Benessaiah, Karina

Benessaiah, Karina
Organization(s): 
Arizona State University

I am a human-environment geographer focusing on vulnerabilities and adaptations to change of coupled social-ecological systems, especially in developing coastal areas. While many studies focus on climate change only, I am interested in understanding how multiple drivers of change (i.e. climate change, globalization, land use changes, political and demographic changes), in combination and operating at different scales, affect people and ecosystems. Specifically, my research focuses on understanding the processes creating vulnerability in a social-ecological system and those fostering adaptation and resilience, in order to understand better the trade-offs between these two opposing states. Sub-fields pertaining to my research interest include cultural/political ecology, human dimensions of global change (HDGC) and transdiciplinary associated fields such as resilience and sustainability science. All these fields study how humans affect, and in turn, are affected by their environments, at various scales, from the local to the global. All recognize that social-ecological systems are complex, interdependent, dynamic and may exhibit emergent properties. The different fields are often based, however, on different epistemologies (e.g. positivist vs. structuralist or constructivist approaches), which may result in different foci of interest and slightly different findings. A fruitful synthesis of these different subfields bears the potential for a more in-depth understanding of concepts of change, vulnerability and adaptation/resilience.

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