Toggle Main Menu Toggle Search

Open Access padlockePrints

For an Environmental Ethnography in Human and Physical Geography: Reenvisioning the Impacts and Opportunities of El Niño in Peru

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Andrew HendersonORCiD, Professor Andrew RussellORCiD

Downloads


Licence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

© 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.In 2017 El Niño Costero devastated the northern coast of Peru. This article seeks to learn from this experience for future large central and eastern Pacific-driven El Niño events. It directs attention away from dominant disaster narratives to reflect on the opportunities that El Niño rains have generated for desert livelihoods over time. We make a call for and set out the key elements of a historical geographical ethnography approach in environmental geography, which, as well as examining climate dimensions (paleoclimatology, dendrochronological, and atmospheric changes) of El Niño, also aims to consider its impacts on the livelihoods and management strategies of desert communities over time. We take as a starting point the responses of people who themselves come directly into contact with environmental change, yet whose agency and experiences are often marginal in knowledge production about El Niño. Responding to recent calls for qualitative geography researchers to be more explicit about how data are collected and analyzed, we explain how and why it is important to compare stakeholder interviews and climate records with newspaper archives and community memories of the 1983 and 1998 El Niño events. We illustrate that for desert populations in northern Peru, El Niño can represent abundance as well as disaster and make visible their role in managing change after El Niño flooding.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Laurie N, Henderson ACG, Rodriguez Arismendiz R, Calle O, Clayton D, Russell AJ

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Annals of the American Association of Geographers

Year: 2024

Pages: epub ahead of print

Online publication date: 12/08/2024

Acceptance date: 31/05/2024

Date deposited: 20/08/2024

ISSN (print): 2469-4452

ISSN (electronic): 2469-4460

Publisher: Taylor and Francis Ltd.

URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2024.2377222

DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2024.2377222


Altmetrics

Altmetrics provided by Altmetric


Funding

Funder referenceFunder name
AH/T004444/1AH
Arts and Humanities Research Council
NE/R004528/1Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
Natural and Environmental Research Council
RG120575Royal Society
Scottish Funding Council
SGS0-XFC090
Royal Society

Share