jpostigo
Main profile
Postdoctoral Alumnus
Julio's research focuses on change and continuity in pastoral social ecological systems (PSES). His dissertation analyzed how plants, pastoralists and sub-national governments respond to social, political and climatic changes in the Peruvian Southern Andes. Using methods from the natural and social sciences he documented the upward shift in plants' upper limit as they colonize the ice-free soil on the forelands of the Quelccaya ice cap. Further, he demonstrated that Andean PSES' responses to socio-environmental change are based upon a dynamic and flexible polycentric social organization. Finally, he showed that there is a mismatch between the actions taken by sub-national governments and peasants to cope with climate change. From this research, he developed pathways for synergistic actions between populations and governments to respond to social and environmental change. At SESYNC, Julio will analyze how PSES in the Global South are impacted by and respond to Globalization and Global Environmental Change (GEC). To do this, he will combine data from remotely sensed imagery, socio-economic datasets, published studies and expert opinion statements. The goals of this project are: i) to enhance the understanding of the relationships and feedbacks between social and physical vulnerability by disentangling the effects of multiple disturbances on PSES; ii) to improve policy design (and budget efficiency) by identifying specific and more relevant disturbances of PSES and building specific hypothesis of press pulse dynamics (PPD); iii) to contribute to the science-policy interface and international efforts to tackle the effects of GEC by informing planning and investment decisions of governments, businesses, and households, as well as international donors.
| Resources | |
|---|---|
| Perception and Resilience of Andean Populations Facing Climate Change |
Oct 15, 2014 Article published in Society of Ethnobiology. |
| Social sciences at the crossroads: Global environmental change in Latin America and the Caribbean |
Nov 18, 2013 Abstract: Global environmental change in Latin America and the Caribbean ranges from urbanization to deforestation and melting glaciers. The understanding of relations between nature and society in this context requires coupled human–environmental frameworks across spatial and temporal scales. Transdisciplinarity and co-production of knowledge from the social to the natural sciences and to traditional knowledge will result in more effective solutions. |