Mr Mark Tebboth
| Job Title | Contact | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Research Student | M dot Tebboth at uea dot ac dot uk |
Biography
Over the last 10 years I have worked in the field of sustainability and climate change in the public sector. After completing an undergraduate degree in 2001 in Geography with Environmental and Development Studies at the University of Sussex I worked for Cardiff Council focusing on sustainable development and low carbon urban design. In 2007 I spent a year working for a mental health and development charity in India before returning to the UK to work for the Energy Saving Trust as a programme manager. I was responsible for supporting the public sector to reduce carbon emissions corporately with a specific focus on social housing. In 2010 I studied for an MSc in Climate Change and International Development and am currently reading for a PhD. The focus of my research is the migration of people to mega-cities as a response and adaptation strategy to climate change impacts on water and agriculture in China.
Additional Contacts
Room No: ENV 02.19
Tel No: +44 (0)1603 593990
Tel No: +44 (0)1603 593990
Key Research Interests
- Adaptation to the impacts of climate change
- Migration
- The framing of contentious environmental issues
My PhD
Climate change impacts on agriculture (including crop productivity, variability of water supply and impacts on livestock production) result in economic, social and demographic change in rural areas. One specific outcome is a greater incentive to migrate that amplifies the exodus of people from rural areas to mega-cities in the developing world.
This research will examine migration to mega-cities as a response and adaptation strategy to climate change impacts on water and agriculture in China. Much of the previous analysis on migration and climate has focussed on potential displacement due to inundation or impacts of drought in marginal agricultural regions. New frameworks and empirical research (Bardsley and Hugo, 2010; Black et al., 2011) show how migration ‘push’ factors are affected by ecosystem services decline and by hazards as well as social factors such as attachment to place and identity. This research will initially model rural to urban movement in China over the past decades (for two regions) and assess climate variability and crop productivity variance in these movements as a ‘push’ factor. The second stage of the research will build predictive models of migration under future climate scenarios, such as those in development through Declan Conway’s ongoing work (Xiong et al. 2009; Xiong et al. 2008; Li Yue et al, in review). While this has been attempted for Mexico-US international migration (Feng et al. 2009), it has not been attempted for large-scale internal migration. The work would need to be supplemented by new data collection on migrant social profile and motivations for movement or non-movement. This will form the basis of predictive modelling of how climate change will influence future rural-urban migration patterns. The work will also model how these amplified flows impact on sustainable urbanisation.
Research Group Members
Neil Adger (co-supervisor)
Declan Conway (co-supervisor)
Declan Conway (co-supervisor)
