In this episode, Farhad Mamshai joins us to discuss his recent piece in Community Change titled “Climate Change as a Threat Multiplier: Security and Communal Implications for Iraq." You can find the piece here and the abstract for his piece is copied below:

Climate change is a “threat multiplier” and has posed a deep security concern in many countries by targeting the human security of different communities. Iraq is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This conceptual study explores how climate change is a threat multiplier to Iraqi human security and poses significant societal and security threats. The article starts by providing some conceptual discussions to measure and comprehend the idea of climate change as a threat multiplier. To define a “threat multiplier,” the study articulates some scholarly measurements of the concept and illustrates its leading indicators discussed by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The author adds intragovernmental disputes and interprovincial tensions to the framework as additional indicators to better understand the security risks of climate variability in Iraq. The article then discusses the societal and security ramifications of the climate-related human movements that have undermined the security and stability of Iraq. Finally, the analysis illustrates how climate change might exacerbate security challenges to the country by enabling tribes, militant groups, and extremists to recruit climate-affected individuals and intensify communal violence in the country.

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Community Change is a peer-reviewed academic journal run by graduate students for graduate students interested in how to understand and propagate social change. It is a project of the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance.

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Molly Todd to discuss her recent piece in Community Change titled "Reflections on a Cross-Border Collaborative Research Effort During COVID-19," which can be found here. You can read the abstract for the piece below.

Todd, M. F., Grimes, C., Moayerian, N., Poets, D., & Stephenson, M. (2022). Reflections on a Cross-Border Collaborative Research Effort During COVID-19. Community Change, 4(1).

This article shares the reflections of members of a Virginia Tech-based collaborative research group and their experiences sharing information across borders during the COVID-19 pandemic. We focus here on the methodology of our team-based or collaborative work, which has examined the roles of community-led newspapers and the arts in encouraging individual and collective agency in two of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, Maré and Rocinha. By collectively reflecting on seven prompts, our research team members discuss how our collaboration has involved working together to produce knowledge toward shared goals, with shared labor, while remaining attuned to questions of voice and power.

Community Change is a peer-reviewed academic journal run by graduate students for graduate students interested in how to understand and propagate social change. It is a project of the Virginia Tech Institute for Policy and Governance.

We are excited to introduce this new forum for authors published through Community Change to share more about their research and reach a new audience.

Music: https://www.purple-planet.com