Search results

On September 9, 2018, Hurricane Irma swept across south Florida, leaving a path of destruction across the entire state. Miami-Dade County, at the southern tip of the state, avoided a direct hit. However, the storm left the county and its dozens of municipalities with gigantic mounds of storm debris. As the weeks went by, the piles festered and frustration with the pace of the clean-up mounted. Two dump sites in particular drew the attention of media and community activists: a park ringed by single family homes in Liberty City, a black community in the heart of Miami; and historic Virginia Key, the only beach open to black citizens under Jim Crow segregation. This research examines three narratives -- media coverage, official explanations from local governments, and reactions on social media -- as a way to investigate how the dumping of storm debris in black spaces was justified, interrogated, and contested in the aftermath of one of the worst hurricanes to strike Miami-Dade County in over a decade. Climate change models predict the increasing frequency of super storms like Irma, and discussions of how coastal cities respond in terms of infrastructure and resiliency are growing. This investigation looks at two components of this response that have not been as widely considered: what are the institutional and citizen responses in the aftermath of these storms, and how will issues of race and historic geographic marginalization be either acknowledged or ignored as the problems associated with climate change grow ever more acute and pressing.

This chapter presents a research study that examined post-disaster authentic university academic care resilience (PAUACR) at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU). PAUACR is a university’s and its students’ capacity to bounce back from post-disaster educational challenges. PAUACR requires a strong caring response and authentic academic care environments. For the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI), PAUACR following Hurricanes Irma and Maria was crucial to ensure students successfully completed the academic year. To assess UVI’s PAUACR, this study utilized a caring about academic caregiving inventory (CAACI). This 49-item instrument was used to gain students’ discernment of post-disaster authentic university academic care (PAUAC). The research employed a cross-sectional exploratory survey research design. The empirical analysis found associations between the structural workings of UVI’s academic caregiving in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria. These findings offer distinctive indicators of UVI’s PAUACR. Along with the findings, this chapter offers practical lessons of academic resilience drawn from the experience of conducting post-disaster research.

The chapter explores how tourism creates even more dependence as spaces become gentrified and too expensive for local occupation through colonial tropes, and accumulation models. Tourism consumes gently. In the wake of Hurricanes Irma, Maria, and Dorian, The Bahamas and Puerto Rico have experienced an accelerated strike on their natural and social resources: from land deals and tax concessions to power infrastructure and school closures. Debt has plagued the countries; the policies designed to get them out of debt prior to the natural disasters, then converted into man-made disasters, have only deepened dependence and indebtedness. In fact, both have become externalized communities where land is being accumulated through dispossession. Tourism is more than just hotels and resorts; it is now the gated communities and private islands that build on coloniality and inequalities. Tourism, disaster capitalism, and green grabbing accumulate by dispossessing locals of land in the name of improving their economic health. Economic well being seems to result in loss.

The members of the United Nations celebrate 30 years of the adoption of the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) in 2019. This milestone has added significance in a context in which we are about a decade away from fulfilling the targeted goals of the UN 2030 Agenda with its pledge to leave no country or no-one behind. This is an opportune moment to assess the status of children in Small Island Developing States (SIDS). Using primary and secondary data, the chapter assesses the status of children after 30 years of the CRC in four Caribbean SIDs; Barbados, Jamaica, Haiti and St Lucia. The focus is on poverty, education, health and climate change related CRC articles and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Data analysis reveals that the vulnerabilities of SIDS impede adherence to Child Rights for large proportions of children who are at risk of being left behind. Climate Change increases their vulnerabilities and disparities persist in access to basic social services. As with the CRC and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the implementation of the SDGs is plagued with a lack of timely and disaggregated data to inform the policy process; inadequate programmatic coordination; insufficient financial support; limited accountability and political will. Cultural perceptions of children and inadequate recognition of the importance of children to any the Developmental Agenda also thwart progress for children in SIDs. Urgent action is needed if we are to fulfil all the commitments that we made to our children since 1989 with the adoption of the CRC.