Oxford University Centre for the Environment

Latest News

Jan 2009  New book published:  Castree, Demerrit, Liverman and Rhoads. 2009. eds.  A Companion to Environmental Geography. Wiley-Blackwell.

Feb 2009.  Lectures at University of  Wisconsin (Weston lecture) and Rutgers University.

Mar 2009. Plenary speaker at the IARU Climate Change Congress, Copenhagen

New web page at University of Arizona http://environment.arizona.edu/diana-liverman

Biographical Information

As of January 2010 I will be based at the University of Arizona. I will hold a jcint appointment between Oxford and the University of Arizona - as a senior research fellow in ECI and Professor of Geography at Oxford and as co-director of the Insitute of Environment at the University of Arizona.  My responsibilities at Oxford will include supervising my current doctoral students and postdocs, working with the GECAFS and Tyndall projects, and providing advice, if needed, to ECI Acting Director Prof David Banister and Deputy Director Steve Morgan.  At Arizona  I will be helping to develop a university-wide environmental program, doing my own research and writing, and serving as a member of the US National Academy of Sciences Committee on America's Climate Choices, and as vice chair of the panel on Informing Effective Decisions and Actions on Climate Change.

I returned to England and came to Oxford in 2004 after spending most of my professional career in the United States. My former positions include Professor of Geography and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona (1996-2003), Interim Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Arizona, Associate Professor of Geography and Associate Director of the Earth System Science Centre at Penn State University (1990-1995), Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1985-1989) and a research fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado (1981-1984). My degrees are in Geography from University College London (1976), the University of Toronto (1980) and UCLA (1984).

I have been interested in the impacts of climate on society for most of my professional life. My MSc at Toronto was on drought impacts and I was also fortunate to work as a research assistant for Anne Whyte, Ian Burton and Ken Hare in the Institute for Environmental Studies on a variety of international environmental initiatives. I did my PhD with Werner Terjung and his group at UCLA on climate change and the world food system through a cooperative program with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), spending two years as one of Steve Schneider's group in the Advanced Study Programme just as climate change was emerging as a major issue in the early 1980s.

I was especially interested in the potential and limitations of modeling climate impacts using both crop simulation models and the first generation of global models that allowed the assessment of climate change impacts. As it became clear to me that our knowledge of climate impacts in the developing world was insufficient for modeling, and that some of the most interesting questions were about how people and places became vulnerable to climate change, I was able to use a research fellowship from the SSRC and MacArthur Foundation to begin fieldwork in Mexico. I was particularly interested in understanding vulnerability to natural hazards in the agricultural sector and to explore how global warming might affect agriculture and livelihoods in Mexico and was funded by NSF and EPA for work on these topics.

In 1988 I was invited to become a member of the US Social Science Research Council national committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change and this led to many other opportunities to serve on committees seeking to mobilize and define research on social science and global change including the US National Academy Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (which I chaired from 1995-99), the NOAA Global Change Advisory Committee and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Inter American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI).

Mexico was a fascinating place to work and when I moved to the University of Arizona (starting with a sabbatical in 1994) I began to work on a wider range of Mexican environmental issues, especially land use change and US-Mexico border environmental issues. I was able to work with my students in several regions of Mexico and in other parts of Latin America and have sustained a strong interest in Latin American climate impacts and policy. One of the most significant issues to draw my attention was the spread of neoliberalism in the Americas and its impact on environmental conditions and management, not only through NAFTA but also in the privatization of resources and other changes in governance. At the University of Arizona I was funded by the Ford, Hewlett and Mott foundations to co-organize an annual conference on US-Mexico border environmental issues, and by NASA for work on land use change in Mexico. I also helped to develop a regional climate assessment center for the southwest US (a model for the national NOAA program), which now flourishes as CLIMAS in Arizona's Institute for the Study of Planet Earth. One other commitment stemming from Arizona is a Prentice Hall textbook on world regional geography (World Regions in Global Context) that I wrote with Sallie Marston and Paul Knox where we use globalization and environmental history to place world regions in a global context. We have just completed the 3rd edition.

Upon returning to the UK my interest  (re)turned to climate change, partly because of the expertise that surrounded me in Oxford, because the UK is trying to lead internationally on climate policy, and also because the implementation of Kyoto raises some intriguing questions about the political economy and practices of mitigation and adaptation. As a coordinator of projects on climate policy for the James Martin 21st Century School and for the Tyndall Centre I am now working on climate and development (with a focus on Latin America) and on the geographies of the new carbon economy in the form of the CDM and other carbon offsets. My research activity was somewhat limited by my administrative role as Director of ECI with duties that include fundraising and strategic planning, budgets and personnel, and helping to coordinate environmental research across the university.

I am a member of editorial boards of the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Global Environmental Change, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Climatic Change and of the Oxford University Press Geography Editorial Advisory Board. In terms of committee responsibilities I currently chair the Science Advisory Committee for the ICSU Global Environmental Change and Food Systems program (GECAFS) and serve on the UK Human Dimensions of Global Change Committee. I am a member of the board of Cape Farewell (an organization that brings artists, scientists and educators together to collectively address and raise awareness about climate change) and of Julie's Bicycle a non profit company established to find ways to reduce the UK music industry’s greenhouse gas emissions.

A few of my recent public lectures are available as webcasts:

Climate change and communities: Presidential Dialogue on Sustainability, Memorial University, Newfoundland Nov 2007 https://builder.ucs.mun.ca/temp/dags/video.php

Climate change and food security: Development and Climate Days, Bali, Indonesia Dec 2007. http://www.meta-fusion.com/kongresse/iied2007/iied07.html (see Day 2 session 1)

Current Research Projects

Committee on America's Climate Choices

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Phase 2: I am the programme leader for the research on post-2012 climate policy and on climate science for policy (with collaborators Alex Haxeltine, Mark New, Myles Allen, Heather Lovell, Heike Schroeder, Chuks Okereke and Harriet Bulkeley) and the coordinator for the Oxford node of the Tyndall Consortium. Within Tyndall I am working on the role of non nation state actors in the climate regime, especially the role of carbon offset organizations.

James Martin 21st Century School: A generous benefaction from James Martin led to the establishment of the 21st Century School at Oxford, directed by Ian Goldin. ECI is one of the 10 initial institutes funded by the school and we have created a fellowship programme that I coordinate focusing on climate policy and on environmental governance. The James Martin 21st Century fellows are working on a variety of urgent policy issues including adaptation, climate modelling, economics of climate change, climate mitigation and development. We are organizing workshops on a variety of topics including theorising the carbon economy, climate change and the future of Amazonia, and the ethics of commodification.

Climate and Art: A couple of years ago I was approached to see if ECI would be interested in helping to organise an encounter between climate scientists and artists concerned with environmental change. We held the first conference at Christ Church college in 2005, the second at Trinity in 2006 and the third at Exeter in 2007. I am hoping to be involved in several future efforts including events at the South Bank associate with Tipping Points (the group that has emerged from these encounters)and I have just agreed to join the board of Cape Farewell, a project led by David Buckland that seeks to bring art and science together to raise awareness about climate change.

Global Environmental Change and Food Security: In 2005 I became the chair of the science advisory committee for the international program GECAFS under the ICSU Earth System Science Partnership. Focusing on the interaction of global change and food systems GECAFS looks at future scenarios and at vulnerability working with key partners such as FAO and the international agricultural research system (CGIAR). The GECAFS project office is now based in ECI led by John Ingram.

Other work: I continue to maintain a strong interest in Mexico and have maintained research interest and contacts through my current and former doctoral students and postdocs. I continue to monitor and write about the environmental impacts of NAFTA and to study vulnerability and mitigation in the Mexican context. Because of my long term involvement in climate change I have also been asked to write several recent review articles on assessments such as IPCC.

Recent publications

(since 1999 some with links to reprints)

Castree, N. Demeritt D., Liverman D. and Rhoads B. eds. 2009. A Companion to Environmental Geography. Wiley Blackwell.  588pp.

Lovell H., Bulkeley H. and Liverman D. M.  (under revision). Carbon offsetting: Sustaining Consumption. Environment and Planning A (Special issue on the carbon economy)

Liverman D.M. and Boyd E. 2008. The CDM, Ethics and Development. Pp 47-58 in n Holm Olsen K., Fenham J. eds.  A Reformed CDM. UNEP RISOE. UNEP.

Liverman D.M. In Press. Carbon Offsets, the CDM and Sustainable Development. Chapter for Schellnhuber J. Global Sustainability: A Nobel Cause (PIK)

Liverman, D.M. and Roman Cuesta R.M. (2008) Human interactions with the Earth system: People and pixels revisited. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 33, 1458–1471

Liverman, D.M.  (in press) Conventions of Climate Change: Constructions of danger and the dispossession of the atmosphere. Journal of Historical Geography.

Bumpus A.G. and Liverman D.M (2008). Accumulation by decarbonisation and the governance of carbon offsets. Economic Geography 84(2): 127-156.

Bottrill, C., Lye, G, Boykoff, M. and Liverman D.M. (2008) First Step: UK Music Industry Greenhouse Gas Emissions for 2007. Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University and Julie's Bicycle. http://www.juliesbicycle.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/jb-first-step-e-report.pdf

Lemos, M.C., E. Boyd, E. Tompkins, H. Osbahr, D. Liverman 2007. Developing adaptation and adapting development, Ecology and Society,12(2): 26
[online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol12/iss2/art26/

Liverman D.M. 2007. Assessing Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability: Reflections on the Working Group II Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Global Environmental Change 18 (2008) 4–7

Boyd E., Hultman N E., Roberts T., Corbera E., Ebeling J., Liverman D, Brown K, Tippmann R., Cole J., Mann P, Kaiser M., Robbins M, (2007) The Clean Development Mechanism: An assessment of current practice and future approaches for policy: Tyndall Centre Working Paper 114 http://www.tyndall.ac.uk/publications/working_papers/twp114.pdf

Liverman D.M. 2007. From Uncertain to Unequivocal The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report on the Physical Science Basis of Climate Change. Environment Vol 49 No 8 pp 36-39

Vilas S. and Liverman D.M. 2006. Scale, Technique and Composition Effects in the Mexican Agricultural Sector: The Influence of NAFTA and the Institutional Environment. International Environmental Agreements 7(2):1567-9764.
  
Liverman D.M. and Vilas S. 2006.  Neoliberalism and the environment in Latin America Annual Review of Environment and Resources 31(1): 327-363.

Hibbard K.A., Crutzen P.J., Lambin E.F., Liverman D.M., Mantua N.J., McNeill J.R., Messerli B. and Steffen W. 2006. Decadal-scale Interactions of Humans and the Environment. Sustainability or Collapse: An Integrated History and future Of People on Earth. Dahlem Workshop 96. R. Costanza, L.J. Graumlich and W. Steffen. Eds. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press: 341-378.

Liverman D.M. 2006. People and Places at Risk. Burning Ice: Art and Climate Change. D. Buckland, A. MAcGilp and P. S. Eds. London, Cape Farewell: 148-149.

Liverman D.M. 2006. Survival into the Future in the Face of Climate Change. Survival: The Survival of the Human Race (2006 Darwin Lectures). E. Shuckburgh. Ed. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 187-205.

Root T., Liverman D. and Newman C. 2006. Managing Biodiversity in the Light of Climate Change: Current Biological Effects and Future Impacts. Key Topics in Conservation Biology. D. Macdonald and K. Service. Eds. Oxford, Blackwells: Chapter 6.

Marston, S.A., Knox, P. and Liverman D.M. 2005. World Regions in Global Context: Peoples, Places, and Environments. Saddlebrook, NJ: Prentice Hall. 2nd edition. 672pp.

Liverman D.M. 2005. Equity, Justice and Climate Change. pp 20-25 in Climate Change: the greatest threat we face? Report of the Liberal Summer School, Centre for Reform, London.

Liverman, D.M. 2004. Who governs, at what scale and at what price? Geography, environmental governance and the commodification of nature. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 94(4): 734-738.

Bales, R. C., Liverman, D.M., and Morehouse, B. 2004. Integrated assessment as a step toward reducing climate vulnerability in the southwestern United States. Bureau of the American Meteorological Society 85(5): 1175-77

Yetman, D., Burquez A. and Liverman, D.M. The drought of the 1950s in northern Mexico in Betancourt J. ed. The Drought of the 1950s in the Southwest. University of New Mexico Press: Albuquerque, NM. (Forthcoming)

Vasquez M. and Liverman D.M. 2004. The political ecology of land-use change: Affluent ranchers and destitute farmers in the Mexican Municipio of Alamos.Human Organization 63(1): 21-33

Liverman, D., R. G. Varady, O. Chávez, R. Sánchez, A. Browning-Aiken, and L. Stauber Environmental change in the U.S.-Mexico border region: issues and actions. In Fronteras y Comunidad Latina en America del Norte, ed. by A. Mercado Celis and E. Gutiérrez Romero. Mexico City: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Centro de Investigaciones Sobre América del Norte (Forthcoming)

Liverman, D.M., B. Yarnal, and B.L. Turner II. 2004. The Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change. Chapter in G. Gaile and C. Wilmott. Geography in America at the dawn of the 21 st Century. Oxford University Press: New York

Committee to Review the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan, National Research Council. 2004. Implementing Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Final U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic PlanWashington DC: National Academy Press  152pp.

Committee to Review the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan, National Research Council. 2003. Planning Climate and Global Change Research: A Review of the Draft U.S. Climate Change Science Program Strategic Plan. Washington DC: National Academy Press. 99 pp.

Cavazos T., Comrie A.C., Liverman D.M. 2002. Intraseasonal variability associated with wet monsoons in southeast Arizona.Journal of Climate 15 (17): 2477-2490

Liverman D.M. and Merideth R.W. Jr. 2002. Climate and society in the US Southwest: the context for a regional assessment. Climate Research. Vol. 21: 199–218.

Liverman, D.M. 2001. Vulnerability to drought and climate change in Mexico. Pp 201-216 in Kasperson J.X. and Kasperson R. eds. 2001. Global Environmental Risk. NY: UNU and Earthscan.

Liverman D.M. 2001. Environmental Risks and Hazards. pp. 4655-4659 in N. J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes. Eds. 2001 International Encyclopedia of the Social Behavioral Sciences. Pergamon, Oxford.

Liverman, D.M. 2001. The Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAIGC) in Canadell J. and Mooney H.A. Eds. Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change The Earth System: Biological and Ecological Dimensions of Global Environmental Change Volume 2. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Liverman D.M. and K.L. O’Brien. 2001. Southern Skies: international environmental policy in Mexico.Chapter in The Social Learning Group. Eds. Learning to Manage Global Environmental Risks: A Comparative History of Social Responses to Climate Change, Ozone Depletion and Acid Rain. Volume 1. The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.

Liverman, D.M. 2000. Adaptation to drought in Mexico. Volume 2 Chapter 31. pp.35-45 in Wilhite, D. Drought: A Global Assessment. Routledge: New York

Conde, C., Ferrer R.M. and Liverman D. 2000. Estudio de la vulnerabilidad de maíz de temporal mediante el modelo CERES. Pp 119-142 in Gay García C. ed. 2000. MéxiCo: Una Visión hacia el Siglo XXI. El Cambio Climático en México. PUMA, UNAM. Mexico.

Liverman, D.M., R. Varady, O. Chávez, and R. Sánchez, 1999. Environmental issues along the U.S.-Mexico border – drivers of changes and the response of citizens and institutions.Annual Review of Energy and Environment. , Vol. 24: 607-643

Liverman D.M. 1999. Vulnerability and Adaptation to Drought in Mexico. Natural Resources Journal 39(1): 99-115

Liverman D.M. 1999.Geography and the Global Environment. Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 89(1): 107-124

Liverman, D.M. and G. Kourous. 1999. Climate Change and the Borderlands. Borderlines 56 7(5) May 1999

Lecturing and teaching

I am involved in postgraduate teaching for the MSc in Environmental Change and Management and also offer a lecture module for MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Policy and core lectures on Environment and Development open to all MSc students in the Centre for the Environment. I often offer a postgraduate option seminar in Latin American environmental policy or Environmental Policy in the Americas. At the undergraduate level I teach for the Final Honours School in Geography within the GEII Human Geography track and a special subject option on Environmental Policy.

In 2007-08 my lectures will include a series on Environment and Development (for MSc students in MT2007)), a series on environmental policy with Paul Jepson for NSEP (in MT2007), and the GEII undergraduate geography course (in HT2008).

For Oxford  course materials including lecture schedules and notes please click here

Postgraduate Supervision

Because of my move to the United States and a large number of students are in the process of writing up I will probably not accept new DPhil students at Oxford to begin in 2010 although I may offer to cosupervise if you have a primary advisor.  I will accept one or two students to study for an MA or PhD in Geography and Development at the University of Arizona (where the US system has more people involved in supervision)  
If you wish to inquire about possibilities please review the appropriate programs and email me.

Current Graduate Students (DPhil, Primary Supervisor*)

• Juan Carlos Arrendondo. Adaptation of firms in Mexico.*

• Adam Bumpus. Political Ecology of Carbon Offsets* 

• Ame Ramos Castillo. Water governance in San Cristobal, Mexico*
• Ben Champion. Local food networks in Kansas COMPLETED*
  
• John Cole. CDM in Brazil and China*
• Christian Ellerman. Climate finance and China (with Jimin Zhao)*
  
• John Gates. Groundwater recharge and paleohydrology of the Badain Jaran, NW China. (COMPLETED with Mike Edmunds)
  
• Natasha Kuruppu. Adaptation and water resources in Kiribati (wth Mark New)
  
• Deborah Ley. Mainstreaming climate into development in Latin America *
• Philip Mann. CDM and woodstoves in India. (with Brenda Boardman)
  
• Anthony Milner. Modeling risk and environmental management (with Richard Washington)
  
• Alex Noriega Guerra. Hazard vulnerability in Guatemala*
• Arnoldo Matus Kramer. Adaptation in Mexico (Quintana Roo)*
• Bernado Peredo. Biodiversity, poverty and livelihoods in Bolivia*
• Carolina Schmidt. International climate policy and Brazilian environmental law
• Allen Shaw (Supervisor Brenda Boardman) Does a coherent energy plan exist for India?
  
• Joel Scriven. Forests and carbon trading in Peru. * (with Yadvinder Malhi)
• Dave Stainforth. Uncertainty and confidence in predictions of climate change (with Mark New)
  
• Erika Trigoso. Hazard vulnerability and GIS in Peru *
• Katherine Wilkinson Evangelical environmentalism in the USA*
  

Former students

• Laura Pulido. M.A. 1987. Geography. University of Wisconsin. "Farmworkers perceptions of pesticide hazards in Kern county, California." (Associate Professor of Geography, University of Southern California)
• Altha Cravey. M.A. 1988. Geography. University of Wisconsin. "Social indicators in Mexico." (Associate Professor of Geography, University of North Carolina)
• Maxx Dilley. PhD. 1993. Geography. The Pennsylvania State University. "Climate and agriculture in Oaxaca, Mexico." (UNDP Crisis Recovery)
• Anke Wessels-Beyer. PhD 1995. Geography. The Pennsylvania State University "Social and Environmental Reconstruction in Eastern Germany." (Program Director, Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy, Cornell University)
• Karen O'Brien. Ph.D. 1996. Geography. The Pennsylvania State University. " Deforestation and Climate Change in the Selva Lacandona, Chiapas, Mexico." (University of Oslo)
• Graeme Burt. MA 1996. Geography. The Pennsylvania State University. “Land use change in Alamos, Sonora." (Consultant, Vancouver, Canada)
• David Rain. Ph.D. 1997. Geography. The Pennsylvania State University. "Eaters of the Dry Season." (Geography, George Washington University)
• Ane Schjolden. MA 1999. Geography and Regional Development. University of Arizona (Beth Mitchnek, co-supervisor). "Globalization, Liberalization and Restructuring of the Brazilian telecommunications industry: the end of technological capability." (Norway, Forum for Environment and Development)
• Kimi Eisele. MA 1999. University of Arizona. Geography and Regional Development. "Landscapes of Solidarity: The children of Colonia Solidaridad, Nogales, Sonora."(writer, Tucson).
• Laura Paulson. MA 1999. Latin American Studies. University of Arizona. "Globalization and survival of the smallholder: the role of agricultural restructuring in land use change in Michoacan, Mexico." (Nature Conservancy)
• Annika Hipple. MA 2000. Latin American Studies, University of Arizona. “Environment and the media in Mexico” (writer, Seattle)
• Margaret Wilder. PhD 2002. University of Arizona, Department of Geography and Regional Development. “In name only: water policy, the state and ejidatario producers in Northern Mexico” (Assistant Professor, Latin American Studies, University of Arizona)
• Hallie Eakin. PhD 2002. Geography, University of Arizona. “Rural Households’ Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climatic Variability and Institutional Change: Three Cases from Central Mexico”. (Assistant Professor of Geography, University of California, Santa Barbara)
• Mrill Ingram, PhD 2004. University of Arizona, Department of Geography and Regional Development. “Experts in the field: the contributions of farmers and other lay experts to knowledge about soil in US agriculture” (Program Coordinator, College of Agriculture, University of Wisconsin, Madison)
• Karen Suasanna, MSc 2004. Oxford. Social movements and recycling in Sao Paulo, Brasil. (Greenpeace climate policy coordinator, Brazil)
• Ghinwa Chammas, MSc 2004. Oxford, Student perceptions of Climate change. Carolina Fuentes, MSc 2004. Oxford. CDM in Mexico. (Mexico, Energy Ministry)
• Katherine Meehan, MSc 2005. Oxford.Streamlining the state? Power, decentralisation, and water at work in Guatemala. (PhD student Arizona)
• Anthony Knox, MSc 2005, Oxford. Economics of Marine Protected Areas in Mexico. (MSc African Studies, Oxford)
• Heidi Hausermann, MSc 2005. Arizona. The Coffee Crisis and Land Use change in Veracruz.(PhD student Arizona)
• Dereka Rushbrook, PhD 2005. Arizona. Carving a Niche: Artisans in a Global Economy. Commodity Chain Analysis of Rustic Pine Furniture in Mexico (Lecturer , University of Arizona)
• Lydia Breunig. PhD 2006. Arizona. Conservation in Context: Establishing Natural Protected Areas During Mexico's Neoliberal Reformation (Adjunct Instructor, University of Arizona)
• Blanca Raymundo Garcia. Msc 2006. Oxford. The potential for Clean Development Mechanism projects in the Mexican industrial sector: a case study of the cement industry. (Consultant, Mexico)
• Sapna Thottathil. MSc 2006. Oxford. Fairtrade's Carbon Emissions: What's Its Share, and Do People Care? (Researcher, ECI)
• Johannes Ebeling. Msc 2006. Oxford.Tropical deforestation and climate change – Ways towards an international mitigation strategy. (Researcher, Ecosecurities)

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