The Department of Geography at Ohio University is a research-intensive graduate program (MS and MA) that provides an extensive curriculum and research opportunities related to climate change adaptation around the world. Students from around the world and the US undertake field-based research examining adaptation challenges related to institutional, agrarian, and cultural change. Recent students have pursued a range of adaptation related projects in the recent past:
- institutional mapping of adaptation actors in the Gambia
- assessment of social vulnerability and flood risk in Brazil
- innovation in adaptive agriculture in Northern Ghana
- changing fuelwood economies in rural Tanzania
- gendered access to resources for adaptation in Tanzania
- community mapping and assessment of water resource management through an adaptation lens
We believe that our current and future research could make a contribution filling gaps and needs related to NAPS in a variety of countries, particularly in Ghana, the Gambia, Tanzania and Kenya. We would welcome the opportunity to draw on feedback from this initiative to refine the focus and planned outcomes of research in ways that can contribute to the NAPS process.
Many of our students return to their home countries to provide important scientific, civil society and policy leadership related to climate change adaptation challenges. Their engagement with NAPS research needs from the outset of their graduate programs would better prepare them for making substantive contributions in research and practice.