Title of Presentation:
“Integrating Remote Sensing and Critical Social Science Perspectives to Identify Drivers of Environmental Peace and Conflict in Colombia”
Description:
In the wake of the 2016 peace agreement between the Government of Colombia and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), interest in the relationship between the environment, conflict, and peace in Colombia has surged. Remote sensing research has argued that Colombia’s peace process has accelerated deforestation and environmental change, which itself may be reinforcing conflict dynamics. Social science research, especially in environmental peacebuilding, reports more mixed results – finding complex relationships between environment, conflict, and peacebuilding. In this talk, McKenzie Johnson discusses NASA-funded research that employs remote sensing approaches and critical social science to examine these dynamics in greater depth. Her team contends that the disparate findings emerging from these fields, each rooted in different methodological and epistemological approaches, are likely identifying different pieces of a larger complex puzzle. Piecing together this puzzle to reveal a more comprehensive picture requires resolving scalar and temporal challenges that make integrating remote sensing and social science research difficult.
This event is organized by the Data, AI and Computing Working Group and co-sponsored by the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society and the Keough School’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
About the Speaker:
McKenzie Johnson is an Associate Professor of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Johnson’s research and teaching integrates environmental politics, human security, and environmental justice to explore how environmental governance initiatives across diverse natural resource systems shape opportunities to achieve socio-ecological security. She has conducted interdisciplinary research projects in the United States, South Asia, West Africa, and South America, with her most recent work focused on environmental peacebuilding in Colombia. Her work has been published in World Development, Global Environmental Politics, Political Geography, International Affairs, Global Environmental Change, Energy Research & Social Science, European Journal of International Relations, Conservation and Society, and Biological Conservation, as well as other journals.
Johnson received her PhD in Environmental Policy from the University Program in Environmental Policy at Duke University. She also holds an MA in Conservation Biology from Columbia University and an AB in Environmental Studies from Vassar College. Prior to joining the faculty at UIUC, she worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society – Afghanistan from 2007-2010.