Graduation Year
2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Name
Master of Arts (M.A.)
Degree Granting Department
Anthropology
Major Professor
Rebecca Zarger, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Maya Trotz, Ph.D.
Committee Member
E. Christian Wells, Ph.D.
Keywords
Anthropocene Anthropology, Interdisciplinary Research, Coastal Communities, Climate Resilience, Nature-based Solutions, Climate Change
Abstract
Examining opportunities for climate resilience requires an evaluation of lived experiences of environmental change which benefits from transdisciplinary perspectives. This research examines those experiences through the lens of anthropogenic change which allows for a critical focus on local conditions of environmental change specific to Placencia Village, Belize, over time. An anthropology of the anthropocene framing shifts the focus from the results of the global phenomenon responsible for climate change to the implications of local human-caused environmental change on natural systems, human-environment relationships and dynamics, and the future trajectories of these relationships. Through the use of interviews, go-alongs, participatory mapping, transdisciplinary fieldwork, and oral histories, this research reveals that challenges contributing to resilience include intensifying development, processes of dispossession, and political ecologies of climate change that necessitate that broader political and economic processes of change be considered. Findings suggest that environmental changes are tightly linked to people’s experiences of and narratives about local history of those changes. Decreased access to community spaces and dispossession from coastal spaces as well as cultural and environmental practices interact with feelings of agency and control. This place-based historical context is then used to consider future possibilities for resilience-building through Nature-Based Solutions interventions around Placencia Village, shared with local communities and organizations who collaborated in this work. A storymap focused on social and environmental change at Laughing Bird Caye National Park is a public product of the project
Scholar Commons Citation
McKenna, Rory E., "Beyond Climate in Placencia, Belize: Navigating Environmental Change in the Anthropocene" (2024). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/10651
