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University of Oxford
School of Geography and the Environment

 School of Geography and the Environment

IGS: Current and Recent Graduate Research

Laura Pereira

Private sector adaptive capacity to climate change impacts in the food system: food security implications for southern Africa and Latin America

Supervisor(s):
Contact Info:
  • Address: St Hilda's College, Oxford, OX4 1DY, UK.

Academic Profile

Laura completed her BSc with distinction, majoring in Zoology, Ecology and Law at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa in 2005. In 2006 she went on to complete her BSc (Hons) with distinction in Ecology and Environmental Science, working on nitrogen dynamics in southern African agriculture under the supervision of Prof. Mary Scholes. She was also elected as a member of the Wits Student Representative Council and the president of the Wits chapter of the Golden Key International Honour Society. She moved across to the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford in 2007 where she read for her MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Policy at St Hilda's College. Her dissertation involved using a materialistic approach to analyse the legal commodity chain of coca in Colombia and she was supervised by Dr Dariusz Wójcik. She is currently a D.Phil. student working on climate change adaptive capacity of private sector actors in the food system.

Awards
  • 2009: Commonwealth Scholarship
  • 2009: St Hilda's College Graduate Scholarship
  • 2008: Oxford University Clarendon Scholarship
  • 2008: Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Grant
  • 2008: St Hilda's Travel Grant for field research in Colombia
  • 2007: University of the Witwatersrand Council Merit Scholarship Award for Overseas Postgraduate Study
  • 2006: John Twinch Memorial Prize in Plant Ecology for most outstanding student in plant ecology
  • 2006: University of the Witwatersrand Postgraduate Merit Scholarship Award
  • 2003: University of the Witwatersrand Academic Excellence Scholarship

Current Research

Laura's interests lie in the interdisciplinary nexus between the natural and social sciences and combining these different forms of knowledge to provide relevant answers to pressing global issues. Her current area of focus is on food security in southern Africa and Latin America and how adaptation to climate change impacts will play out within the food systems of these regions. Her D.Phil. thesis aims to analyse adaptive capacity to climate change impacts in the food system and then to analyse what repercussions this will have on food security. She is using a socio-ecological systems approach in order to incorporate the double exposure effect of both environmental and economic impacts on the food system. This comparative, nested study between southern Africa and Latin America will take the form of four papers, each engaging with the problem through a different analytical lens and at a different scale. The six countries of research are Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia and the crops being analysed are maize, wheat, sugar cane and cassava.

The first paper is a regional comparison of how changes in agricultural production due to climate change will alter countries' terms of trade and then how these impacts could play out in the food system by focussing on commodity chains. The second paper will track national commodity prices in Brazil and South Africa over the past 15 years to analyse the relationship between food prices and extreme climate events like drought. The third paper is a case study of agri-food companies and other private sector entities in the southern African food system. This paper aims to ascertain the adaptive capacity of large corporations based in developing countries to climate change impacts on their value chain. Issues of corporate governance shifting from corporate social / environmental responsibility (CSR/CER) to incorporating environmental and social elements into company strategy will be analysed and contextualised within the broader concept of Earth System Governance. The final paper is a rural consumer case study, which will look at local level vulnerability to changing food prices and the food security implications of this for household livelihood strategies. This will focus on the role of private sector (i.e. retail and distribution) in fostering or constraining local level adaptive capacity.

Selected Publications

Papers, Conferences, Seminars
  • Pereira, L.M. and Ruysenaar, S. (2012) Moving from traditional government to more adaptive governance: the changing face of food security responses in South Africa. Food Security.
  • Pereira, L. (2010) Becoming coca: a materiality approach to a commodity chain analysis of hoja de coca in Colombia. Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 31(3): 384-300.
  • Eakin, H., Bohle, H-G., Izac, A-M., Reenberg, A., Gregory, P. and Pereira, L. (2010) Food, violence and human rights. In, Ingram, J., Ericksen, P. and D. Liverman (eds.) Food Security and Global Environmental Change. Earthscan. pp. 245-271, ISBN 9781849711289.
  • Schilpzand, R., Liverman, D., Tecklin, D., Gordon, R., Pereira, L., Saxl, M and Wiebe, K. (2010) Governance beyond the state: non-state actors and food systems. In, Ingram, J., Ericksen, P. and D. Liverman (eds.) Food Security and Global Environmental Change. Earthscan. pp. 272-300, ISBN 9781849711289.
  • Pereira, L. (2010) Adaptive food governance in the private sector. RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London, 1st - 2nd October 2010.
  • Pereira, L. and Chiarini, T. (2010) Understanding macroeconomic processes in the food system under climate change: a study of food prices in Brazil. Presented at the Global Business and Technology Association Annual Conference, Kruger National Park, 5-9th July 2010.
  • Pereira, L., Fontoura, Y. and Fontoura, C. (2010) Governance for food security under climate change: strategic shifts for the food retail sector in Brazil and South Africa. Presented at the Global Business and Technology Association Annual Conference, Kruger National Park, 5-9th July 2010.
  • Pereira, L. (2009) Becoming coca: a commodity chain analysis of hoja de coca in Colombia. RGS-IBG Postgraduate Conference, Plymouth University, 6 March 2009.
  • Pereira, L. and Scholes, M. (2009) Nitrogen input/output dynamics in agricultural systems in southern Africa. Presented by Mary Scholes at the African Studies Symposium, Kansas University 30th March - 1st April, 2009.
  • Oxford University representative at the LERU Bright Conference, 27th - 31st August 2009, Universita degli studi di Milano, Milan.