Consilience

Homeownership and Environmental Attitudes

E Jen Liu — 2025-01-12

Homeownership is associated with financial stability, middle-class status, and the good life in the United States. On the national level, homeownership has been touted to improve social stability, generate wealth, and foster citizenship and solidarity. If true, expanding homeownership could help to solve the nation’s social, political, and thus environmental challenges. However, despite the popular currency of these ideas, existing research has mixed findings on the political consequences of homeownership. While previous research has linked homeownership to conservative political orientation, there is reason to believe that this may not apply to environmental attitudes. The conservatizing hypothesis is supported primarily by research on homeowners’ attitudes toward macroeconomic or local development policies, not environmental ones. The two mechanisms from the literature — social integration and locally dependent financial investment— can be expected to increase environmental concern among homeowners. Through six semi-structured interviews and a multivariate regression analysis using the General Social Survey 2021 Cross-section Study, this paper finds that homeowners tend to be more concerned about the environment than renters, especially if their neighborhood is highly exposed to environmental risks.

Blocking Oil Development in Yasuní National Park: Ecuador’s Unprecedented Strides Towards Environmental Justice

Lillian Prime — 2025-01-12

This paper explores Ecuador's proposal to protect Block 43 of the Yasuní National Park from oil drilling through the Yasuní-ITT Initiative proposed in 2007. The paper will examine why the initiative failed and how community activists responded. Ultimately, it will argue that the Yasuní-ITT Initiative upheld environmental justice through its assertion of a moral economy and its potential to help Ecuador step away from oil dependency and protect the rights of Indigenous communities, particularly the two tribes living in voluntary isolation in the Yasuní region. When the initiative was terminated and Indigenous communities were not consulted in the decision to begin drilling for heavy crude oil, citizen activism and mobilization of democracy through a referendum reasserted environmental justice and Indigenous rights.

A Looming Crisis: Exploring the Precarious Legal Status of ‘Climate Refugees’ Under International and Human Rights Law

Claudia Sachs — 2025-01-12

As climate change worsens, millions of people around the world will be displaced, further exacerbating conflicts and resource scarcity. In recent years, individuals displaced by climate change have sought legal recognition as 'climate refugees' under the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1951. This paper argues that the Convention, originally designed to address persecution-based displacement, lacks provisions for those fleeing environmental crises. This paper explores alternative legal frameworks relating to the status of 'climate refugees' under international and domestic law, with a focus on recent judicial opinions. It also examines alternative frameworks for refugee claims, including human rights treaties, as well as regional agreements such as the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees and the 2009 African Union Kampala Convention. These mechanisms offer potential pathways for recognizing and protecting those displaced by climate change beyond the narrow definition of the 1951 Refugee Convention. The paper concludes that regional agreements, modeled after the Kampala Convention, provide the most practical and enforceable solutions for addressing the complex legal challenges posed by climate-induced displacement.

Evaluating a Decade of Mangrove Restorations in Mumbai: Success or Failure?

Adam Shaham — 2025-01-12

From 2012-2022, more than US $5 million was invested in the restoration of Mumbai’s mangrove forests. The present study is the first published evaluation of these restorations. Mangrove restoration is critical for coastal communities, rehabilitating forests that guard against floods and absorb eight times the CO2 of any other ecosystem. Mumbai has 150 km of shoreline and 65 km2 of mangroves. Heavy pollution, industrialization, and major infrastructure development have led to the clearance of thousands of mangrove trees over the last two decades. A sample of 25 mangrove restoration sites were assessed through a remote sensing, time-series analysis. Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 data were collated in Google Earth Engine and mangrove extent was determined through a random forest, machine learning model. Restoration failed at 13 of the 25 sites (52%) which saw no mangrove growth from their restoration start year until 2022. Across the 25 sites, there was an increase of 30.44 hectares (ha) of mangrove coverage, from 67.19 ha of cover prior to restoration, to 97.63 ha by 2022. Despite strong conservation laws and compensatory afforestation mechanisms, Mumbai’s mangroves remain vulnerable to urbanization and land-use land-cover changes. Policy recommendations, including public transparency around mangrove restoration locations, long-term forest monitoring, and improved enforcement of the existing coastal regulation zone, are outlined at the local, national, and international levels to improve mangrove restoration outcomes in Mumbai.

Beyond Income and Education: Unveiling the True Catalysts of Green Behavior in Pakistan and South Asia

Fasih Zulfiqar — 2025-01-12

There is extensive literature on the progress of green alternatives in Pakistan, but there is no evaluation of how the people of Pakistan will respond to these proposed solutions. After conducting a literature review on green alternatives, this paper employs the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) framework. It utilizes data from the World Values Survey (WVS) in conjunction with logistic regression to assess the viability of sustainable practices in Pakistan and whether specific demographic groups, such as women, highly educated individuals, and high-income citizens, exhibit a greater inclination to adopt sustainable practices. Our regression analysis indicates that people’s income, religiosity level, and age do not affect their likelihood of adopting sustainable practices. In contrast, their attitude towards free market ideology, self-provision, and cultural values such as power distance and global connectedness have a significant impact. The paper shows Pakistan’s education system does not instill environmental values in people like other South Asian systems. Women in South Asia are less likely to adopt sustainable practices than men. These findings offer valuable insights for policymakers and financial institutions, guiding a nuanced restructuring of green alternative approaches in Pakistan and South Asia.

Motivators and Hindrances of Consuming Reusable Water Bottles: An Exploratory Case Study at Columbia University

Jung Ha Yoo — 2025-01-12

This pilot study explores the factors that motivate and hinder tap water consumption and reusable water bottle usage among students at Columbia University. Despite Manhattan's tap water being among the highest quality globally, the prevalence of single-use plastic water bottles on campus remains significant. Choosing reusable water bottles over single-use plastics is a pro-environmental behavior that can reduce plastic production and waste. This research investigates the underlying reasons behind students' choices regarding tap water consumption and reusable bottle usage. The data were collected from 58 students selected through convenience sampling utilizing questionnaires and participant observation. The questionnaire responses were thematically coded, and descriptive statistics, including percentages and frequencies, were used to analyze the data. Findings indicate that, while a relatively high percentage of students consume tap water compared to other universities, hygiene concerns related to water quality are the main hindrances. In terms of bottle usage, the primary motivation for carrying a reusable water bottle was to increase water intake. The major barrier was the inconvenience and lack of portability of reusable bottles. Notably, students overestimated the positive environmental impact of using reusable water bottles, which could potentially lead to greater environmental harm due to misconceptions. This pilot study underscores the need for further in-depth research to identify and address the misconceptions and barriers affecting students' pro-environmental behaviors.

A User-Centered Account of Urban Energy Transitions in Kampala, Uganda

Jessica Kersey — 2025-01-12

The rapid and complex effects of urbanization are shifting energy production and consumption patterns on the African continent. Energy poverty is manifesting to an increasing degree and in diverse forms in low-income, vulnerable urban populations like informal settlements and/or “slums.” This photo essay shows the lived realities of the urban energy transitions unfolding across Kampala, Uganda’s many informal communities. Though residents are almost universally connected to the grid, 97% of households and businesses rely on expensive and polluting charcoal. Electricity access is precarious and residents develop personalized fuel-stacking strategies to balance the competing demands of affordability, health, convenience, etcetera. Redundancy, hybridity, and improvisation are key features of the strategies that low-income communities use to meet their daily energy needs in the face of an unreliable, unaffordable, or inaccessible grid. This essay contributes to a growing body of research that aims to center users within discussions of urban energy transitions and sustainable development broadly.