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

该项目旨在培养一名研究生的经验、科学数据收集和分析方法，研究自然灾害是使人们团结还是使人们分离。对人类行为进化的研究表明，人类的合作能力可能部分是由于我们最早的祖先需要应对多变的气候和资源短缺。这个问题在当前尤其重要，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了一种可行的解决方案，以减轻经济危机、跨国资源冲突和国家安全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、冲突以及人口和利益集团相互竞争的目标的阻碍。拟议的研究将集中在个人和社区层面对自然灾害的反应，在少数易受恶劣天气影响的游牧民族中。在罗格斯大学的Lee Cronk博士的指导下，Thomas Conte将探讨环境风险对合作和社区恢复力的发展和维持的影响。该研究将在蒙古北部亚北极地区的两个游牧牧民社区中进行。之所以选择这个地点进行勘探，是因为它极易受到严冬灾害条件（蒙古语称为zud）的影响，在严冬灾害条件下，极冷的温度或暴风雪会导致大量牲畜死亡。在最严重的情况下，冬季灾害可能导致家庭失去整个畜群，并在全国范围内导致数百万牲畜死亡。因此，它们是造成该区域农村贫困的主要因素。由于蒙古北部远离主要城市中心，牧民必须依靠自己的努力来准备和从冬季灾害中恢复过来，而这些努力往往以与其他牧民家庭合作的形式出现。研究人员将通过分析牧民的劳动力交换社会网络，采访他们为自然灾害做准备和恢复的家庭，以及在实验经济情景中比较个人在灾害期间与他人合作的意愿，来评估牧民如何应对自然灾害。本研究将采用半结构化访谈、社会网络分析和实验性经济游戏。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中合作的发展和维持。此外，研究结果还可以为未来的政策方向提供信息，说明以社区为基础的决策和合作如何能够提高蒙古和美国社区对自然灾害的抵御能力。

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.