IGS: Current and Recent Graduate Research
Debora Ley
Sustainable development and climate change integration in rural Central America
Supervisor(s):
Contact Info:
- Email: debora.ley@ouce.ox.ac.uk
- Email: debbieannley@yahoo.com
- Tel: +44 (0)777 025 2895
Academic Profile
From 2001 to 2007, Debora worked at one of the US Department of Energy national laboratories, Sandia National Laboratories, and was Program Manager of the Central America and Mexico Regional Energy and Environment Development Program, where she implemented the international renewable energy and development projects of the US Department of Energy and the US Agency for International Development. Prior to this, she worked at Mexico's National Energy Savings Commission in the areas of cogeneration and renewable energy, providing technical assistance and supporting the implementation of international commitments.
Debora has worked on rural development projects in Central America in both the technical and the non-technical aspects. At Sandia, she was also the coordinator for the energy efficiency and renewable energy activities under the North American Energy Working Group between the US, Canada and Mexico. Her most recent job was with the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Mexico City Sub-regional office, in the Energy and Natural Resources Unit, where she supported the implementation of regional energy projects and co-authored a sustainable energy strategy for Central America as well as a study on the role of energy for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.
Voluntarily, she is a mentor and professional partner of Engineers Without Borders in the United States, and to date continues to work on rural energy development projects in Guatemala. She has also been an advisor for thesis under the topics of renewable energy, development and climate change.
Current Research
Can rural renewable energy projects simultaneously meet the multiple goals of sustainable development, climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation? If so, under what conditions? Rural communities throughout Latin America have increasingly suffered the impacts of climate change and few policies exist to help them adapt to these impacts. The basic infrastructure and services that they frequently lack can be provided by low carbon technologies, potentially funded by international carbon finance flows that could enable the Millennium Development Goals of economic growth and poverty alleviation to be met while minimizing carbon emissions. This research will focus on this interrelationship among development, climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation policies and practices using political ecology to analyse common property renewable energy projects in rural Central America.
Debora proposes to assess up to eight community-owned renewable energy projects in Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to analyze whether current renewable energy projects are achieving these goals in an integrated way. Four of these projects were established primarily as development projects while the other four were established primarily as voluntary carbon offset projects. The projects will be evaluated on economic, development and climate change indicators that include sustainable development, poverty alleviation, emissions reductions, and climate vulnerability. She will examine how the type of common property governance, local historical and environmental background and project implementation process influence the project success in meeting multiple objectives of climate adaptation, mitigation and development. Methods include participatory poverty assessment techniques, semi-structured interviews, stakeholder analysis, and a combination of rapid and participatory methods. The analysis of sustainable development and vulnerability will use the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach methodologies and emissions reductions will be calculated using standard carbon reduction methodologies.
The results will contribute to the debate about 'mainstreaming' development with climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation by showing if, and under what conditions, renewable energy projects can simultaneously meet these three objectives. This research will also contribute to literature in political ecology and common property resource, which has rarely included renewable energy.