Economic Well-being in the Aftermath of the Indian Ocean Tsunami

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This project will support research on population-environment relationships in Indonesia and Ecuador using a variety of new approaches. As part of the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR), the principle investigator and a collaborator will use a unique large-scale, longitudinal survey dataset to investigate the human consequences of the Indian Ocean Tsunami in Indonesia. Analyses of this dataset will investigate patterns of displacement and return migration following the tsunami, the consequences of displacement for health and well-being, and changes to household formation and composition following the tsunami. The results will provide insight into household responses to large-scale natural disasters, and will help to inform future disaster relief efforts. Building on this effort, the principle investigator and a second collaborator will adapt methods from STAR to conduct a follow-up survey with 400 indigenous households in the Ecuadorian Amazon, a region experiencing ongoing oil extraction, agricultural colonization and deforestation. This will create a valuable ten-year panel dataset on indigenous well-being and land use in a biodiverse region, allowing novel analyses of the patterns and drivers of change in 28 communities from five ethnicities. The results will provide new insight into the challenges facing Amazonian indigenous communities, and will inform programs for human development and environmental conservation. Finally, the principle investigator will build on both of these efforts and on previous research to develop a proposal for a new, large-scale longitudinal data collection in Ecuador focused on population-environment relationships. By incorporating several new environmental data sources, this effort would shed new light on the consequences of environmental change for human well-being, migration and rural livelihoods.