Cymene Howe

“The Arctic is arriving on coastlines all over the world,” Howe writes. In her Academy project, “MELT//RISE,” she plans to bring research in the social sciences to bear on the physical connections and adaptation responses to ice melt and sea-level rise. She designs her research around a new modeling tool developed by NASA physicists, the “gradient fingerprint map.” The GFM pinpoints contributions from each major glacial basin—from the Himalayas to Antarctica and from the Alps to the Andes—to calculate how sites of melting ice contribute to sea level rise in specific coastal cities. Taking the GFM connectivities as a heuristic, Howe analyzes whether these physically linked sites and processes also share socio-environmental similarities in their adaptation practices and priorities. Combining ethnographic inquiry, physics, and climate modeling, “MELT//RISE” also introduces the concept of “hydrological globalization,” which proposes that locations physically connected via hydrological processes are indicative of global interrelationships that are not predicated on the usual ties of trade or migration, but upon socio-environmental phenomena accelerated by climate change. Hydrological globalization thus offers a framework that weighs physical phenomena and social responses more equally than past theories of globalization by drawing from earth-system science and the qualitative insights of anthropology. In Berlin, Howe plans to work with scholars at the Humboldt Universität, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, among others, as well as meet with attorneys at Freshfields, Bruckhaus & Deringer about their landmark climate-reparations lawsuit involving emissions and financial responsibility for melting glaciers.