertical (state-society) and horizontal (‘modernity’-‘tradition’) inequalities/differences based upon cultural and historical backgrounds, East Timor and Somaliland undertook different approaches in a decade after the end of their civil wars. While East Timor accepted UN peace operations, Somaliland rejected them. Yet both experienced similar transitions to make political order between ‘failure’ (political de-legitimation/societal dissent) and ‘success’ (political legitimation/societal consent).Accordingly, this thesis poses two questions: 1) what caused the UN to have ‘failed’ (to prevent the ‘crisis’ from recurring in 2006) in East Timor, and 2) what caused East Timor and Somaliland to have experienced ‘equifinality’ (making similar progress along different paths) in building peace (in East Timor from 1999 to 2012 and in Somaliland from 1991 to 2005). Findings, among others, include different paths in transition: a ‘hybrid’ path with external intervention in East Timor and an ‘agonistic’ path without it in Somaliland. Asymmetry in power relations urged deliberative agencies to address the ‘legitimation problem’ differently.

Awareness of extreme high tide flooding in coastal communities has been increasing in recent years, reflecting growing concern over accelerated sea level rise. As a low-lying, urban coastal community with high value real estate, Miami often tops the rankings of cities worldwide in terms of vulnerability to sea level rise. Understanding perceptions of these changes and how communities are dealing with the impacts reveals much about vulnerability to climate change and the challenges of adaptation. This empirical study uses an innovative mixed-methods approach that combines ethnographic observations of high tide flooding, qualitative interviews and analysis of tidal data to reveal coping strategies used by residents and businesses as well as perceptions of sea level rise and climate change, and to assess the relationship between measurable sea levels and perceptions of flooding. I conduct a case study of Miami Beach’s storm water master planning process which included sea level rise projections, one of the first in the nation to do so, that reveals the different and sometimes competing logics of planners, public officials, activists, residents and business interests with regards to climate change adaptation. By taking a deeply contextual account of hazards and adaptation efforts in a local area I demonstrate how this approach can be effective at shedding light on some of the challenges posed by anthropogenic climate change and accelerated rates of sea level rise. The findings highlight challenges for infrastructure planning in low-lying, urban coastal areas, and for individual risk assessment in the context of rapidly evolving discourse about the threat of sea level rise. Recognition of the trade-offs and limits of incremental adaptation strategies point to transformative approaches, at the same time highlighting equity concerns in adaptation governance and planning. This new impact assessment method contributes to the integration of social and physical science approaches to climate change, resulting in improved understanding of socio-ecological vulnerability to environmental change.

Given the state of the planet at present —specifically, the linked global ecological and economic crises that conjure dark imaginings and nihilistic actualities of increasing resource depletion, poisonings, and wide-scale sufferings and extinctions—I ask What might we hope now? What points of intervention offer possibility for transformation? At best, the response can only be partial. The approach this thesis takes initiates from specific pre-discursive assumptions. The first understands current conditions as having been produced, and continuing to be so, through practices that enact and sustain neoliberal relations. Secondly, these practices are expressive of a subjectivity tied to a Cartesian worldview, which, therefore, needs to be interrupted at its foundational roots. Thirdly, the scaffolding that supports this subjectivity draws on Newtonian science and neo-Darwinian narratives deemed to be natural law and, therefore, ontological, immutable reality. Contrary to modernist thinking, I premise that these two strains, subjectivity and science, are neither autonomous nor ontological, but that they are materially and contingently integral. Finally, this thesis presumes that different and life-affirming trajectories are, in fact, desired. An integral framing of science and subjectivity provides a productive method of feminist science studies analysis and theorization. Observing the capitalist Western social imaginary through this lens reveals its philosophical and scientific infrastructures to be outdated and crumbling. Observing how emerging scientific narratives in quantum physics and systems-biology intersect with marginalized theories in process-philosophy and subjectivity reveals a life-affirming imaginary of difference, one that arrests nihilism and sets ethical trajectories in motion. Certain, though not all, percepts of feminist new materialism engage twentieth and twenty-first century sciences successfully to show that ethicality matters. Though many questions remain, this points auspiciously towards the possibility for a transformed politics of justice.