Diane C. Bates

A Tropical Forest Transition? Agricultural Change, Out-migration, and Secondary Forests in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Could old colonization zones in the urbanizing and industrializing countries of Latin America become sites for a tropical forest transition in which reforestation becomes more prevalent than deforestation? We try to answer this question through a case study of land-use change and migration since 1985 in a long-settled region of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Data from remote sensing analyses, household surveys, and land-use maps of individual farms reveal two disparate patterns of reforestation in the region, one on peripheral lands far from roads and the other on lands close to roads. The former pattern characterizes most places experiencing a forest transition; the latter pattern does not. Roadside reforestation has occurred in part because Amerindian smallholders have abandoned cattle ranching in order to practice short-cycle shifting cultivation of crops for expanding urban and export markets. This example suggests that tropical forest transitions may differ from earlier temperate forest transitions in that reforestation does not signify land abandonment. Even as they come to rely more completely on nonfarm sources of income, smallholders in developing countries continue to manage their land, reforesting when it eliminates expenses or promises new, near-term streams of income.

Environmental Refugees? Classifying Human Migrations Caused by Environmental Change

What distinguishes environmental refugees from other refugees—or other migrants? Are all environmental refugees alike? This essay develops a classification to begin to answer these questions and facilitate future policies and research on environmental refugees. Environmental refugees may have considerable control over the decision to migrate, but this varies by the type of environmental disruption. The origin, intention, and duration of environmental disruptions shape the type of refugee. Refugees from disasters and expropriations have limited control over whether environmental changes will produce migration. Gradual degradation allows “environmental emigrants” to determine how they will respond to environmental change.

The Black Bear Hunt in New Jersey: A Constructionist Analysis of an Intractable Conflict

The black bear hunt in New Jersey represents a symbolic clash of understandings about how human beings should live with nonhuman animals who typify intractable conflicts involving potentially dangerous mammals. Manifest and latent content analysis of newspaper editorial materials—written over a 10-year period, ending in 2005—document 2 findings. First, hunt supporters and opponents promote specific constructions of bears, hunters, and other actors in their letters and editorials. Second, these constructions are not only different but contradictory. Opponents and supporters portray bears as either menacing threats or benevolent and peaceful animals. The two groups see hunters as either bloodthirsty killers or defenders of wildlife. Contradictory constructions serve to de-legitimate other constructions and other actors. This finding highlights how public discourse has fed intractability over the conflict rather than provided common grounds for consensus about how New Jerseys residents should interact with their ursine neighbors.

The Barbecho Crisis, La Plaga del Banco, and International Migration Structural Adjustment in Ecuador's Southern Amazon

Structural adjustment policies have had devastating effects on segments of Latin Americas population, especially when environmental degradation has added to the squeeze. In Ecuadors Southern Amazonian region, the withdrawal of public subsidies for agricultural loans coincided with productivity declines related to environmental degradation. As oil wealth in the 1960s gave way to financial crisis, interest rates for agricultural loans to colonists were changed from fixed to floating rates, ending a tacit subsidy in an inflationary economy. At the same time soil fertility declines and pests reduced agricultural production. Unable to recover from economic losses through commercial crops, cattle ranching, or access to credit, colonists (especially young men) are leaving the community to seek work in Ecuadors cities or in the United States and Europe.

CABECT: collaborating across boundaries to engage undergraduates in computational thinking (abstract only)

Innovative solutions for complex problems entail diversity of perspectives, and students must learn to integrate concepts from multiple disciplinary areas. Yet, to provide collaborative experiences that cross disciplinary boundaries, educators must navigate numerous administrative and pedagogical challenges. In this hands-on workshop participants will learn how to leverage existing courses for students and faculty to collaborate across disciplines and with a community partner, to develop socially-relevant computational solutions for real-world problems. Participants will also brainstorm ideas on addressing specific challenges at their own institutions. The intended audience is educators interested in engaging their students in deep computational thinking through immersive multidisciplinary collaborative experiences. Registered participants will be reimbursed the workshop registration fee through NSF Award# 1141170. We will additionally offer a stipend to participants who adopt our model, administer assessments and provide us with their results for analysis and inclusion in reports. More information will be available at http://tardis.tcnj.edu/cabect/. Laptop Recommended.

Emerging Gender Parity and Persistent Differences: Cultural Shifts among Faculty Cohorts at a Primarily Undergraduate Institution

Abstract Purpose Although there are more primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs) than research-oriented institutions (ROIs) in the United States and more professors work at PUIs than ROIs, most research on gender inequality among faculty has focused on ROIs. Do patterns of women’s numeric scarcity, gender-hostile work climates, and difficulties with work-life balance found at ROIs hold true for PUIs? This chapter examines one PUI to address this question. Methods We analyze data from four sources: an archival database of all professors at the institution, interviews with full and associate professors, and two surveys. Findings Similar to ROIs, our study found women were less likely to achieve higher ranks, and take longer than men to do so. However, we find greater numbers of women and few gender differences in perception of climate, so numeric scarcity and gender-hostile climate cannot explain persistent lags in women’s advancement. Instead, we find women struggle with work-life balance more than men, especially in science disciplines. Thus, gender parity in advancement has yet to fully emerge, despite more women in the faculty and a more equitable climate than at ROIs. Research implications Differences between faculty cohorts are intensified at the PUI because of changes to the institution’s mission, but our research demonstrates that not all gendered patterns found at ROIs apply to PUIs. Practical and social implications PUIs that increasingly emphasize scholarly output should enact family-friendly policies to support all professors, including on-campus or subsidized childcare, flexible scheduling, family leave, and dual-career hiring policies. Originality/value This chapter demonstrates that there are important differences between ROIs and PUIs that must be taken into account if we are to understand and remedy gender inequality in academia.

A Review of: “Speth, James Gustave. Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment”

vices, carbon relief, and the like), and deforestation in distant lands, low on their list of concerns, proves a small price to pay and is easily addressed by token environmental funding and certification schemes. Followers of global institutionalism and epistemic communities alike will nod their heads while reading that a once disparate collection of professionals is gradually overcoming self-interests of national and discipline borders to legitimate transnational ‘‘conceptions of sustainable management [that] are growing more unified and gaining in substance.’’ In turn, a system of norms, monitoring and sanctioning, ‘‘often purely formal exercises, but also more and more frequently the actual modes of forest use,’’ might well represent an international regime as defined some 20 years ago by Krasner (‘‘implicit . . . norms . . . around which actors’ expectations converge’’). In this process, the only challenge to the influence of powerful states and their multilateral lending agents seems to be the role of NGOs. However, the initially celebrated civil society role of NGOs has shown itself to be curtailed by the ability of traditional actors to manipulate information (Fox and Brown’s The Struggle for Accountability) and contract terms. To paraphrase Susan Strange, while relational power appears to show a decrease in state sovereignty, structural power reinforces, in a much less obvious way, the interests of key state actors. Smouts’s effort to move beyond issues of sovereignty, agency, and interests seems to be more of a footnote than a central goal. This inability to alter the theoretical framework of international relations is disappointing for two reasons. First, outside of the realm of global finance, forest management would be a most likely case to find a transformative process in global politics. An alert general public listening to an array of seemingly independent NGOs on a moral issue that remains ‘‘low politics’’ is where a move away from statecentered relations should be easiest to find. However, instead of global networks providing long-term, transformative exchange of information, ethics, or other resources, what appear are political alliances, sometimes fleeting, designed to serve interests of power and greed. Second, the search for a framework outside of the U.S.-led discipline that we call international relations remains an important goal in order to move beyond ontological barriers and to escape the parochialism of global hegemony and unbounded rationality. While criticisms of the existing pepper the book, the alternative remains to be proposed. Nonetheless, the biting critiques make for engaging reading and self-reflection. In addition, this is an excellent book on deforestation and the use of rhetoric in international politics. Combining in a short book such success with the lofty goal of theory building seems overly ambitious.