About the Project
Supervisors: Dr Manoj Roy (Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University) and Dr Maria Angela Ferrario (School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University), with additional supervisor(s) from Tanzania and/or Ghana
Urban climate change risks are often amplified for those who live in informal settlements – places that are undesirable to others thus affordable (these include informal settlements on precarious lands, at high risk from land-slides, sea-level rise, and flooding) and where there is inadequate provision for adaptation. Whilst poverty estimates are notoriously unreliable, predictions consistently show an upward trend of poverty in towns and cities across the Global South, with a jump from 17 to 28% in the past 10 years. In Sub-Saharan Africa the urban share of poverty is already 25%. Predicted to outpace all other regions in the rate of urbanisation, high rates of urban poverty in Africa are already regarded as a major challenge for global poverty reduction goals.
Increased climate variability, especially altered temperature and rainfall patterns, is also predicted to be one of the major factors to aggravate the everyday shocks and stressors facing Africa’s growing poor urban populations. The impacts are both direct and indirect: homes are flooded/ damaged/ destroyed; loss of basic services; livelihoods are disrupted; incomes fall; and health burdens increase, placing additional demand on already overstressed housing facilities and services. For decades, government policy has neglected these people, continues to do so; as a result, households and communities are doing what they possibly can - adjusting their homes and changing their livelihoods and lifestyles on their own.
While scholarship on urban flooding is growing, research to date concerned itself little about the hidden/shadow spaces of suffering, and the full social cost that it entails for poor urban people. Existing studies tend to focus on the actual (spatial) extent of urban floods, and usually concern only those people that keep residing within that space. Population who are displaced involuntarily, short/longer terms, are at best studied partially from those who still live in the affected area. Studies that try to track the displaced are rare. We rarely know how far the affected people move to cope or to acquiescence, how long they stay displaced, who they get support from, what the cumulative direct and indirect (i.e. full) social cost of such displacement is, and the opportunities that the practices developed by affected population may reveal (e.g. what makes people going back to high-risk urban floods – e.g. economic opportunities / family ties; what mechanisms could support a regeneration of extra urban/rural areas currently only seen as ‘shadow’ places of displacement).
Against this backdrop, this PhD project aims to develop an interdisciplinary methodology to map the hidden/shadow space of flood sufferings, to estimate the social cost of urban flooding in informal settlements of Tanzania and/or Ghana, and to harness opportunities from existing practices developed by the affected population. The specific objectives are: (a) understanding the changing nature of urban flooding; (b) capturing the full extent of people’s displacement because of flooding; and (c) contributing to better flood forecast, preparation and adaptive action.
The methodology will incorporate GPS-enabled mobile tracking of flood-related displacement (flood victims self-reporting using open source data bookmarking tools such as SnAPP developed at the School of Computing and Communications, Lancaster University) with respondents’ self-completed research diary on flood impacts on their lives (to measure social costs). It will develop a matrix to associate flood sufferings and source of support for these people to minimise their sufferings with the nature of the flood events. Empirical work will be undertaken in selected slums in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and/or Accra (Ghana).
Further information: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/sci-tech/downloads/phd_325.pdf
Academic Requirements: First-class or 2.1 (Hons) degree, or Masters degree (or equivalent) in an appropriate subject.
Deadline for applications: Midnight 28 February 2017
Provisional Interview Date: TBC – Late March 2017
Start Date: October 2017
For further information or informal discussion about the position, please contact Dr Manoj Roy ([Email Address Removed])
Application process: Please upload a completed application form (download from
http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/media/lancaster-university/contentassets/documents/lec/pg/LEC_Funded_PhD_Application_Form.docx)
outlining your background and suitability for this project and a CV at LEC Postgraduate Research Applications,
http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/lec/graduate-school/phd/apply-online/.
You also require two references, please send the reference form (download from
http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/media/lancaster-university/contentassets/documents/lec/pg/LEC_Funded_PhD_Reference_Form.docx)
to your two referees and ask them to email it to Andy Harrod ([Email Address Removed]), Postgraduate Research (PGR) Coordinator,
Lancaster Environment Centre by the deadline.
Due to the limited time between the closing date and the interview date, it is essential that you ensure references are submitted by the closing date or as soon as possible.
Funding Notes
Full studentships (UK/EU tuition fees and stipend (£14,296 2016/17 [tax free])) for UK/EU students for 3.5 years or full studentships (International tuition fees and stipend (£14,296 2016/17 [tax free])) for International students for 3 years.
References
Adelekan I, Johnson C, Manda M, Matyas D, Mberu B U, Parnell S, Pelling M, Satterthwaite D and Vivekananda J. (2015) Disaster risk and its reduction: An agenda for urban Africa International Development Planning Review 37(1): 33-43
Baker J L (ed.). 2012. Climate Change, Disaster Risk and the Urban Poor: Cities building Resilience for a changing World. Washington DC: World Bank.
Douglas I. (2012). “Urban ecology and urban ecosystems: understanding the links to human health and well-being”. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 4:385–392.
Roy M, Cawood S, Hordijk M and Hulme D (eds.). 2016. Climate Change and Urban Poverty: Life in the Slums of Asia, Africa and Latin America. London and New York: Routledge.
Roy M, Hulme D and Jahan F. (2013). “Contrasting adaptation responses by squatters and low income tenants in Khulna, Bangladesh”. Environment and Urbanization 25(1):157-176.
The Economist. (2007). The strange allure of the slums. 3rd May. Retrieved October 20, 2015 from - http://www.economist.com/node/9070714
UN-Habitat (United Nations Human Settlements Programme). (2014). The state of African cities 2012: Re-imagining sustainable urban transitions. Nairobi: UN-Habitat.