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​Udall Center staff Bob Varady, Andrea Gerlak, Molli Bryson and Chris Scott focus on research, publishing, public speaking, and policy engagement on environmental and hydrodiplomacy themes. This includes such signature events as the Stewart Udall Centennial on November 19th. On October 16th, Chris was quoted in a New York Times front-page story on the U.S.-Mexico water treaty. On October 28th, Chris was a panelist in the inaugural webinar of Harvard University's Food Security in the Americas series, presenting "Food, energy and water security in the borderlands: Chihuahua as the linchpin of Mexico-U.S. hydrodiplomacy.” Additionally, Bob and Andrea, together with associates Margaret Wilder and Nicolas Pineda, are putting the final touches on a special issue of Environmental Science and Policy, which brings together 14 essays featuring hydrodiplomacy across the globe. Finally, led by Andrea and Bob, the Udall Center serves as an active member of and participant in the Universities Partnership for Water Cooperation and Diplomacy.​

Julie Minde will be a post-doctoral research associate on environmental collaboration and conflict resolution, starting in spring 2021. Welcome, Julie!

Dr. Andrea Gerlak sheds light on the effects of COVID-19 on water insecurity, especially in rural communities. Read the full article here: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/511299-heat-waves-to-heighten-energy-and-water-insecurity-during-covid-19

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New podcast from Journal of the Southwest Radio Hour featuring the green infrastructure expertise from Dr. Adriana Zuniga-Teran: Better Monsooner than Later, with Patricia Schwartz. Depending on where you’re standing, summer rains in the desert can mean rejuvenation or destruction (or both). Rapid urbanization has put borderlands cities out of touch with the storm waters that sustain them, an oversight for which they pay dearly in flood damages and eroded soils. What predictions can we make about the future of the monsoon in the Sonoran Desert? What are we doing to make use of the rain and prevent it from sweeping us away? How can storm water management be used to promote environmental justice and urban equity? Written, produced, and narrated by Patricia Schwartz, a graduate student in the School of Geography, Development and Environment, University of Arizona, this ~40 minute podcast features interviews with Dr. Gregg Garfin, University Director of the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center and Associate Professor/Extension Specialist at the School of Natural Resources and the Environment at the University of Arizona; and Dr. Adriana Zuniga-Teran, Assistant Research Scientist and Professor at the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning and the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at the University of Arizona. Here is the link to the full podcast episode: https://jsw.arizona.edu/multimedia/podcasts/

Andrea Gerlak and Adriana Zuniga share their insights from their project on community engagement to address injustices around green infrastructure in Tucson in this recent publication.

The Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and the Native Nations Institute (NNI) stand in solidarity with those seeking justice for George Floyd, Dion Johnson, Dalvin Hollins, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and every Black person’s life who has been ripped away from their family by the unrestrained actions of institutional racism, including the discriminatory use of force by law enforcement. As allies, we know that Black lives also suffer from the racism ingrained in our governmental and institutional systems. The United States of America was founded on the genocide and erasure of our collective ancestors, which is ongoing. The anger and violence spilling into the streets is a result of centuries of violent oppression that has gone unchecked for too long.

Chris has been named a Fulbright Scholar for 2020-21 and will be on sabbatical in Spring 2021 to extend what has been nearly a decade of collaboration in Mendoza, Argentina, where he will be teaching on the water-energy-food nexus and conducting research on Andean river basin development.

On April 7 and 8, 2020, Andrea K. Gerlak of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona (UArizona) helped to host an innovative scenario planning workshop for some stakeholders in the Colorado River Basin. These scenario planning workshops considered for the first time the potential for extreme climate events to occur synchronously with potential major crises in governance, the economy and other "extremes."

Women’s participation in large-scale mining (LSM) has been increasing in Mexico and worldwide; however, few comprehensive studies exist on the socioeconomic effects of mining on women depending on the specific roles they play in this activity. The objective of this study was to analyze, from a feminist political ecology perspective, the effects of mining on women in a rural community in Sonora State, in arid northwest Mexico, a region with important participation of LSM in the country. For this purpose, we developed a mixed methods approach combining literature review on gender and LSM, semistructured in-depth interviews, and analysis of secondary government data. Most literature on women and mining treats them conceptually as a homogeneous social group or focuses on only one role women play in mining. We address this gap by identifying several roles women can play in their interactions with the mining sector and then analyzing and comparing the effects of mining associated with these distinctive roles. In doing so, we unravel the gendered complexities of mining and highlight the socioecological contradictions embedded in these dynamics for individual women who are faced with significant trade-offs. Mining can provide economic and professional opportunities for women of varying educational and socioeconomic levels in otherwise impoverished and landless rural households. At the same time, women are unable to, as one interviewee phrased it, “break the glass ceiling even if using a miner’s helmet,” especially in managerial positions. Extraction of natural resources in the community is accompanied by the extraction of social capital and personal lives of miners. We give voice to the social– ecological contradictions lived by women in these multiple roles and offer potential insights both for addressing gender-based inequities in mining and for avenues toward collective action and empowerment.