Interdisciplinary Climate and Equity Seed Grant Awardees

The UC Berkeley campus is committed to research that has high social impact, with climate change being one of the most complex and pervasive challenges, both globally, regionally and locally. The social, environmental, and technological challenges of climate change require that UC Berkeley, a top public research institution in the world, leverage its collective excellence by creating cross-disciplinary teams to develop the most effective, viable, and equitable solutions. 

Toward this goal, the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (VCRO) has funded an initiative that will support the formation of interdisciplinary teams to prepare for external funding opportunities to advance innovative and integrative interdisciplinary understandings and approaches to the study of Climate and Environmental Equity. The awardees are listed below.

Equitable Agrivoltaics: Accelerating Climate Transitions at the Energy-Agriculture Nexus

While California farmers lead the US in adoption of renewable energy systems to power their operations, primarily in the form of rooftop solar, the wider adoption of agrivoltaics, the dual use of land for solar energy production and agriculture, holds promise for California’s farmers and  renewable energy portfolio. However, the economies of scale involved with agrivoltaic installation could potentially favor large-scale farms over small and mid-sized farms, who are more likely to be producers of color. Additionally, workforce development for agrivoltaic construction and maintenance may not provide long lasting benefits for the diverse rural communities where they are located. This project, led by Professor Timothy Bowles in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, will integrate research on just and equitable agricultural transitions with research on just and equitable clean energy transitions. This project will bring together perspectives from biophysical science, energy systems, economics, and policy.

Collaborators:

  • Daniel Kammen, Energy and Resources Group; Goldman School of Public Policy; and Nuclear Engineering; 

  • Federico Castillo, Environmental Science, Policy and Management & Berkeley Food Institute  

  • Marc Weiss, College of Environmental Design

Climate driven-extreme events, hazardous sites, and cumulatively burdened populations in United States-Mexico borderlands

Climate-driven extreme events such as severe storms, floods, extreme temperatures, and wildfires are increasing in frequency and intensity globally. For example, in 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast, a region dense with petrochemical facilities, releasing more than 1 million pounds of  harmful pollutants. Such natural disasters can trigger secondary technological disasters called Natechs which compound the devastation of extreme events. This interdisciplinary team led by Professor David Gonzalez in the School of Public Health will investigate the intersections of climate-driven extreme events on hazardous sites and adjacent population centers along the Mexico–U.S. borderlands, a region that is home for many of the world’s most vulnerable communities. The proposed study will determine historical and projected future trends for climate-driven extreme events, hazardous sites, and human exposures and identify regional stakeholders’ priority concerns. The project findings will help communities and policymakers take informed proactive action to mitigate the harms of future climate-driven disasters in areas already burdened by industrial pollution.

Collaborators:

  • Rachel Morello-Frosch, Environmental Science, Policy and Management
  • Lara Schwarz, School of Public Health 
  • Danielle Rivera, Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning 
  • Lu Liang, Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning

Georgia’s Sea Islands Exploratory Research: Black Ecologies, Climate Transformation and Property

This project centers the history and experiences of Sea Island Gullah communities whose ancestors, formerly enslaved Black people, obtained land and created thriving communities on the Georgia and South Carolina Sea Islands in the face of white supremacist violence and dispossession. Presently, the remaining Sea Island Gullah communities face threats from supercharged development pressure and climate change related hazards, including sea level rise and intensifying coastal storms. Led by Professor Justin Hosbey in the College of Environmental Design, this project brings together scholars from City and Regional Planning, Urban Design, Feminist Studies, and Anthropology to ask, not why have Gullah communities been destroyed, but rather what combination of socio-spatial practices have allowed them to persist through generations of unrelenting pressure? The team will partner with local communities to co-construct a participatory action research framework to help scholars and activists better understand, reinforce, Black place keeping in the Georgia Sea Islands. 

Collaborators:

  • Zachary Lamb, City and Regional Planning, College of Environmental Design
  • Courtney Morris, Gender and Women’s Studies 

Developing new methods and tools to integrate climate and environmental equity in flood risk management

A team led by Dr. Anna Serra-Llobet, researcher in the Center for Catastrophic Risk Management in the Institute for Governmental Studies, will explore and develop new methods for accurately integrating equity in flood risk management. Serra-Llobet and team will focus on the Lower Pájaro River Valley in California, a community that has been repeatedly impacted by flooding, to develop a pilot project that is scalable and representative of many communities. Their holistic approach will include engineering, policy and governance as well as identifying historical and institutional forces that have created inequalities and pathways to reversing those inequities, to software engineering where creation of digital twins will allow researchers to understand different risk scenarios and their equity implications.

Collaborators:

  • Adda Athanasopoulos-Zekkos, Civil & Environmental Engineering
  • Gabriela Paredes, Civil & Environmental Engineering
  • Danielle Rivera, Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning, College of Environmental Design
  • Matt Kondolf, Landscape Architecture & Environmental Planning, College of Environmental Design
  • Kenichi Soga,  Civil & Environmental Engineering
  • Chris Ansell, Political Science