Profile

Petra Tschakert is an Assistant Professor of Geography and the Alliance of Earth Sciences, Engineering and Development in Africa (AESEDA) at the Pennsylvania State University. For the months of April and May 2009, Petra is a Oxford Martin School Visiting Fellow at ECI at the University of Oxford. Through her fellowship, she will be involved in the Climate Change Adaptation Research Cluster as well as with other 21st Century School Institutes, including the International Migration Institute.

Petra’s research focuses on climate change adaptation, resilience, marginalization, and social learning. Her interests are in the theoretical and empirical intersections of political ecology, environmental justice, complex systems science, and participatory research. She has experience in interdisciplinary research and capacity building in West Africa, the American Southwest, and with indigenous people (Emberá) in Panama.

Petra holds a Ph.D. in Arid Lands Resource Sciences (with a minor in Applied Anthropology) from the University of Arizona and an MPhil in Geography and French from the Karl Franzens Universität in Graz, Austria. From 2003-2004, she held a post-doctoral position with the Department of Biology and the Center for Global and Climate Change Research at McGill University, Montreal.

Research Interests

Petra’s research interests are related to strategies small-scale resource users adopt in coping with and adapting to environmental, socio-economic, political, and institutional stresses and risks. Her current work focuses on the following four research themes:

1) Climate change adaptation, anticipatory learning, and resilience (Senegal, Ghana, and Tanzania): Out of Petra’s earlier work on social vulnerability, multiple stressors, and environmental service provision in Senegal emerged the understanding that social learning activities can play a crucial role in boosting and expanding local memory of climate stresses and adaptive responses. Such latent knowledge is expected to be essential for coping with and preparing for the increasing frequency and severity of extreme events. Petra is more and more interested in the concepts of anticipatory learning, existential/livelihood tipping points, and adaptive capacity as key concepts of livelihood resilience.

Petra is currently PI of two research projects on climate change adaptation in Africa:

• Climate Change Collective Learning and Observatory Network Ghana (CCLONG), funded by USAID: This project focuses on enhancing adaptive capacity to climate change in Ghana by building an information exchange infrastructure that brings the science of climate change and the implications for people and the environment to a level that is understandable, accessible, and beneficial to multiple parties. Key social actors in this project are subsistence land users (farmers, herders, fishermen), agricultural extension agents, regional and national researchers, and policy decision-makers. The main objectives are to understand local experiences with climatic changes and extremes, examine determinants of adaptive capacity, and adjust climate and crop models to people's needs for more effective adaptive decision-making. This project is a collaboration with the University of Ghana (Regional Institute for Population Studies; Soil Sciences) and the Ghana Environmental Protection Agency. See project flyer for details.

• Anticipatory Learning for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience (ALCCAR), funded by the National Science Foundation (Human and Social Dynamics). Petra works with Robert Crane, Esther Prins, Ken Tamminga (all Penn State), and Chris Hoadley (New York University) to examine how cyclical (loop) learning can strengthen people's anticipatory capacity in decision-making with respect to climatic and other livelihood stressors. The team aims to understand iterative ways of analyzing and learning about changes and uncertainties in the past, present, and future. By focusing explicitly on learning processes and decision-support tools, the goal of the project is to reverse the deterministic notion of presumably vulnerable groups as passive victims of climate change by highlighting people's skills, knowledges, strategic responses, anticipatory capacity, and agency for adaptation planning. Petra hopes that the project will foster people's capacity to influence their future through iterative planning rather than learning by shock. Research is conducted in Ghana and Tanzania, in collaboration with partners from the University of Ghana (Geography and Performing Arts), the Afram Plains Development Organization (a Ghanaian NGO), and the University of Dar-es-Salaam (Geography). See project flyer for details.

2) Environmentally-induced migration: Unlike other health-related impacts of climatic changes (e.g. vector-borne diseases), the role of sadness, depression, and desperation caused by significantly altered environments has so far been largely ignored in global change debates. At the intersection of internal migration and environmental deterioration in West Africa, Petra explores environmental triggers for migration and the psychological and emotional distress caused by slow-onset, creeping environmental changes. She is particularly interested in distress and loss of belonging among those who stay behind. In an ongoing case study in Ghana, men and women who have moved from the northern regions to slums and shanty towns in Accra, the capital, assess livelihood stressors and opportunities at their place of origin and their new urban environment. In a second phase (to be started this summer), Petra will work in selected migrants’ home communities and test concept of ‘solastalgia’, coined by Australian environmental scientist Glen Albrecht. It signifies an environmentally-induced illness and potential loss of belonging among those who find themselves in increasingly ‘pathological ‘homes. Through this empirical work, Petra hopes to contribute to current debates on so-called environmental refugees.

3) A third research theme is marginalization and recognition in the small-scale gold mining sector. Applying a political ecology and environmental justice lens, Petra examines the links between the contested use of mercury- the only extraction method available to artisanal gold miners - and marginzalization through corporations and public and state discourses in Ghana. She uses a participatory research design to contextualize the socio-cultural, environmental, mental, and topographical spaces of contamination and to engage miners to explore conflictual aspects from their perspective. She is particularly interested in the role of recognition and participation in the context of social exclusion and the creation of counter-narratives and parity-fostering contact zones to counteract criminalization. A recent NSF-funded collaborative US-Ghana workshop allowed a diverse team of researchers to explore complex linkages and feedbacks between climatic extremes, land disturbance, and the activation of a bacterium that causes Buruli ulcer (an aggressive skin disease) within Ghana’s mining sector. Petra is interested in the applicability of the concept of social-ecological resilience to assess thresholds in disturbed environments (for instance through mining and deforestation).

4) Community-based participation in carbon offset schemes, both in Senegal dryland farming systems and among indigenous populations at the tropical forest margin in Panama: Petra’s initial interests (2000-2004) were how to involve communities into carbon measurements and monitoring and how to design equitable and transparent cost-sharing mechanisms between carbon producers and buyers. Given the increasing interest in REDD, Petra will return to Panama this fall to examine equity dimensions of an ongoing carbon offset project, including winners and losers of avoided deforestation.

Recent Publications:

• Tschakert P., R. Sagoe, G. Darko, and SN Codjoe.(2009) Floods in the Sahel: An analysis of anomalies, memory, and anticipatory learning. Climatic Change (forthcoming).
• Tschakert P. (2009) Digging deep for justice: A radical re-imagination of the artisanal mining sector in Ghana. Antipode (forthcoming).
• Tschakert P. and R. Tutu. (2009) Solastalgia: Environmentally-induced distress and migration due to climate change among Africa’s poor. In T. Afifi and J. Jäger (Eds.) Environment, Forced Migration and Social Vulnerability. International Organisation for Migration (IOM) (forthcoming).
• Tschakert P. (2009) Recognizing and nurturing artisanal mining as a viable livelihood. Resources Policy, 34 (1-2): 24-31.
• Tschakert P., E. Huber-Sannwald, D. Ojima, M. Raupach, and E. Schienke.(2008) Holistic, adaptive management of the terrestrial carbon cycle at local and regional scales. Global Environmental Change, 18 (1): 128-141.
• Tschakert P. (2007) Views from the vulnerable: Perceptions on climatic and other stressors in the Sahel. Global Environmental Change, 17: 381-396.
• Tschakert P. (2007) Environmental services and poverty reduction: Options for smallholders in the Sahel. Agricultural Systems, 94 (1): 75-86.
• Tschakert P. and K. Singha. (2007) Contaminated identities: Mercury and marginalization in the artisanal mining sector of Ghana. Geoforum, 38 (6): 1304-1321.
• Tschakert P., O. Coomes, and C. Potvin. (2007) Indigenous livelihoods, slash-and-burn agriculture, and carbon stocks in Eastern Panama. Ecological Economics, 60(4): 807-820.
• Potvin C., P. Tschakert, and K. Kirby. (2007) Land use and land management in Ipetí-Emberá: Estimation of the baseline scenario. Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, 12 (8): 1341-1362.
• Tschakert P. and K. Dietrich. (200-) Anticipatory learning for climate change adaptation and resilience. Ecology and Society (under review).
• Tschakert P.(200-) Staging smart farmers: Learning partnerships in global change science. In S. Batterbury and L. Horowitz (eds.) Engaged Political Ecologies. Duke University Press (under review).
• Tschakert P. (200-)Mercury in fish: A critical examination of gold mining and human contamination in Ghana. International Journal of Environment and Pollution. Special Issue on 'Small-Scale Gold Mining, Mercury, the Environment and Human Health: Challenges and Ways Forward in Rural Ghana' (under review).