Mapping Hotspots of Climate and Security Vulnerability [Podcast]
Publisher: New Security Beat
Author(s): Joshua Busby
Date: 2017
Topics: Climate Change, Land, Renewable Resources
Maps help us to grasp complex ideas, such as patterns of risk and vulnerability, but the stories they tell can have significant implications. “It’s very difficult to validate that what you’re capturing in the maps is representative of real-world phenomenon,” says Joshua Busby in this week’s “Backdraft” episode, describing his efforts to map climate and security hotspots in Africa and Asia. “You have to be modest in what you think the maps can tell policymakers, but also realize there is some seductive power in the way maps simplify complex reality.”
The maps produced by Busby’s Climate Change and African Political Stability and Complex Emergencies and Political Stability projects are designed to help planners, donors, and national governments “shore up resilience on the ground.”
“The real question that we have to ask and answer all the time is, ‘Do the maps have any basis in reality? Are they useful?’” says Busby, associate professor from the LBJ School at the University of Texas, Austin.
When Busby and his team traveled to East Africa, they found that some of the challenges associated with chronic water scarcity were missing from their work, so they incorporated new indicators and updated the maps to more accurately represent the current situation. Without this “ground-truthing,” the maps could be misinterpreted and used to support interventions and other policy actions that could produce negative results, such as conflict.