Education for disaster resilience: Lessons from El Niño.
This paper calls for greater attention to the role of youth and children as development actors in the context of education for disaster management. Drawing on debates in disaster studies and children’s geographies, we explore the possibilities offered by everyday formal education spaces, often overlooked in disasters management practice, to engage children in disaster preparedness and resilience planning. Using the case study of Peru, we examine the extent to which national responses to the restrictions that the COVID-19 pandemic placed on in-person teaching, opened-up opportunities to engage with disaster management in new ways. We draw on the case of an innovative digital curricula that uses intergenerational storytelling about the El Niño phenomenon to investigate livelihood opportunities and climate change pressures in northern coastal Peru, exploring how the phenomenon benefits desert populations. We assess the role of participatory virtual learning in facilitating disaster knowledge and climate adaptation awareness among students and critically examine the youth subjectivities that are constructed through these processes. We conclude calling for greater engagement with children’s formal education spaces in climate adaptation strategies, while cautioning against conceptualising children and young people as only ‘adults in the making’, rather than as impacted individuals with current agency and everyday capacities.
Date: 01/01/2024
Harvard Citation: Bell, I. Laurie, N. Calle, O. Carmen, M. and Valdez, A. (2024) Education for disaster resilience: Lessons from El Niño. Geoforum, Volume 148. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103919
Translation urgency in our climate-challenged times: co-producing geographical knowledge on El Niño in Peru.
This paper makes a case for revisiting the understandings of translation to enhance the co-production of geographical knowledge on climate change. Specifically, it offers insights about the potential role that schoolteachers and students can have as knowledge producers in relation to climate change by drawing on a case study of collaborative research on El Niño in Sechura, northern Peru. We call for researchers to pay greater attention to how co-production can be achieved through the integration of research agendas and practice with curricula development and innovation in school education. We contribute to work on how a generational shift in understanding about climate adaptation can be achieved through exploring communities’ knowledge of the lesser-known opportunities of the El Niño phenomenon in northern desert regions. We conclude by arguing that revisiting how geography engages in and with translation is an urgent priority in climate-challenged times.
Date: 12/12/2023
Harvard Citation: Laurie, N. Healy, G. Bell, I. Calle, O. Carmen, M. Cornejo, S. Davies, A. Mendo, T. Puescas, V. Schofield, V. Valdez, A and White, R.M. (2023) Translation urgency in our climate-challenged times: co-producing geographical knowledge on El Niño in Peru. Scottish Geographical Journal. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/14702541.2023.2289496
Creating stories of educational change in and for
geography: what can we learn from Bolivia and
Peru?
This article will explore the potential for embedding education outputs within contemporary
geographical scholarship to provide a disciplinary resource for school teachers’ curriculum thinking and pathways to impact for academic geographers. In particular, the article will draw upon two projects to show the empirical depth that can be achieved by developing resources that give teachers and students insight into the particularities of places (in this case Bolivia and Peru) in relation to sustainable development agendas via a focus on the co-production of geographical knowledge. Through engaging with research pursued by geographers, this article sheds light on the relationship between environmental justice and sustainable development, which can play an important role in shaping geography teachers’ curricular decision-making. It also recasts expertise where Indigenous leaders and others with first-hand experience of their local environment are at the forefront of complex decisions and conflicts to determine trajectories of sustainability.
Date: 05/06/2023
Harvard Citation: Healy, G. Laurie, N. and Hope, J. (2023) Creating stories of educational change in and for geography: what can we learn from Bolivia and Peru? Geography, 108:2, 64-73. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00167487.2023.2217629
Climate variability in the province of Sechura and its impact on productive activities. Compilation and analysis of environmental data using R software.
This is the undergraduate thesis of Nohelia Stefany Palacios Saavedra and Isabella Alejandra Zapata Gallo, both participants of the Farming and Fishing project and students of the University of Piura (UDEP).
Date: 25/10/2022
Harvard Citation: Gallo, A. Palacios, N. (2022) Climate variability in the province of Sechura and its impact on productive activities. Compilation and analysis of environmental data using R software. Undergraduate Thesis. University of Piura.
Analyzing Crisis and Resilience in the Museum Space through the ‘When it Rains, We Harvest’ / Cuando Llueve Cosechamos’.
This paper was written for and presented at the 2022 Cambridge Annual Student Archaeology Conference with the theme of ‘Crisis and Resilience.’ Emily Sears completed the MLitt Museum and Gallery Studies program at the University of St. Andrews and acted as content specialist for the student-led exhibition.
Date: 09/09/2022
Harvard Citation: Sears, E. (2022) ‘Analyzing Crisis and Resilience in the Museum Space through the ‘When it Rains, We Harvest’ / Cuando Llueve Cosechamos’ Exhibition’, School of Geography and Sustainable Development Pedagogies Research- Working Papers. Available at: https://elninophenomenon.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/files/2022/09/PRSGSD-Analyzing-Crisis-and-Resilience-in-the-Museum-Space.pdf
The impact of the El Niño phenomenon on fishing, agriculture, and livestock activity in the Sechura desert.
The Foundation for the Agricultural Development (FDA), a partner of the project, presented its final report on the work carried out in the framework of the activities developed by the project “Fisheries and Agriculture in the Desert”.
Date: 26/06/2021
Harvard Citation: The Foundation for Agricultural Development. (2021). The Impact of the El Nino Phenomenon on Fishing, Agriculture and Livestock Activity in the Sechura Desert. Available at: https://elninophenomenon.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/files/2022/02/Final-Report.pdf
Return Migration in the Alto Piura Region in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.
St Andrews University and CIPCA Presented a joint publication based on the project about return migration due to Covid 19 with the participation of the, Farming and fishing on the desert, Principal Investigator Nina Laurie.
Date: 20/10/2020
Harvard Citation: Burneo, M. Trelles, A. University of St. Andrews, CIPCA (2020). Return Migration in the Alto Piura Region in the Context of the Covid 19 Pandemic. First Edition. Piura: Centro de Investigación y Promoción del Campesinado and the University of St. Andrews. Available at: https://elninophenomenon.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/files/2022/02/Return-Migration.pdf