Karen Elizabeth Mcnamara
Biographic Data
| ID | 198151 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karen Elizabeth Mcnamara |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karen Elizabeth |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcnamara |
| SIGNATURE | MCNAMARA K E |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Queensland |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4511-8403 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 65 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 417 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 65 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
I Don't Know Anything Else Besides Gardening’
Across the globe, the escalating impacts of climate change threaten food security by disrupting agricultural production, reducing crop growth and yields and decreasing food availability. In Vanuatu, women market vendors play a substantial role in maintaining food security throughout the country through the production and sale of local produce. However, there is limited understanding of the vulnerability of these women vendors to climate change an…
Valuing a values-based approach for assessing loss and damage
Anthropogenic climate change is causing widespread losses and damages to what people value. To date, non-economic loss and damage assessments are commonly guided by predefined ‘types’ of non-economic losses, similar to those proposed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Instead, we draw from studies conducted in Bangladesh and Fiji to emphasize the benefits of a values-based assessment approach to gain a context-sensitive…
Who plans for women? Representation of power in planning for climate change adaptation in Bangladesh
Gender considerations have been part of climate change adaptation planning in the Global South for the last two decades. Despite this, studies have reported a gap in understanding how organisations incorporate people's diverse experiences of climate risks into planning and implementing adaptation strategies, particularly for women disproportionately impacted by climate risks. Taking the case of Bangladesh, this study contributes to this knowledge…
Partial planned relocation and livelihoods
Pacific Island Countries (PICs) are vulnerable to climate change impacts, including sea level rise, extreme weather events and other environmental changes. Planned relocation can be an adaptive response to climatic threats. In Fiji, six communities have already relocated. While there is growing interest in planned relocation, there are few empirical case studies from which to learn. Narikoso village, in the Kadavu Province of Fiji, undertook part…
Guiding our responses to climate change by what people value
Pacific Island countries are experiencing and responding to significant and multiple climate change impacts. However, very few studies have examined how these climate change impacts affect what people value and how this then affects how people respond to these impacts. This study explores what people value and how climate change affects these values, and identifies values-based ways of addressing loss and damage. We draw on in-depth interviews wi…
Framing locally led adaptation in a planned relocation in Fiji
Using a human rights lens to understand and address loss and damage
Experiencing and responding to extreme weather
Catastrophic extreme weather events are destructive, costly, and bring about significant harm and distress. As a consequence of a warming world, extreme weather is only expected to increase in intensity. Unravelling the ways that frontline communities, such as those in the Cook Islands, are experiencing, preparing for, responding to, and recovering from, extreme events over time is vital to document, learn from, and share widely. This paper, draw…
Locally led adaptation
Locally led adaptation (LLA) has recently gained importance against top-down planning practices that often exclude the lived realities and priorities of local communities and create injustices at the local level. The promise of LLA is that adaptation would be defined, prioritised, designed, monitored, and evaluated by local communities themselves, enabling a shift in power to local stakeholders, resulting in more effective adaptation intervention…
Investing in home
Labour migration is considered an important pathway for improving economic development in countries of origin. In recent years, labour migration, through the ‘migration as adaptation’ discourse, has been further positioned as a response to changing environmental conditions in places of high climate risk, such as the Pacific Islands region. However, limited empirical work examines whether and how labour mobility schemes enhance both development ou…
Ways of healing in the Anthropocene
Grief and mourning are part of the human journey. But what happens when sadness occurs because of changes happening around us: losses to animals and plant species, changing weather patterns and loss of place and identity. How do we, in a time of significant planetary change, begin to acknowledge, process and act when faced with growing distress, anger, anxiety and despair? This paper explores ways of healing in the Anthropocene, a new geological …
Emotions of the Anthropocene across Oceania
As human activities have destabilised life on Earth, a new geological era is upon us. While there is a myriad of challenges that have emerged because of such human-driven planetary changes, one area of investigation that requires ongoing scholarly attention and scientific debate is the emotions of the Anthropocene. The emotional, mental, and psychological burdens induced by rapid and unprecedented change must be understood to better reflect the e…
Wellbeing outcomes of nature tourism
Nature-based tourism may provide a well-structured format to facilitate opportunities for wellness. This research collected in-depth data from 72 tourists to explore the holistic wellbeing outcomes of experiences at the Mt. Barney Lodge in Queensland, Australia. We found that the Lodge offers a multitude of benefits across wellbeing dimensions. Such research indicates that nature is a public health resource, and that nature-tourism enterprises ha…
International student mobility
Tertiary education scholarships for individual students from developing countries, including those in the Pacific Islands, are a key pillar of Australia's development policy. Understanding students' experiences of these scholarships are important in identifying both positives and challenges, which can help foster improved future opportunities. This is especially the case for Pacific Islander students engaging in the Australia Awards Scholarship p…
Experiences of i-Kiribati with labor mobility schemes
Circular labor mobility provides opportunities for Pacific Islanders to upskill whilst alleviating labor shortages in Australia and New Zealand. Past studies have sought to understand the value of the labor schemes, yet very few have focused on the experiences of i-Kiribati participants. Drawing on preliminary insights from eight semi-structured interviews, this research offers specific examples of the benefits of labor mobility in Australia and …
Cascading loss and loss risk multipliers amid a changing climate in the Pacific Islands
Hopeful tourism to grapple and engage with emotions in the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene is characterised by people's significant influences on global systems, which generate both high levels of uncertainty and profound change in our lifetime. We must start to better engage with what it might mean to inhabit and know the world differently, especially as we experience extensive loss and change, and because grief is increasingly with us. At the same time, we must better engage with our emotions productively and find ho…
Alternative Entry Points for Adaptation
As climate change accelerates, effective adaptation is an urgent and unavoidable priority. Bottom-up approaches such as community-based adaptation have been portrayed as the panacea. Recent studies are, however, highlighting the ongoing and inherent issues with normative “community” conceptualizations that assume a geographically bound, temporally fixed, and harmonious unit. Despite documentation on the negative impact these problematic assumptio…
Locally led adaptation
Adapting to the impacts of climate change is one of the most urgent priorities of our time. Given that the impacts of climate change are experienced at local scales, it makes sense that adaptation should occur locally, and yet, despite this, locals often have little control over how adaptation is funded, designed and delivered in order to climate-proof their places and futures. Increasingly competitive access to funding and limited progress towar…
I thought I lost my home”
Purpose This paper builds on existing studies by drawing on Conservation of Resources theory to explore the losses, psychological impacts as well as recovery processes of the 2017/18 volcanic disaster on Ambae Island, Vanuatu. Design/methodology/approach This discussion is based on local perspectives and personal accounts collected through a series of eight semi-structured interviews (five males and three females). Findings The volcanic activity …
Climate-driven losses to knowledge systems and cultural heritage
Anthropogenic climate change is leading to widespread losses around the world. While the focus of research over the last decade has largely been on economic or tangible losses, researchers have begun to shift their focus to understanding the non-economic or intangible dimensions of loss more deeply. Loss of life, biodiversity and social cohesion are some of the losses that are beginning to be explored, along with Indigenous and local knowledge (I…
Spatial and temporal ways of knowing sea level rise
Sea level rise presents risks to ecosystems, populations, and infrastructure in low‐lying areas. This article considers diverse ways of knowing, understanding, and experiencing these risks. It explores differences and connections between knowledge produced through the technological methods of scientific research and that which emerges through the experiences and insights of local people. For example, while scientific assessments measure and forec…
Women’s capabilities in disaster recovery and resilience must be acknowledged, utilized and supported
People’s susceptibility and capacity to respond to disasters is not homogenous. Women, in a generalized sense, tend to bear the brunt of disasters, but they are also often at the frontlines of disaster response and recovery. Women’s experiences and capabilities, however, remain ill-recognized or poorly integrated into policies and projects. This paper draws on a study that documents and listens to the stories of women market vendors in Vanuatu wh…
An assessment of community-based adaptation initiatives in the Pacific Islands
Relocation planning must address voluntary immobility
We do not want to leave our land’
Indigenous (im)mobilities in the Anthropocene
This paper explores Indigenous (im)mobilities in the Anthropocene, and their relationship to Pacific Islands climate activism. In a context where Indigenous peoples and perspectives are poorly represented in global climate politics, it is important to understand how Pacific people represent their own interests and imagine their own futures as pressures to move due to climate change take hold. We examine political action outside of formal governan…
Being(s) framed
The complex decision-making of climate-induced relocation
Climate change is increasingly challenging the ability of millions of people to sustain livelihoods as the places where they live become uninhabitable. The relocation of populations as individuals, households, and communities within countries and across international borders demonstrates the complexity of climate change impacts. Looking at the literature, some researchers argue that relocation caused by climate change can be an effective strategy…
Moving People in a Changing Climate
High levels of vulnerability to climate change impacts are rendering some places uninhabitable. In Fiji, four communities have already initiated or completed the task of moving their homes and livelihoods to less exposed locations, with numerous more communities earmarked for future relocation. This paper documents people's lived experiences in two relocated communities in Fiji-Denimanu and Vunidogoloa villages-and assesses the outcomes of the re…
Women as recovery enablers in the face of disasters in Vanuatu
Resisting a ‘Doomed’ Fate
The impacts of climate change have been, and are predicted to be, particularly concentrated in tropical areas such as the Pacific Islands. With rising sea levels, more droughts, and more frequent and intense storm activity now evident across the region, scholars have deemed low-lying countries as likely to be uninhabitable in the future. Hugo (1996, 125) made the case early on that [I]nternational relocation may provide an enduring solution for s…
Gendered vulnerabilities of smallholder farmers to climate change in conflict-prone areas
Locally led adaptation
Locally led adaptation (LLA) has recently gained importance against top-down planning practices that often exclude the lived realities and priorities of local communities and create injustices at the local level. The promise of LLA is that adaptation would be defined, prioritised, designed, monitored, and evaluated by local communities themselves, enabling a shift in power to local stakeholders, resulting in more effective adaptation intervention…
Climate-driven losses to knowledge systems and cultural heritage
Anthropogenic climate change is leading to widespread losses around the world. While the focus of research over the last decade has largely been on economic or tangible losses, researchers have begun to shift their focus to understanding the non-economic or intangible dimensions of loss more deeply. Loss of life, biodiversity and social cohesion are some of the losses that are beginning to be explored, along with Indigenous and local knowledge (I…
Transformative mobilities in the P acific
Climate change is affecting Pacific life in significant and complex ways. Human mobility is shaped by climate change and is increasingly positioned by international agencies, policymakers, and governments as having an important role in both climate change adaptation and human development. We consider the potential for human mobility to promote adaptation and development among Pacific people in a changing climate. We argue that where Pacific peopl…
Taking stock of community‐based climate‐change adaptation projects in the P acific
A number of international donors have in recent years shown great interest in implementing community‐based projects related to adaptation to climate change climate‐ in the P acific. This interest has seen a flurry of activity in P acific communities to develop and implement on‐ground activities in the hope of enhancing adaptive capacity. This article draws on the results of a questionnaire completed by 31 agencies that have implemented climate‐ch…
Conceptualizing discourses on environmental refugees at the United Nations
Exploring climate-driven non-economic loss and damage in the Pacific Islands
A livelihood analysis of resettlement outcomes
What is shaping vulnerability to climate change? The case of Laamu Atoll, Maldives
As climate change accelerates, it brings with it numerous challenges to society and the natural world. Concepts such as vulnerability have emerged as a way of trying to understand people’s risk, despite there being a range of variables that can influence vulnerability and its temporal and spatial dimensions. Drawing from the well-known conceptualisation of vulnerability as a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, this paper see…
From community-based to locally led adaptation
Voices from the margins
This paper captures some of the structural deficiencies within the United Nations' decision‐making processes at its headquarters in New York. Ideas and methodological approaches from critical geopolitics are adopted here to examine semi‐structured interviews held with Pacific ambassadors ( n = 7) at the United Nations and bring new knowledge to an underexplored area. Results demonstrate that the institutional capacities of Pacific small island st…
Spatial and temporal ways of knowing sea level rise
Sea level rise presents risks to ecosystems, populations, and infrastructure in low‐lying areas. This article considers diverse ways of knowing, understanding, and experiencing these risks. It explores differences and connections between knowledge produced through the technological methods of scientific research and that which emerges through the experiences and insights of local people. For example, while scientific assessments measure and forec…
System of hunger”
Wellbeing outcomes of nature tourism
Nature-based tourism may provide a well-structured format to facilitate opportunities for wellness. This research collected in-depth data from 72 tourists to explore the holistic wellbeing outcomes of experiences at the Mt. Barney Lodge in Queensland, Australia. We found that the Lodge offers a multitude of benefits across wellbeing dimensions. Such research indicates that nature is a public health resource, and that nature-tourism enterprises ha…
Community-based adaptation to climate change
Community-based adaptation has gained significant international attention as a way for communities to respond to the increasing threats and complex pressures posed by climate change. This bottom-up strategy represents an alternative to the prolonged reliance on, and widespread ineffectiveness of, mitigation methods to halt climate change, in addition to the exacerbation of vulnerability resulting from top-down adaptation approaches. Yet despite t…
Reading, learning and enacting
The northern Wet Tropics rainforest of Australia was declared a world heritage site in 1988 and now supports an extensive tourism industry that attracts an estimated 2.5 million local and international visits annually. As part of the visitor experience, many sites include both environmental and cultural interpretation experiences, which range from static displays to one‐on‐one guided tours. This paper identifies visitor demand and level of satisf…
Women’s capabilities in disaster recovery and resilience must be acknowledged, utilized and supported
People’s susceptibility and capacity to respond to disasters is not homogenous. Women, in a generalized sense, tend to bear the brunt of disasters, but they are also often at the frontlines of disaster response and recovery. Women’s experiences and capabilities, however, remain ill-recognized or poorly integrated into policies and projects. This paper draws on a study that documents and listens to the stories of women market vendors in Vanuatu wh…
A Study of Climate-Smart Farming Practices and Climate-resiliency Field Schools in Mindanao, the Philippines
Conceptualizing discourses on environmental refugees at the United Nations
Voices from the margins
This paper captures some of the structural deficiencies within the United Nations' decision‐making processes at its headquarters in New York. Ideas and methodological approaches from critical geopolitics are adopted here to examine semi‐structured interviews held with Pacific ambassadors ( n = 7) at the United Nations and bring new knowledge to an underexplored area. Results demonstrate that the institutional capacities of Pacific small island st…
We do not want to leave our land’
Reading, learning and enacting
The northern Wet Tropics rainforest of Australia was declared a world heritage site in 1988 and now supports an extensive tourism industry that attracts an estimated 2.5 million local and international visits annually. As part of the visitor experience, many sites include both environmental and cultural interpretation experiences, which range from static displays to one‐on‐one guided tours. This paper identifies visitor demand and level of satisf…
Assessing Tourists' Perceptions of Climate Change on Mountain Landscapes
The increasing popularity of mountains as a tourism resource has coincided with growing concerns about the probable impact of climate change on sensitive mountain ecosystems and the long-term sustainability of these ecosystems. This paper outlines and tests a six-step model that synthesizes scientific research into the probable impacts of climate change on mountain ecosystems with tourism research that evaluates how tourists are likely to respond…
Solastalgia and the Gendered Nature of Climate Change
Planning Nature-based Hiking Trails in a Tropical Rainforest Setting
Tropical rainforests are under threat and tourism has been identified as one industry that has some potential to add value to this important natural resource. This paper examines how nature-based hiking trails may be developed in a sustainable manner within a planning framework that recognizes the role of inputs and outputs. Consideration of inputs is restricted to visitor demand for hiking experiences and consideration of outputs is similarly re…
Using Participatory Action Research to Share Knowledge of the Local Environment and Climate Change
Reading seasons and environments has been a long-held practice for Torres Strait Islanders through their close relationships with their islands and seas. This research project worked with elders on Erub (Darnley) Island, in the eastern group of islands in the Torres Strait, to document and synthesise their knowledge of seasonal patterns and indicators, and climate change. This knowledge varied from details on the migration and nesting patterns of…
Modelling a Tourism Response to Climate Change Using a Four Stage Problem Definition and Response Framework
Climate change has become a hot topic for research, but the response of national governments has been relatively cool, particularly in their support for effective mitigation measures to combat the problem. A review of the scientific literature (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]. (2007). Summary for policy makers. In S. Solomon, M. Qin, Z. Manning, M. Chen, K. Marquia, M. Averyt, M. Tignor, & H. Miller (Eds.), Climate change 2007: t…
Mobilité humaine et changement environnemental
Les Nations Unies occupent une place prépondérante dans la protection de l’environnement aussi bien que des personnes déplacées. Cependant, ces deux rôles demeurent mutuellement exclusifs. À l’heure actuelle, il n’y a pas aux Nations Unies de cadre unifié pour répondre à la mobilité humaine générée par le changement climatique - y compris comme un facteur parmi d’autres. Plus précisément, cet article décompose différentes descriptions textuelles …
Taking stock of community‐based climate‐change adaptation projects in the P acific
A number of international donors have in recent years shown great interest in implementing community‐based projects related to adaptation to climate change climate‐ in the P acific. This interest has seen a flurry of activity in P acific communities to develop and implement on‐ground activities in the hope of enhancing adaptive capacity. This article draws on the results of a questionnaire completed by 31 agencies that have implemented climate‐ch…
Raising awareness about climate change in Pacific communities
Community-based climate change projects in the Pacific typically seek to raise the awareness of locals about the consequences of climate change and changing weather patterns. A key concern is that such activities might be done in an ad hoc manner, with little consideration of local relevance, audience and the integration of local experiences and knowledge. Drawing on the results gleaned from an interactive focus group with 10 climate change pract…
‘Our kids don’t want to eat taro anymore’
Niue, an island country in the South Pacific Ocean, is commonly referred to as the ‘rock of Polynesia’. The oval-shaped island is one of the world’s largest coral islands and supports a population of 1,460 residents. During focus group discussions with community members from three coastal villages in October 2012, it was evident that the country faces significant contemporary sociocultural changes that present numerous challenges for Niue’s long-…
Being(s) framed
The need to reinterpret “community” for climate change adaptation
“Community” has long been used as the preferred scale for implementing development projects, but it is being increasingly pitched as the panacea for climate change adaptation. The Pacific region is no exception and given the speed at which projects are being implemented it is important to extract lessons from past community-based projects more generally to inform adaptation activities now and in the future. This article draws from in-depth focus-…
How might adaptation to climate change by smallholder farming communities contribute to climate change mitigation outcomes? A case study from Timor-Leste, Southeast Asia
The complex decision-making of climate-induced relocation
Climate change is increasingly challenging the ability of millions of people to sustain livelihoods as the places where they live become uninhabitable. The relocation of populations as individuals, households, and communities within countries and across international borders demonstrates the complexity of climate change impacts. Looking at the literature, some researchers argue that relocation caused by climate change can be an effective strategy…
Community-based climate change adaptation
The focus on climate change adaptation, rather than mitigation, has become more prominent since the turn of the century. Given this, it is important to consider what has been achieved so far, particularly community-based approaches which have become the resolve for practitioners and donor agencies working in the sector. This review of 128 publications on community-based climate change adaptation, identified through a systematic database search, f…
Climate‐induced migration
A number of studies have indicated that the long term habitability of Kiribati, a low‐lying country in the central tropical Pacific Ocean, is tenuous given the impacts of climate change, particularly sea level rise. In an effort to plan for the resultant challenges ahead, a number of national policies and programs have surfaced to reduce the impact of localized changes on people's livelihoods. This study explores how local community members ( n =…
Gendered vulnerabilities of smallholder farmers to climate change in conflict-prone areas
A Study of Climate-Smart Farming Practices and Climate-resiliency Field Schools in Mindanao, the Philippines
Resisting a ‘Doomed’ Fate
The impacts of climate change have been, and are predicted to be, particularly concentrated in tropical areas such as the Pacific Islands. With rising sea levels, more droughts, and more frequent and intense storm activity now evident across the region, scholars have deemed low-lying countries as likely to be uninhabitable in the future. Hugo (1996, 125) made the case early on that [I]nternational relocation may provide an enduring solution for s…
Identification of limits and barriers to climate change adaptation
Communities living on remote islands are often viewed as among the most exposed and vulnerable to climate change impacts. This study uses the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework to investigate how indigenous communities living on two physically different islands in Torres Strait, Australia, experience what they consider to be the impacts of climate change in relation to their daily lives. During this process, a series of natural, physical, and soci…
Transformative mobilities in the P acific
Climate change is affecting Pacific life in significant and complex ways. Human mobility is shaped by climate change and is increasingly positioned by international agencies, policymakers, and governments as having an important role in both climate change adaptation and human development. We consider the potential for human mobility to promote adaptation and development among Pacific people in a changing climate. We argue that where Pacific peopl…
What is shaping vulnerability to climate change? The case of Laamu Atoll, Maldives
As climate change accelerates, it brings with it numerous challenges to society and the natural world. Concepts such as vulnerability have emerged as a way of trying to understand people’s risk, despite there being a range of variables that can influence vulnerability and its temporal and spatial dimensions. Drawing from the well-known conceptualisation of vulnerability as a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, this paper see…
Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration (50 works) · Geography (43 works) · Political science (43 works) · Sociology (38 works) · Climate change (37 works) · Ecology (30 works) · Economics (29 works) · Environmental resource management (29 works) · Disaster Management and Resilience (27 works) · Psychology (26 works)