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Tuesday, 08 March 2011 18:04

Half way through

30 May 2010

There is a division between the scientific community and the greater public, and it is the type of division that leaves so many people skeptical about scientific findings. Of course, science is carried out on the boarder of what can be explained and what cannot and unfortunately this makes science intimidating to many who haven’t had the education or time to learn about various subjects in greater detail. Many people aren’t ready to agree with findings that explain the boarder of the unexplainable.

I am not alone in thinking that education is one of the most important contributors to quality of life and understanding. However, I am now significantly more experienced about the amount of hard science that can be lost when trying to simplify information in order to make it communicable to educate larger masses of people.

This simplification is one of the greatest contributors to skepticism. The simplifications can easily be questioned and proven incomplete. This is intrinsic to the simplification. I have struggled a great deal with my own work to decide upon where simplifications can be made and what simplifications have to be made. It is during these periods that supervisors can be such an asset in reemphasizing the greater purpose of the work and what is possible for the scale of the project.

I am in the process of creating a vulnerability assessment of the rural communities in Cyprus to climate change. Unfortunately, describing what makes a community vulnerable does not necessarily have to do with what makes a community sustainable. Understandably, politics, economics and human demands play a great roll in the difference between the two. For example, I will use the case of water subsidies. The farmers demand it, the politicians need the farmers support for reelection and as a result they allot water subsidies that the farmers come to depend upon to grow water intensive crops such as mangos. Ultimately the farmers are economically rewarded by the demand in the market for this exotic fruit; however, by the end of this process the value of the water is essentially lost in the exchange.

It isn’t surprising that sowing water intensive crops in a drought ridden country isn’t the most sustainable practice and further, it leaves farmers more vulnerable in the long term due to the uncertain water provisions that will be allowed in the future. However, displaying such information in a limited number of indicators is where the challenge lies.

I am nearing the end of my excel experience and am approaching the application of indicators as proxies for qualitative information. I am both excited about the process and eager to see the results. Most of all, I am anxious to go into the communities to see what the data looks like in the flesh and determine whether or not the simplifications can still represent the ultimate values that we are aiming for: understanding what it is that affects the livelihood of the people and their quality of life and quality of the environment.

I imagine that no matter what I find, the portrayal of such circumstances will be complex and contradictory. I imagine there will be bright green fields amongst a backdrop of brown. I am sure that the quality of life in the rural communities will not match the number of BMWs and stylish high heals I see in Nicosia.

The few people that remain farmers in the rural communities of Cyprus imaginably do so out of a connection they feel towards their work or because of a lack of further experience that would entice them to a life in the city. I imagine I will feel a great sense of respect when I speak with these people while at the same time a great amount of concern.  

 

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