Kevin Gould

• Concordia University

Most studies and policy in disaster risk reduction have focused on either what people lack (their vulnerability or their capacities to deal with risk (their resilience). Few studies and decision-making processes have focused on the role of emotions in informal urban settings. However, the results of a four-year study including interviews, three int...

Purpose Disaster risk reduction is of prime importance in informal settlements in the Global South, where several forms of vulnerability coexist. Policy and official programmes, however, rarely respond to the needs and expectations of citizens and local leaders living in these settlements. Even though these agents constantly attempt to reduce risks...

In times of global warming, disaster risk reduction poses a great challenge for governments and organizations in the Global South. The challenge is even greater in informal settings: that is, in contexts where housing and economic activities emerge primarily from residents’ efforts. In slums, barrios, favelas, tugurios, comunas, and other low-incom...

By virtue of its impact, budget, and number of participants, ADAPTO is one of the most ambitious recent research and implementation initiatives in the area of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate response in informal urban settings in Latin America and the Caribbean. The project (also known as “Climate Change Adaptation in Informal Settings:...

For decades, social scientists have attempted to reveal the real causes behind disasters. While some scholars have recently focused almost exclusively on people’s vulnerabilities, the majority recognize that disasters result from a combination of people’s choices and hazards. Agencies and government officials, on the other hand, have often downplay...

Purpose Few people living in informal settlements in the Global South spontaneously claim that they are “resilient” or “adapting” to disaster risk or climate change. Surely, they often overcome multiple challenges, including natural hazards exacerbated by climate change. Yet their actions are increasingly examined through the framework of resilienc...

Debates about the ostensibly new militarized humanitarianism engage narrowly with historical and geographical precedents. Rarely taken into account is Kennedy-era counterinsurgency in Latin America which had much in common with the whole-of-government approach of the United States and its allies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. This article add...

Since the 1970s, human ecologists, geographers, Marxian political economists and others have insisted that there is no such thing as a 'natural' disaster. This assertion opened a space not only for exploring socioeconomic conditions that render marginalized populations vulnerable to natural hazards, but also for the formation of a field, the politi...

Through its capacity to evoke systemic adaptation before and after disasters, resilience has become a seductive theory in disaster management. Several studies have linked the concept with systems theory; however, they have been mostly based on theoretical models with limited empirical support. The study of the Cuban model of resilience sheds light...

Advocates claim that market-assisted land reform (MALR) promotes economic development and reduces poverty by improving the security of private property rights and the efficiency of land markets. However, scholars argue that MALR often benefits elites at the expense of the disadvantaged and forces intended beneficiaries to resist or make difficult c...

Geographers describe how social movements elaborate alternative histories in public spaces. However, few studies have examined how such alternative histories are conditioned by underlying historical narratives. We engage this topic by analyzing public art created in 2004-5 by the Guatemalan chapter of a transnational organization called Hij@s por l...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to add a new dimension to urban resilience by exploring how representations of disasters, reconstruction and human settlements are made, and how, by shaping plans and programs, they ultimately influence resilience. Design/methodology/approach The paper draws on James Scott's notion of “legibility” to ask how differ...

Based on my political opposition to neoliberal policies, I elected to conduct dissertation research on a World Bank-funded land policy in Guatemala. This paper explores emotional aspects of this work. Specifically, I describe my fear that research subjects would accuse me of being a spy. I then describe my efforts to cope with these fears and the w...

Neoliberal land policies such as land administration seek to improve property rights and the efficiency of land markets to boost rural economic production. Quantitative studies of pre-existing land markets can help planners to tailor these policies to local conditions. In this article we examine an extra-legal land market currently being modernized...

Land regularization, the provision of state-sanctioned property rights to landowners, is an important development strategy in the Global South. Although much work has examined the effects of regularization in settled rural areas, the effects of this policy on agricultural frontiers are poorly understood. Four benefits of regularization that are pre...

Baits and soil cores were used to quantify temporal variation in the use of cattle dung by two species of subterranean termites, Amitermes beaumonti Banks and Hoplotermes sp. nov. (hereafter referred to by genus), during the 1991 dry season in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. The densities of termite foragers of both species were evaluated in cattle dung pa...

Tree regeneration was compared in burned and unburned portions of a tropical dry forest (1110mmppt/year) and a tropical humid forest (1542mmppt/year) in southeastern Bolivia. Both forests burned 5 years prior to our study, and both forests were also lightly selectively logged (intensity

We examined the effect of disturbances of varying intensity on the dominant modes of regeneration among woody plants in tropical dry forest in lowland Bolivia. Seed survival and density, mortality, height, crown area, and basal diameters of seedlings and sprouts were compared among four treatments of varying disturbance intensity (high-intensity bu...

A comparison of plant communities within areas burned by wildfire five years previous to this study and adjacent unburned areas was conducted within a tropical subhumid and a tropical dry forest in eastern Bolivia. The objective of the study was to compare the impacts of wildfire on plant species composition, species richness and structural attribu...

The traditional harvest of non-timber forest products (NTFP) in Petén, Guatemala, provides a model for integrated conservation and development programs. Conservation International and El Cruce a Dos Aguadas (El Cruce). and agricultural community in the Maya Biosphere Reserve in Northern Petén, have created a new NTFP, called Gatherings™ which is a...

CONSERVATION INTERNATIONAL Since 1991, Conservation International (CI) has been working in the northern department of Petén, Guatemala to help conserve one of Central America's largest remaining tracts of tropical forest, the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) (See Map 1). Through its Proyecto Petenéro por un Bosque Sostenible (ProPetén) project, CI has...