Overseas on-site Research

2020 Recipients

Nynia Chatal Etienne, 1st-year Master's student. Why are mental health issues marginalized in St. Lucia? Analyzing post-disaster government policies.

2019 Recipients

Wu, Yi-Chen, 4th-year Doctoral student. Strategizing sympathy: Taiwan’s trilateral humanitarian assistance in Syria refugee crisis.
Advisor: Dr. Min-Hui Lo
Co-advisor: Dr. Shiuh-Shen Chien
ABSTRACT
In the late 20th century, humanitarian assistance became increasingly important due to the growing conflicts and natural disasters in developing countries with high population densities and weak infrastructure (IPCC, 2001; Ritchie & Roser, 2019; Roberts, 1999). There are principles of humanitarian assistance adopted by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), namely humanity, neutrality, independence, universality, and impartiality. However, their relations with politics has long been ambiguous. Many relief agencies define politics as the opposite of humanitarianism, distinguish their actions as apolitical, and insist to guard the border between them (Barnett & Weiss, 2008). On the contrary, many scholars have questioned the apolitical nature of humanitarian assistance, but these analyses predominantly focused on Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors and ignored non-DAC donors, such as Taiwan, an emerging and increasingly visible actors in humanitarian actions. Since 2011, the Syrian Civil War has forced millions of Syrian citizens seeking asylums in other parts of the world. Taiwan joined 79 other countries and IGOs in the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS and had provided over US$32 million assistance in the Middle East (TECRO, 2019). Like many major donors, Taiwan declared that humanitarianism alone guided relief efforts while strategized the effort to achieve broader political objectives, thus forming a new aid strategy. Different from conventional development cooperation, humanitarian assistance is a set of rapid response to people temporarily needing support after destructive events. These events and resulting refugee generate cross-border instability, raising need for timely multinational cooperation (Cozzolino, 2012), thus creating opportunities for Taiwan to seek for cooperation, thus breaking the diplomatic isolation. This research tends to figure out to what extend Taiwan’s humanitarian aid echoes or challenges the DAC-established norms and practices of humanitarian politics. By onsite visit and in-depth interview with governmental and non-governmental actors collaborated with DAC members, this research analyses Taiwan’s new humanitarian cooperation strategy: instead of transactional exchange of “money diplomacy” for diplomatic recognition, Taiwan expands the recognition of Taiwan’s contributions to a much wider global audience, establishes trilateral cooperation to facilitate substantial partnership with major donors, and reconfigures the North-South dichotomy in trilateral cooperation.
Loan Thi Phan, 3rd-year Doctoral student. Ecotourism management in wetland protected areas under the context of climate change: The case of Mekong River Delta, Vietnam.
Advisor: Dr. Sue Ching Jou
ABSTRACT
The research is conducted in Mekong River Delta (MRD) in Vietnam which has suffered 3 main threats of hydrological dam construction in the upstream Mekong river, human intervention and climate change (Le et al, 2007). They disrupt agriculture and fishery, exaggerate conflicts in land-water use and challenge natural resource management. Diversifying livelihoods is considered as a solution to improve adaptive capacity of local communities, in which, tourism especially ecotourism1 is supposed to be a potential in this area. Globally, ecotourism has developed rapidly since 1970s and accounted for 25% of the tourism industry's overall market during 6 years and achieved revenue of 473.6 billion USD / year2. MRD possesses abundant ecotourism resources from dense river systems, fertile orchards and wide range and uniqueness of wetland landscapes. The uniqueness of wetland tourism has become a significant component in the tourism industry, particularly in developing countries (Koshkam, Marzuki, & Arzjani, 2014) and MRD is not an exception. In this research, we focus on inland water protected areas (IWPA) which occupy the largest area of wetland in MRD (Viet Nam Environment Protection Agency (VNEPA), 2005) and are the most heavily impacted and threatened by human activities of all biomes and habitats (Dubley, 2008). IWPA is known as various terms like inland waters (inland wetlands), freshwater systems, and simply wetlands are often used interchangeably. It refers to all non-marine aquatic systems, including inland saline and brackish-water systems; whether transitional systems like estuaries are included is a matter of interpretation. For the purposes of this study we use the term inland waters to describe the variety of aquatic and semi-aquatic habitats, and their associated species, that fall outside marine classifications (Dudley, 2008). Ecotourism development in the context of climate change is a two-way relationship, on the one hand, ecotourism is a sustainable development method contributing positively to "mitigate" impacts of climate change, on the other hand, the development of ecotourism is affected by climate change impacts and therefore it is necessary to have orientations for adaptation (Ni & Tuan, 2015). According to desk review, currently, drought is identified as the most serious disaster influencing to ecotourism in IWPA in particular and MRD in general (Ni & Tuan, 2015; Tran & Barzen, 2016) because of threatening the ecological systems, habitat of many fauna and flora, which are resources of ecotourism, followed by the decrease of tourism revenue (Pongkijvorasin & Chotiyaputta, 2013). It is expected that higher temperatures and erratic rainfalls will most likely lead to longer and more extensive dry periods and to an increase of forest fires. It also causes an increase in alum process and fish death phenomenon. This causes a decline in resources for ecotourism such as fish and birds, and affects the landscape of melaleuca forests and grasslands (Tran & Barzen, 2016). This could affect the development and conservation of the National Park’s biodiversity, the natural resources of the area and the livelihood of local people. For example, Sarus crane is known as the symbol of Tram Chim National Park, however, in these recent years, the number of this bird has decreased significantly and the water management strategy is the main culprit of this situation (Ni & Tuan, 2015). According to Dr. Tuan (Can Tho University), that building the dykes and sluicegates control to store water and reduce forest fires can slow the growth of melaleuca. Besides, it can reduce the landing areas of Sarus crane. However, climate change also brings positive sides to ecotourism. With the early and increasing rainfall in the flood season, it can extend the tourism season, followed by increasing the tourism revenue. Besides, water storage strategy and water canals which are made for forest fire management can be used for tourism transportation. Therefore, there are still many debates around climate change and nature resource management in TCNP which draw the attention of local authorities and scientist communities. In this context, most research of MRD toward climate change adaptation focus on the field of food security (agriculture, fishery) and water management (droughts, sea level rise, land use change). Meanwhile, in Vietnam in general and MRD in particular, most of research of ecotourism concentrate on economic aspect of tourism like ecotourism resources (Hong et al, 2002, Nhan & Thong, 2011) ecotourism growth in Vietnam (Luong et al, 1999); however, there is still a lack of research evaluating climate change and ecotourism nexus and ecotourism management in IWPA to propose appropriate climate change based solutions. Therefore, this research with the combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods aims to analyze impacts of climate change on ecotourism of two typical IWPAs which are two national parks in MRD as well. Based on that, we plan to use the concepts and tools/techniques of “diverse economies”3 (Gibson & Braham, 2008) to analyze and build strategies for the natural resource management of wetland national parks. We assume that Tram Chim National Park (TCNP) with more experience in ecotourism development than U Minh Thuong National Park (UMTNP) have more advantages in adapt diverse economies to secure social equality and wellbeing and ecological health for the local social-ecological systems. However, UMTNP with their own advantages of the latter, can learn from both successes and failures of the formers in ecotourism development as well as natural resource management, which can be a valuable ecotourism development model for unexperienced wetland protected areas of MRD.
Manassé ELUSMA, 2nd-year Doctoral student. Food System Vulnerability and Resilience to Climate Disasters : Farmers’ Coping Capacity and Adaptation Strategies of Northern Haiti.

David Ryan Broman, 2nd-year Doctoral student. Leadership for Sustainable Development in Marginalised Communities.

Mariana Gabrielle Cangco Reyes, 1st-year Master's student. The effectivity of low-cost coral transplantation in Anilao, Mabini.

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