Examining Equity: A Multidimensional Framework for Assessing Equity in Payments for Ecosystem Services
Melanie McDermott, Associate Director of the Rutgers Initiative on Climate and Society at Rutgers University, will be speaking September 24th as part of the Monday Seminar Series from 12:00-1:30 in room 101, West Duke Building. This talk is part of the Environmental Justice Initiative in collaboration with Nicholas School of the Environment.
Melanie McDermott is a research assistant professor in the Human Ecology department and the associate director of the Rutgers Initiative on Climate and Society. With degrees in interdisciplinary social science (B.A., Harvard; Ph.D., Berkeley) and forestry (M.Sc. Oxford), she has over 20 years’ experience in the U.S., Asia, Southern Africa, and the Caribbean in research, policy analysis, and consulting. Her work has pursued a number of related themes: the social impacts of climate change mitigation and adaptation; the political ecology of natural resource management, with an emphasis on community forestry; indigenous land rights; gender; non-timber forest products and agroforestry; sprawl, green spaces, and urban forestry; and environmental risk communication. A focus on social equity crosscuts this diverse field. At a more theoretical level, she investigates how the causes and consequences of peoples’ resource-use practices are shaped by environmental factors and social relations of power, difference and identity operating across multiple scales.