Papers by Rimjhim Aggarwal
IMF working paper, Mar 1, 2024
This paper evaluates the additional spending needed to meet core targets of selected Sustainable ... more This paper evaluates the additional spending needed to meet core targets of selected Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) while accounting for the associated cost to address climate risks. The SDGs under study are those related to human and physical capital development. An additional 3.8 percent of global GDP, or US$3.4 trillion, of public and private spending will be required by 2030 to achieve a strong performance in the selected SDGs while addressing associated climate risks. This includes an increase of 0.4 percent of global GDP (US$358 billion) compared to estimates that do not account for mitigation and adaptation needs within these sectors. LIDCs and SSA experience the highest climate-related cost augmentation relative to GDP, while EMEs (driven by large Asian emerging economies) bear the largest cost in absolute terms.
npj Urban Sustainability
There is a growing recognition that responding to climate change necessitates urban adaptation. W... more There is a growing recognition that responding to climate change necessitates urban adaptation. We sketch a transdisciplinary research effort, arguing that actionable research on urban adaptation needs to recognize the nature of cities as social networks embedded in physical space. Given the pace, scale and socioeconomic outcomes of urbanization in the Global South, the specificities and history of its cities must be central to the study of how well-known agglomeration effects can facilitate adaptation. The proposed effort calls for the co-creation of knowledge involving scientists and stakeholders, especially those historically excluded from the design and implementation of urban development policies.
Ecology and Society, 2023
This paper is motivated by the question: how does governance emerge within social-ecological syst... more This paper is motivated by the question: how does governance emerge within social-ecological systems (SESs)? Addressing this question is critical for fostering sustainable transformations because it directs attention to the context specific and process intensive nature of governance as arising from the internal dynamics (i.e., interplay of feedbacks and interdependencies between the components) of SESs. This contrasts with the commonly held view of governance as an external intervention applied to a system. To systematically examine the recurrent patterns in how the internal dynamics promote/detract from the emergence of different types of governance, we applied archetype analysis to 60 selected cases of irrigation systems from Asia. Drawing inspiration from grid-group typology of cultural theory, we developed four specific archetypes: egalitarian, individualist, hierarchical, and fatalist. To build these archetypes, we applied a robustness framework and several other theories/perspectives to identify the different social-ecological and infrastructural attributes of irrigation SESs, and their interdependencies and feedback structures. We then used these attributes, identified through our theoretical review, to deductively code our selected cases and classify them into the different archetypes. The results show the different configurations of attributes that co-occur in each archetype, and how together these attributes and their interrelationships lead to specific types of governance. Our archetype analysis also provides several interesting examples of fine-tuning between different SES attributes and how this fine-tuning is being threatened by various social and environmental changes. Through a systematic exploration of recurrent patterns using archetype analysis, our work builds on past efforts to apply ideas from complexity theory-specifically emergence-to unpack the complexities of SESs and offer practical guidance for fostering sustainability.
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2018
The Phoenix Area Social Survey (PASS) parallels the Ecological Survey of Central Arizona (formerl... more The Phoenix Area Social Survey (PASS) parallels the Ecological Survey of Central Arizona (formerly, Survey 200) as a long-term monitoring program of the CAP LTER. Every five years, the PASS research team surveys households in selected neighborhoods in the metropolitan Phoenix area to better understand perceptions, values, and behaviors on several key environmental issues, including water conservation, urban growth, air pollution, land conservation, biodiversity and urban climate change, as well as perceptions about their neighborhoods. The survey was piloted in 2001-2002 in eight neighborhoods in Phoenix with 302 respondents and grew to 40 neighborhoods and 800 households in 2005. The PASS research team added five new neighborhoods to the survey design in 2011 to incorporate areas co-located with other CAP research endeavors and to expand the sample of low-income neighborhoods and included additional questions relevant to the housing crisis and recession and access to healthy food in the city.
International Forestry Review, 2019
Increased out-migration from rural areas indicates a significant socio-demographic shift that is ... more Increased out-migration from rural areas indicates a significant socio-demographic shift that is increasingly being studied for its impact on community-based forestry institutions. Previous studies in Nepal, Mexico and India have highlighted changes in community-based forestry institutions through increased participation of women following out-migration of men. Therefore, this paper analyses the participation of women in Van Panchayats in a representative sample of six Van Panchayats from Almora district, which is facing one of the highest rates of out-migration in Kumaon region of India. The analysis suggests there is low participation of women in the leadership positions of Van Panchayats despite landmark legislations to increase women's participation. Further, there was no statistically significant difference between participation of women from migrant versus non-migrant households in general assembly meetings of Van Panchayats, suggesting lack of supporting evidence on previous claims about out-migration leading to increased participation of women. Moreover, the position of women in the household (whether household head or not) was significant in explaining their participation in Van Panchayats, and other community-based institutions. The reported findings are relevant to the design of gender inclusive public policy on Van Panchayats as well as to the literature on impact of out-migration on community-based forestry.
The Environment in Anthropology (Second Edition)
It is often argued that an important reason why globalization may lead to GDP growth but fail to ... more It is often argued that an important reason why globalization may lead to GDP growth but fail to reduce poverty is because the poor are unable to participate in the new market opportunities and are marginalized. In this paper we examine the experience of resource-poor farmers in south India, who participated aggressively in the new market opportunities that opened up with trade reforms. However, these expanded market opportunities failed to improve their welfare. The paper examines why and how this happened. As cotton prices increased sharply following the reforms, a number of poor farmers shifted to cotton cultivation. However, cotton cultivation requires much greater technical expertise, working capital, and marketing network than the traditional crops. Interestingly, as state support declined, the network of private traders rapidly expanded to meet not only the marketing needs of the new crops but also to provide working capital and technical expertise. We show how this expanded,...
Slum development and growth is quite popular in developing countries. Many studies have been done... more Slum development and growth is quite popular in developing countries. Many studies have been done on what social and economic factors are the drivers in establishment of informal settlements at a single cross-section of time, however limited work has been done in studying their spatial growth patterns over time. This study attempts to study a sample of 30 informal settlements that exist in the National Capital Territory of India over a period of 40 years and identify relationships between the spatial growth rates and relevant factors identified in previous socio-economic studies of slums using advanced statistical methods. One of the key contributions of this paper is indicating the usefulness of satellite imagery or remote sensing data in spatial-longitudinal studies. This research utilizes readily available LANDSAT images to recognize the decadal spatial growth from 1970 to 2000, and also in extension, calculate the BI (transformed NDVI) as a proxy for the intensity of development for the settlements. A series of regression models were run after processing the data, and the levels of significance were then studied and compared to see which relationships indicated the highest levels of significance. It was observed that the change in BI had a higher strength of relationships with the change in independent variables than the settlement area growth. Also, logarithmic and cubic models showed the highest R-Square values than any other tested models. ii
Starting from Hardin’s simplistic prediction of the tragedy of the commons to Ostrom’s careful st... more Starting from Hardin’s simplistic prediction of the tragedy of the commons to Ostrom’s careful study of the complex landscape of the commons and the derivation of a set of design principles, scholarship on the commons has undergone a fundamental transformation. In practice, however, there is a continuing tendency to view the design principles as ” blueprints for success” that are applied to every situation. One powerful illustration of this (mis)translation into practice is the drive towards decentralization of resource management, which was launched with a lot of enthusiasm in several developing countries but failed in many cases. This experience raises the following fundamental question: how can we harness the complexity of social-ecological systems (SES) to yield a set of decision tools that recognize the diversity of SESs and can enable resource managers to search for the ”right fit” for any given context. In this paper we report on ongoing efforts to develop a typology of SESs,...
Journal of Geography and Regional Planning, Sep 30, 2013
Small towns and cities in Sub-Saharan Africa are emerging as hotspots of population growth. This ... more Small towns and cities in Sub-Saharan Africa are emerging as hotspots of population growth. This paper considers the case of the small but rapidly growing town of Bondo in the Lake Victoria region of Kenya, and its surrounding peri-urban and rural settlements. The study objectives are to examine: a) alternative indicators of households' accessibility to improved water sources along the urban-rural gradient; b) households' water collection and storage practices; and c) women's involvement in community-level efforts to improve water-service provision. Data were collected through interviews of 307 women from urban, peri-urban and rural settlements in 2011. By studying different kinds of settlements in the same geographical region, the paper shows how each kind has its own unique characteristics and development needs. Results show that peri-urban settlements are not just an intermediate space between the rural and the urban; instead, these settlements pose very different kinds of challenges than those of their rural and urban counterparts. Despite efforts by donor and government agencies to promote participation among women, study results indicate that women participate only marginally, with lowest participation observed among women from peri-urban areas. Innovative ways that agencies can engage more women to improve water service are discussed.
Society & Natural Resources
Slaughter industries are consolidating, as the number of firms fal Is and plant sizes grow. Relat... more Slaughter industries are consolidating, as the number of firms fal Is and plant sizes grow. Related changes are occurring in upstream livestock production sectors: large cattle feedlots and hog farms account for sharply growing shares of livestock sales. As in poultry, new contractual relationships have begun to replace spot market cash transactions for cattle and for hogs. Those sharp structural changes have raised concerns about market power, pollution control, and the reliability of traditional price reporting sources. This is a research conference, aimed at encouraging evaluation and discussion of research methods, data sources, and results. Topics covered at the conference include the following: * The existence, extent, and effects of market power in livestock and meat indutries; Causal factors in consolidation, such as scale and scope economies, mergers, changes in product mix, innovation, and changes in contractual relations; * Vertical coordination, as compared to spot markets for transferring livestock, including summaries of recent developments and implications for location, for product characteristics, and for price discovery; • Externalities associated with consolidation, including the effects of larger animal production facilities on pollution and the effects of local control regulations on consolidation.
Sustainability, 2021
The world’s global plastics waste crisis demands policy coordination and technological solutions ... more The world’s global plastics waste crisis demands policy coordination and technological solutions to improve waste management systems, and organizations worldwide have created momentum around the concept of a circular economy. This paper advances a holistic, inclusive circular economy framework that aims to empower waste pickers with the following basic pillars: (1) build collaborative networks of stakeholders to enable inclusion of waste pickers; (2) establish cooperative enterprise models to integrate waste pickers into the formal economy; (3) build waste pickers’ technical skills and capacity for entrepreneurship; and (4) provide access to technologies and markets that enable waste pickers to manufacture upcycled products.
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Papers by Rimjhim Aggarwal