Research Cluster on Environment, Society and Sustainable Development

Convenor: Emma Porio, PhD ()

Website: (

Description

The research cluster on environment, society and sustainable development will produce knowledge that addresses the central issue of how the patterns of access, control, and management of resources (both social and environmental) have challenged the sustainability of the ways contemporarylife has been organized and continues to be re-organized. In part, it will examine and/or interrogate the structures-cultures that shape (as well as transform them positively) the forces underlying these sustainability challenges (e.g., increasing poverty and inequality, resource divides, etc.).

Based on the interests of the members, these are some of the research foci:

  • Social justice and the inclusive city (e.g., insurgent urbanism/citizenship, transformative planning, democratic-decentralized governance structures)
  • Resource assessments/management (e.g. climate change vulnerability, adaptation and resilience;valuation of resources, mining)
  • Resource access and divides across genders, ethnicities and social classes (poverty, social inequality, food security)
  • Histories of urban/rural disasters and resource distribution (e.g., histories of fire/floods and community vulnerability, adaptation, resilience and sustainability)
  • Poverty, nutrition and inequality among marginal groups (e.g., nutritional levels and education performance of children)
  • Interrogating conventional frames of resource management and sustainability (e.g., including structures and cultures associated with these knowledge systems/perspectives)

Cluster Support Principles/Strategies

  • The principle of relatively autonomous scholarship but deeply embedded in a collective, collegial support of the SOSS research underpins the organization of the cluster.
  • Collegial scholarship in the cluster is informed by the capacity of scholars to shape the “resource processes and structures”, in turn, being shaped by these forces.
  • Within these structures and processes, the Ateneo-SOSS scholarship is advanced here and abroad.

Strategies of Coordination/Research Convening:

  1. Mentoring/Coaching—locating one’s discourses/perspectives (and interrogating/dialoguing with these) in the literature; targeting one’s production/presentation/publication trajectories (conference presentation, targeting particular journals for submission of written works).
  2. Relatively autonomous scholarship: 1) Committing oneself to a process/product for the academic year cycle/professional stage/cycle; 2) maximize the sharing of academic/professional networks and resources (e.g., conference/publication opportunities, research grants, consultancies with publication potentials, etc.).
  3. Target ISI/Scopus-listed journals with high impact factor.
  4. Ideally, an article can result from a 6 units research de-load.
  5. Basic-applicable orientation in knowledge production (Conceptually driven but anchored on empirical practices/application)
  6. Goal: Increased knowledge production-application in the School of Social Sciences, Ateneo de Manila.

Sample Publications:

Porio, Emma. (2014). Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation in Metro Manila: Challenging Governance and Human Security Needs of Urban Poor Communities. Asian Journal of Social Science, 42, 75-102.

Porio, Emma. (2013). Life Among Manila's Flooding Rivers. In Ananta, A. Bauer and M. Thant (Eds.), Environments of the Poor (pp. 256-270). Singapore: ISEAS.

Palanca-Tan, Rosalina. (2013). Designing a raw water fee scheme as a groundwater conservation strategy for Cagayan de Oro, Philippines. In K. Yamamoto, H. Furumai, H. Katayama, C. Chiemchaisri, U. Puetpaiboon, C. Visvanathan and H. Satoh (Eds.), Southeast Asian Water Environment (pp. 83-88).

Ponce de Leon, I., Gotangco, K.C. (2013). Reconciling Post-Positivist and Post-Modern Worldviews in Climate Research and Services. WMO Bulletin, 62, 45-48.

Porio, Emma.( 2013). Life Among Manila's Flooding Rivers, Environments of the Poor,

2013, 256-270.

Palanca-Tan, Rosalina.(2013). Efficiency and Environmental Effects of Privatizing

Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) in Metro Manila. IAMURE International Journal of Ecology and Conservation, 5, 57-71.

Palanca-Tan, Rosalina. (2013). Age preferences for life-saving programs: Using Choice Modeling to Measure the Relative Values of Statistical Life. Singapore Economic Review. Volume 58, Issue 2, Article number1350008.

Palanca-Tan, Rosalina, Pajanel, M.R. and Viernes, F.A. (2013). Estimating the Benefits of Illness Prevention Using Contingent Valuation: The Case of Swine Flu in Metro Manila. The Empirical Economics Letters, 12(5), 541-550.

Beja Jr., Edsel.E. (2012). The Subjective Well-being Approach to Environmental Valuation: Evidence for Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Social Indicators Research, 109(2), 243-266.