RAPID: El Niño Southern Oscillation Events, Migration, and Resilience

该奖项支持在面对全球气候变化时培养社会生态适应能力的过程的科学研究。研究人员发现，系统抵御冲击和不确定性的能力是系统整体弹性的一种特性，而不仅仅是特定组件在压力下的弹性。社会生态系统的某些方面，如文化世界观，比其他方面，如规则和规范，更难改变，改变得更慢，而规则和规范改变得更快。令人惊讶的是，虽然资源分配系统通常变化最快，但人们对这种变化是如何实际发生的，以及这些变化如何通过整个系统最终影响规则、规范和世界观知之甚少。在世界各地的资源日益受到战争、人口流动和自然灾害的压力之际，政策制定者和公民以及科学家必须了解在社会生态系统面临压力时实现资源重新分配的社会过程。因此，人类学家曾傑瑞·杰卡博士(科罗拉多大学博尔德分校)将返回巴布亚新几内亚高地，他自1998年以来一直在那里研究复原力和脆弱性之间的关系。由于厄尔尼诺南方涛动(ENSO)事件，高原社会生态系统目前面临压力。由东太平洋水域表面温度变化引起的ENSO不定期发生，但当它们发生时，影响可能是毁灭性的。在强烈的厄尔尼诺现象期间，巴布亚新几内亚高原的园艺师受到严重影响，因为伴随而来的霜冻和干旱摧毁了他们赖以生存的粮食作物。在之前的ENSO天气事件中，高原居民迁徙到低海拔地区，在那里他们可以找到低海拔居民的临时住所。然而，经济发展、人口压力以及自然资源管理和获取方面的变化正在限制这些传统的应对措施。这为研究人员提供了一个观察新反应形成过程的机会。数据将通过人种学田野调查收集。将与来自四个社区(两个移民社区和两个收容移民的收容社区)的当地资源管理人员进行面谈，以了解与减轻ENSO事件脆弱性有关的决定和做法。研究参与者还将对风险进行排名和绘制概念图，以了解厄尔尼诺现象是如何在不同的民生背景下表现和概念化的。政府和非政府官员将接受采访，以研究地区和州一级对气候危机的反应。这项研究的发现将阐明促进社会生态韧性的因素，并将推广到其他背景和其他压力。

This award supports scientific research on processes that foster social-ecological resilience in the face of global climatic changes. Researchers have found that the capacity of a system to withstand shocks and uncertainties is a property of a system's overall resilience, not just the resilience of the specific component under stress. Some aspects of a social-ecological system, such as cultural worldviews, are more resistant to change and change more slowly than other aspects, such as rules and norms, which change more quickly. Surprisingly, while systems for allocating resources generally change fastest of all, little is known about how this actually happens and how the changes work their way through the system as a whole to finally affect rules, norms, and worldviews. At a time when resources throughout the world are increasingly under stress from war, population movement, and natural disasters, it is critical for policy makers and citizens, as well as scientists, to understand the social processes through which resource reallocation is achieved when a social-ecological system is under stress. Therefore, anthropologist Dr. Jerry Jacka (University of Colorado, Boulder) will return to the highlands of Papua New Guinea (PNG), where he has been investigating the relationships between resilience and vulnerability since 1998. The highland social-ecological system is currently under stress because of an El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) event. ENSOs, which are caused by variations in the surface temperature of the waters of the eastern Pacific Ocean, happen irregularly but when they do, the effects can be devastating. Horticulturalists in highlands PNG are severely impacted during strong El Niños because the accompanying frosts and droughts devastate their subsistence food crops. During previous ENSO weather events, highland people migrated to lower altitude areas, where they could find temporary accommodation with lowland residents. However, economic development, population pressures, and changes in the governance of and access to natural resources are restricting these traditional responses. This affords the researcher an opportunity to observe the processes by which new responses are developed. Data will be gathered through ethnographic fieldwork. Local resource managers from four communities (two migrating communities and two host communities who take the migrants in) will be interviewed to understand the decisions and practices related to mitigating vulnerabilities to ENSO events. Research participants will also engage in rankings of risks and concept mapping to understand how El Niños are characterized and conceptualized in a diversity of livelihood contexts. Government and non-governmental officials will be interviewed to look at regional and state-level responses to the climate crisis. Findings from this research will illuminate the factors that promote social-ecological resilience and will be generalizable to other contexts and other stresses.