Analyze

The case study findings in the text have been discussed with senior staff at the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and members of the California Latino Legislative Caucus. It has also been presented at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration during a Scoping Analysis workshop with California policymakers and advocates.

“Despite these disadvantages, the state of California has failed to map wildfire vulnerability based on socioeconomic status. Without an accurate identification and mapping process, the state is unable to provide local governments and community-based groups with a reliable rendering of the populations most vulnerable to the impacts of wildfire. Most importantly, by failing to identify socially vulnerable communities across California, government entities are unable to understand in advance where to target limited resources and programs (Sadd et al., 2011).” (Mendez 57)

“To further ensure participation and strengthen capacity, federal, state and local governments should provide appropriate funding to community-based organizations working directly with vulnerable populations.Community-based organizations have stronger cultural competency in engaging with communities of color and immigrants,

greater levels of trust, and more flexibility to explicitly assist these populations. In community-based planning processes, vulnerable communities are actively engaged in the identification, analysis and interventions, monitoring, and evaluation of disaster risks. This approach helps reduce their vulnerabilities and enhance their capacities.” (Mendez 59)

This text highlights the importance of a mixed methods approach to disaster planning. Specifically, the importance of incorporating qualitative research methods as a way to anchor the voices of marginalized communities within disaster planning and provide context to emerging trends observed in climate related risks.  Regarding disaster planning and undocumented immigrant communities for example, Mendez (2020) stresses that practitioners must go beyond addressing the contextual vulnerability of these communities and consider how to address systemic problems perpetuated by the agricultural industry. The lack of accountability and disregard for human life within the industry, coupled with the lack political power within undocumented immigrant communities, particularly those belonging to the Mixteco/ Indigena indigenous groups, are systems of oppression which must be addressed if climate disaster risks are to be truly addressed.

Mendez (2020) stresses that the intersectionality of race, class, gender, indigeneity, and many other dimensions of identities coalesce to shape the lived experiences of people in their local environments. Traditional quantitative methods, though useful in providing snapshots of disaster vulnerability, can do little in capturing the social environmental conditions which determine responses to extreme weather and climatic events. At best, it can serve to provide an obscured understanding of disaster risks, at worst, this one-dimensional methodology approach may exacerbate existing inequalities perpetuated by systems of racism, classicism, and sexism by rendering whole communities invisible simply by virtue of sampling biases (Mendez, 2020). The case study by which Mendez frames his central argument focuses on how Indigenous immigrants were systematically ignored in emergency response and alleviation efforts following the Thomas Fire in California’s Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. 

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) was founded in 1980 by physicians from the United States and the former Soviet Union who shared a common commitment to the prevention of nuclear war between their two countries. In 1985, the organization recieved the nobel peace prize for their efforts.

IPPNW is comprised of national medical organizations, not individuals, with a common commitment to the abolition of nuclear weapons and the prevention of war. Each organization may range in size from a handful of dedicated physicians and medical students to tens of thousands of activists and their supporters.

I can't really find any concise information in regards to the IIPNW having direct publications or legislation passed. They seem as more of an organization that compiles information, and presents at global colloquiums in order to swy opinions for preventions of escalation. They also have many outreach programs for new physicians that help support the idea of nuclear prevention. 

The largest event that affects this organization was the Cold War, becuase it was the reason that it was formed in 1980. The organization cites the first principal of the medical profession — that doctors have an obligation to prevent what they cannot treat. The website states that experts come together to explain the medical and scientific facts about nuclear war to policy makers and to the public, and to advocate for the elimination of nuclear weapons from the world’s arsenals. 

IPPNW is funded by donations and are a non-profit organization. They also recieved money upon recieving the nobel peace prize.

The hardest thing that they have to deal with is trying to convince uneducated legistalors on topics that can affect millions of lives. The material that seems simple to them must be conveyed in a mundane matter.