Sarah started her MPhil programme in Geography in 2015 and upgraded to a Ph.D. Her thesis, ‘Determinants of Drought Risks and Adaptation Response Options in Farming Communities across Clarendon Jamaica’  focused on risks associated with water scarcity and adaptation practices among farmers in one of Jamaica’s breadbasket regions, Clarendon. This interdisciplinary research is one of the first in the Caribbean to use the IPCC’s Climate Risk Framework to characterize drought risks and impacts at multiple scales in a single study. The work was supported by The UWI Research and Publications Grant, UWI Postgraduate Scholarship and Geography Department. Her primary supervisor was Dr. Donovan Campbell.
Further details are available at https://www.mona.uwi.edu/fst/sarah-buckland-–-phd-geography-high-comme...

Richard Robertson, volcanologist and a Department of Geography and Geology alumnus was promoted to the rank of Professor at UWI, St. Augustine. He delivered his inaugral professorial lecture on November 11, 2021. 
The Anthony N Sabga, Caribbean Awards for Excellence podcast with Professor Richardson can be found at https://youtu.be/Trx72rStyaA and a feature in the Awards E-News Volume 16, Issue 5 on page 3 can be found at http://www.ansacaribbeanawards.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/E-News-Sep....
 
 

Principal Investigator:  Marisa Wilson, University of Edinburgh (UoE)
Co-Investigators: Katherine Crowley (UoE), Patricia Northover(UWI), Thera Edwards (UWI), Sylvia Mitchell (UWI), Nicole Plummer (UWI)
AWARD: 7995 GBP
Recipes for Resilience (RfR) will re-connect Caribbean youth to their elders through activities that encourage young people to reflect on their own food behaviours, how they may differ from older people, and why these changes matter in the context of climate adaptation, resilience, and justice for Caribbean peoples of African descent. This will be done through three workshops that draw from the PI's previous engagement work, using sensory methods, storytelling, games, role play, and song, and through youth-led research conducting sensory oral history interviews with their elders about eating, cooking, commensality and gardening. Outputs will include story maps, calypso, soca, reggae, rap and spoken word songs and a podcast recording, which will be shared publicly through an open educational resource.
RfR will broaden and deepen the work of our partners and co-creators, the Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN), a group of young people aged 14-31 from nineteen Caribbean countries. Since 2020 CYEN has been working with the UNDP and UNICEF to research youth perspectives on climate change in the Caribbean, culminating in a report to be presented to heads of governments at the COP26. In addition to broadening their networks, the project will deepen CYEN's work on climate change and agrifood systems. CYEN activities have largely centred on climate change, land use and agricultural production, while RfR centres on whole food system changes, with a particular emphasis on food cultures, behaviours and community resilience.
Linked Information: https://twitter.com/GeosciencesEd/status/1435581270302601224?s=20 AND https://www.ed.ac.uk/geosciences/news/school?item=1539
 

Principal Applicant : Dr Arpita Mandal, Senior Lecturer, Dept of Geography and Geology. The UWI, Mona Campus
Co Applicant : Dr Paulette Bynoe, Senior Lecturer and Interim Deputy Dean of the School of Graduate Studies and Research. University of Guyana.
Award: 6000GBP
The project involves a comparative and interdisciplinary study of the urban flood risk in the two capital cities of Guyana (Georgetown) and Jamaica (Kingston) both of which have been impacted from short duration high intensity rainfall associated with or without tropical storms and hurricanes. Increase in urbanization with limited land space results in excess stormwater runoff in these urban areas which are primarily coastal cities and located on floodplains of major river systems. Jamaica has been affected by flooding, some of the major ones are the recent 2020 rains from tropical storm Zeta (Jamaica), May rains of 2017 and from tropical storms and hurricanes in the last ten years. Kingston’s major infrastructures has shown damage from excess stormwater runoff resulting in collapse of sections of gully/drains, collapse of bridges and damage to major roadways due to landslides and flooding. In Guyana, the capital city of Georgetown is well endowed with water, and has to be drained by a complex system of canals, drains and sluices. The city is below high-tide sea level and has to be protected by a wall to prevent inundation, and continues to be faced by challenges from flooding and consequential nuisances such as mosquitoes and other insects. This flooding is partly caused by the city’s coastal plain location and low elevation, its proximity to the Demerara River; and the presence of underlying, impervious clay soils hampering surface water drainage. The city continues to get affected by flooding from biannual, seasonal rains, with the flooding of 2005 being the most significant one in the last decade.