About the Environment and Security Research Group (ESRG)
he ESRG conducts field-based research on environmental and human security challenges and develops sustainable technological and institutional solutions that empower and protect those communities with heightened vulnerability to processes of global change. Under the twin pressures of environmental and social stress, fragile communities can collapse into humanitarian crisis or become incubators of disease, crime, and political violence. At the same time, these communities have fine-grained understandings of their particular challenges, and remarkable capacities for innovation and adaptation that, combined with critical forms of support, can be transformative.
The ESRG has conducted extensive and pioneering fieldwork in war-torn societies and fragile states to better understand both the extent to which local practices should be preserved or modified and the ways in which local capacity can be enhanced and supplemented given the realities of destabilizing global processes such as climate change. In these contexts, peacebuilding processes have been a major focus of our work, especially in terms of the opportunities they represent for integrating the capacity for better natural resource management and climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Our research uses both case study and statistical analysis to explore the ways in which changes in complex human and ecological systems affect human security, and our normative work emphasizes outcomes that are sustainable–ecologically sound, economically viable ,and socially fair.
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