Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Impact of Environmental Risk on the Development and Maintenance of Cooperation and Community Resilience

这个项目对研究生进行实证性、科学的数据收集和分析方法的培训，问题是自然灾害是让人们走到一起，还是让他们分开。对人类行为进化的研究表明，人类的合作能力可能部分是因为我们最早的祖先需要应对多变的气候和资源稀缺。这一问题在当今特别重要，因为即使是世界上最偏远的人口也受到全球经济一体化和气候变化影响的影响。合作往往为社区和国家政府提供一个可行的解决办法，以减轻经济危机、跨国资源冲突和对国家安全的威胁等风险的负面影响。然而，合作的努力往往受到资源短缺、冲突以及民众和利益集团相互竞争的目标的阻碍。拟议的研究将侧重于极易受恶劣天气影响的一小部分游牧民族对自然灾害的个人和社区一级的反应。托马斯·孔特将在罗格斯大学Lee Cronk博士的指导下，探索环境风险对合作和社区复原力的发展和维持有何影响。这项研究将在居住在亚北极蒙古北部的两个游牧牧民社区中进行。选择这个地点进行勘探是因为它非常容易受到严重的冬季灾害条件(蒙古语中称为zud)的影响，在这种情况下，严寒的温度或暴风雪条件会导致广泛的牲畜死亡。在最严重的情况下，冬季灾害可能导致全国范围内家庭整个牛群的损失和数百万牲畜的死亡。因此，他们是该区域农村贫困的主要贡献者。研究人员将通过分析牧民的劳动力交换社会网络，采访家庭了解他们为应对自然灾害所做的准备和恢复的努力，并在实验经济情景中比较个人在灾难期间与他人合作的意愿，来评估牧民如何应对自然灾害。这项研究将采用半结构化访谈、社会网络分析和实验经济博弈。这项研究的结果将更深入地了解环境风险如何影响小规模社会合作的发展和维持。此外，研究结果还可以为未来的政策方向提供信息，说明基于社区的决策和合作如何提高蒙古和美国的社区抵御自然灾害的能力。

This project, which trains a graduate student in methods of empirical, scientific data collection and analysis, asks whether natural disasters bring people together or drive them apart. Research on the evolution of human behavior suggests that the human capacity for cooperation may be partially a result of our earliest ancestors' need to cope with variable climates and resource scarcity. This issue is of particular importance in the present when even the world's most remote populations are affected by both global economic integration and the effects of climate change. Cooperation often provides a viable solution for both communities and national governments to mitigate the negative effects of risks such as economic crises, transnational resource conflicts, and threats to national security. However, efforts at cooperation are often stymied by resource shortages, conflict, and the competing goals of populations and interest groups. The proposed research will focus on the individual and community-level responses to natural disasters among a small group of nomadic herders that are highly susceptible to severe weather. Thomas Conte, under the supervision of Dr. Lee Cronk of Rutgers University, will explore what impact environmental risk has on the development and maintenance of cooperation and community resilience. The research will be conducted among two communities of nomadic livestock herders living in sub-arctic northern Mongolia. This site is selected for exploration as it is highly susceptible to severe winter disaster conditions (known as zud in Mongolian) in which severely cold temperatures or blizzard conditions cause widespread livestock mortality. In the most severe cases, winter disasters can lead to the loss of families' entire herds and millions of livestock deaths on a national scale. Thus, they represent a major contributor to rural poverty in the region. Given that northern Mongolia is distant from major urban centers, herders must rely on their own efforts to both prepare for and recover from winter disasters, and these efforts often come in the form of cooperation with other herding families. The researchers will assess how livestock herders respond to natural disasters by analyzing herders' social networks of labor exchange, interviewing families regarding their efforts to prepare for and recover from natural disasters, and comparing individuals' willingness to cooperate with others during disasters in an experimental economic scenario. This research will employ semi-structured interviews, social network analysis, and experimental economic games. Findings from this research will provide greater insight on how environmental risk affects the development and maintenance of cooperation in small-scale societies. In addition, research findings can also inform future policy directions on how community-based decision making and cooperation can increase communities' resilience to natural disasters both in Mongolia and the United States.