Overview
Examination and understanding of the relationship between human societies and their environments provides a bridge for linking disparate trans- and interdisciplinary analyses as well as the basis for public action and engagement. Actions by individuals, corporations, and states have impacts across borders that can only be addressed through new institutional structures. Transborder flows of pollution and other "bads" demand global cooperation and regulation. Food production, transport and consumption affect environmental quality in a number of ways, in terms of chemical inputs, fossil fuels, and waste products. Natural resources, such as oil, minerals and water are of growing concern both in terms of adequacy of supplies and as instigators of conflict and violence. The rise of active and broadly supported environmental movements, responding to similar concerns, provides a basis for new forms of civil society and democratic participation. These movements link together concerns about economic growth, environmental stability, social cohesion and political representation, all arising from processes of globalization. Global Environment, Development, Agriculture and Resources seek to understand both the specific environmental crises and impacts that arise from globalization and how those effects motivate social forces and activism.
Projects
- Green Enterprise Initiative collaborates with city and business to attract and develop “green enterprise” in Santa Cruz and establish UCSC as a center of green research and action. Contact: Ben Crow, bencrow@ucsc.edu
- The Water Project is a new international collaboration focused on the “micro-macro” interactive dynamics of large irrigation projects with household and community water supply and demand in the context of a globalized system of large-scale agricultural production and inadequate public health. Contact: Ben Crow, bencrow@ucsc.edu
- Biotechnology in China, India, and Silicon Valley seeks to analyze the forces and processes that drive biotechnology research in China and India and to document their connections to Silicon Valley. Contact Nancy Chen (nchen@ucsc.edu)
- Agro-food Studies Research Group is a multi-disciplinary collective of graduate students and faculty dedicated to research on issues of broad concern in the field of Agro-Food Studies. The intellectual project of the Research Group is to develop theoretical resources to inform critical engagement with trajectories of change in conventional agro-food networks from “field to table.”
- CenTREAD foster interdisciplinary research and training to understand tropical environmental issues and develop ecologically-based, economically viable, culturally repectful, nonexploitative solutions that serve as a foundation for future generations. Contact: Greg Gilbert (ggilbert@ucsc.edu)
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