When Lori Peek (PhDSoc’05) started graduate school in the Department of Sociology in 1999, natural disasters were still largely framed as “acts of God” — isolated events only occasionally impacting an unlucky few, with everyone equally vulnerable to their wrath.

Today, with climate change fueling bigger and more frequent wildfires, hurricanes and floods, and many people experiencing multiple disasters in their lifetime, a different picture is emerging.

“There is growing recognition that these are not ‘great equalizers,’” said Peek, director of the . “People at the margins suffer first and worst.”

For two decades, Peek has applied a social science lens to the study of natural disasters, touching down on site within days of hurricanes in the Gulf Coast, tornados in the Midwest, earthquakes in Alaska and wildfires in the West to explore not why buildings collapse and how to make them stronger, but rather who lived in those buildings and what happened to them.

Peek’s research has elucidated how social fault lines around race, gender, age, disability and income often determine who is hit hardest or recovers fastest.

“Hurricane Katrina was a huge marker moment,” said Peek, who , as terrified residents waited on rooftops for help to arrive. “You had people dying in the streets of a major American city. There was no denying how much your station in life can literally determine if you live or not.”

Peek notes that vulnerable populations are often at a disadvantage before the disaster hits: They might not have the resources, like cellphones and Wi-Fi, to stay informed — or the time, social networks or transportation to leave when necessary. 

Individuals over 65, particularly those with a disability, are often most likely to die. And in the aftermath of disasters, people living on the margins often end up homeless.

“In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, we see communities come together in the most extraordinary ways.”

“Disasters often become a mechanism for pushing the poor out of a community,” she said, referencing mobile home parks in Boulder County that were destroyed and never replaced after the 2013 flood.Children are also prone to mental health problems long after the event, she said, particularly if their schools are closed and communities dispersed for a long time.

In contrast, those able to get back to school, connect with friends and find support from their community can not only survive but thrive, she has found.

“In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, we see communities come together in the most extraordinary ways.”

She hopes that just as the findings of her engineering colleagues may someday inform new, stronger structures, her work can inspire social policies to make vulnerable populations more resilient both before and after disaster strikes.

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Kenya and Tanzania are home to diverse groups of nomadic herders, or pastoralists — peoples like the Maasai, Turkana and Samburu who depend on cattle for their survival and cross wide expanses of grasslands to keep their cows fed. 

They also engage in occasional cattle raiding. Men arm themselves with AK-47s, which you can buy for around $8 in parts of East Africa, and sneak into their rivals’ territory in the dead of night to steal cows. Sometimes, the consequences are deadly.

CU Boulder researchers John O’Loughlin and Terrence McCabe had long wondered: In arid regions of the world like these wide pasturelands, could climate change make violence worse?

"The future of peoples like the Maasai or Turkana may depend on tackling all of these challenges and more together."

“When people live on the margins already, it doesn’t take much to push them over the edge to take desperate measures,” said O’Loughlin, professor of geography.

To get to the bottom of that question, O’Loughlin and McCabe, professor of anthropology, teamed up over the last decade to conduct several surveys of communities across Kenya. They discovered that people who fled their homes to escape drought, including some pastoralists, were over three times more likely to be victims of violence than Kenyans who remained in place.

But the situation is complicated: In many pastoralist communities, traditional elders often meet with leaders from nearby communities, even sworn enemies, to hash out their differences. Those kinds of leaders seem to significantly reduce the risk of disagreements devolving into bloodshed, even in the midst of severe droughts.

O’Loughlin and McCabe worry, however, that East Africa’s pastoralist peoples may be losing their ability to adapt to a changing environment. The team surveyed more than 500 people from Isiolo County near the center of Kenya four times from early 2020 to early 2022. Their preliminary results suggest that life in this region is getting worse as people contend with the COVID-19 pandemic, a historic locust invasion and repeated droughts.

"The future of peoples like the Maasai or Turkana may depend on tackling all of these challenges and more together," McCabe said. 

“What I’m worried about is that people who have been resilient to these kinds of environmental changes for centuries will lose their resilience,” he said.

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When Anna Iwanciw (IntlAf’22) was in high school, her class watched the documentary Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, prompting her to become a vegetarian and reduce her personal carbon footprint.  

Iwanciw feels her education directly impacted her views on climate change. And now she wants all women to have access to the same things she’s learned. 

“I’m a firm believer that everything is interconnected,” Iwanciw said. 

She points to a 2021 , a nonprofit that advocates for girls’ education, which points out the double-edged sword of gender inequity in education. By 2025, climate change is on track to be a contributing factor in preventing some 12.5 million girls yearly from completing their education, according to the report. 

“Whether it’s flooding or escaping wildfires, these girls suddenly become refugees of the climate crisis,” Iwanciw said. 

On the flip side, education has the potential to mitigate the climate crisis by giving young people the tools to challenge its root causes, the resilience to handle disasters and the knowledge to find solutions. 

“There’s a stigma in some countries that women shouldn’t be educated,” said Iwanciw. “And that’s really to the detriment of our society.”

While at CU, Iwanciw has become an ardent advocate for girls’ education through a social media internship and volunteer work with Girls Education International, a nonprofit dedicated to providing girls in remote locations with education. She also produces Girls Ed podcasts, interviewing people like women’s rights activist Anbreen Ajaib, executive director of Project Bedari, a Girls Ed partner in Pakistan. The agency also works with Project Wezesha in Tanzania, which focuses on issues like providing safe transportation to school. 

Iwanciw has already seen the impact of the nonprofit’s work — and the overlap between education and climate change. Saraphina Matombi Matias, a student from Kagongo, Tanzania, who was supported by Girls Ed and Project Wezesha, is now teaching people in her village about the environment and encouraging them to plant trees and manage waste properly — all while working toward a bachelor’s degree in education at the University of Dodoma. 

“Basically, if we educate women, we could potentially save the world,” Iwanciw said.

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When Western wildfires break out, water may first come to mind as a critical resource for helping extinguish it. But what about after the flames finish?

A 2022 CU study on the growing impact of wildfire on the Western U.S. water supply found that large forest fires can significantly increase the amount of water in surrounding streams and rivers up to six years after a fire, impacting regional water supplies and increasing risks for floods and landslides. The results suggest that water and natural hazard management will need to be more prepared for wildfire impacts. U.S. wildfires — — are only projected to escalate.

“It is something organizations need to educate fire-prone communities about, so we can be prepared for short- and long-term impacts.”

“We’re likely going to see a lot more fires,” said Ben Livneh, co-author of the study and assistant professor of civil, environmental and architectural engineering. “Like we saw with [Boulder County’s] NCAR and Marshall fires, this is going to be a clear and present danger.”

Historically, forest-based streams and rivers increased in predictable amounts in response to rain or snowfall. However, from 1970 to 2021, those amounts declined due to warming and evaporation.

Wildfire adds another layer to the equation.

“When you bring so much fire into the mix, it fundamentally alters that relationship,” said Livneh, who also serves as director of the and is a fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

The study examined 35 years of data from 179 forest basins in the Western U.S. between 1984 and 2019, including 72 sites where at least one large wildfire occurred. In areas where 20% or more of the forest burned, area streamflow was 30% greater than expected, for an average of six years post-fire.

It’s the first paper to show this increase persists in all four seasons after a fire, in all manner of vegetation, topography and elevation.

This water surplus could in part be a good thing, given the overall decline in the past 40 years. But it also comes with elevated landslide risks and a need for Western communities to invest in a greater diversity of water sources, as ash-laden water is low quality and expensive to treat, according to Livneh.

Due to the uncertainty of where or when future forests will burn, wildfire is not currently factored into assessments of the effects of climate change on Western U.S. streamflow.

“It is something organizations need to educate fire-prone communities about, so we can be prepared for short- and long-term impacts,” said Livneh.

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Nepal has some of the worst air quality in the world. more than 42,000 deaths were attributed to air pollution in the country in 2019 alone.

Prateek Shrestha (MMechEngr’15; PhD’18), who is from Kathmandu, Nepal, wants to motivate the youth in his home country to address the problem through a small quadcopter drone he and his team created that will take aerial measurements of air pollution in Nepal. He hopes the measurements can spread awareness to residents about the poor air quality and inspire similar projects throughout the country. 

“The mountains that I used to see from the north side of my house while growing up were invisible for most of my college days,” he said.

“Air pollution is a global problem that sees no international boundaries.”

Over the years, they disappeared behind fugitive dust and diesel emissions.

Shrestha, who now lives in Henderson, Colorado, started his drone project in 2019 to exemplify what “people can do at a personal level if they are truly motivated,” he said. 

After building a team of researchers — including a pico-satellite startup in Nepal called — and academics to further expand the initiative, Prateek now works on the project at the advisory level. Currently, they are working on a system that can deliver data from low-cost air sensors mounted on the drone in real time to a ground station based in Kathmandu.

“Countries like Nepal, which are very low income, feel the brunt of climate change disproportionately,” said Shrestha. “What we need is a collective level of preparedness for the harsh conditions that climate change can bring, and increasing our awareness to these issues is the first and most important step.”

Outside of his drone project, Shrestha remains committed to the environment in his work. As a research engineer at the National Renewable Energy Lab, he examines energy performance of residential buildings, such as how residential buildings built with 3D-printed concrete could impact energy performance, and how to ventilate buildings with fresh air at minimal energy and cost. 

He credits much of his current work to CU Boulder, especially his time working with air-quality expert and engineering professor Shelly Miller on indoor-air-quality research, and researchers from engineering professor Mike Hannigan’s lab. 

“Air pollution is a global problem that sees no international boundaries,” Shrestha said.

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The tropical forests of Brazil are legendary for their breadth and beauty. But beneath the canopy, concerns about the forests’ role in carbon sequestration and biodiversity conservation overlap with the rights of those who live in and off of the forests — rights  to develop the area, lift oneself out of poverty, make a living or preserve one’s culture. 

In May 2022, 10 graduate students in CU’s Masters in the Environment (MENV) program journeyed into the Amazon and Atlantic forests with the to consider those intersections. 

They studied how stakeholders in these areas work for sustainable development while navigating the tensions between land-use and conservation; preservation of traditional, remote communities and access to more urban resources; and forest-dependent livelihoods and sustainable supply chains. 

The three-week program trained the cohort of professional master’s students to work at the science-policy interface, teaching them skills to help communities worldwide mitigate climate change, conserve biodiversity and promote sustainable livelihood objectives while keeping human interest at the heart of problem-solving. 

“It’s a wake-up call to think about bottom-up solutions that really work for the people in the regions we talk about; places with millions of people who are dealing with poverty versus conservation. It helps students factor that into the work they go on to do,” said Colleen Scanlon Lyons, program leader and CU associate research professor. 

While the MENV program provides real-world experience, perhaps most heartening — and unique to the program — are the relationships it fosters. Designed to initiate lasting international collaboration, the program joins CU students with master’s students from both Brazil’s University of Amazonas and its Universidade Estadual de Santa Cruz, forging bonds and insights students will carry far into their professional careers. 

Said David Meens, director of CU’s Office of Outreach and Engagement: “There is no substitute for being in that boundary-spanning context where you are developing partners, developing programming together and considering the interests of folks involved who have very different positions and very different economic and cultural situations.”

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Climate justice is all about dignity.

That’s according to Phaedra Pezzullo, an associate professor of communication at CU Boulder.

“Climate change is disproportionately impacting those who have created the least global greenhouse gases, and too often they are left out of conversations about what to do about it,” she said. “To address climate chaos, we have to uphold, improve and practice a more inclusive understanding of dignity.”

This spring, Pezzullo led the foundational graduate course for the Certificate in Environmental Justice, in which students uplifted voices from Colorado communities disproportionately impacted by climate change.

"It's a people problem... Humans are the major drivers of climate chaos, and we have to transform our own species to solve it."

“Being able to see themselves in stories is empowering and allows [communities] to act,” said Anthony Albidrez (MJour’23), who took the class while working toward his graduate certificate in environmental justice.

The course grew out of a to prioritize areas for environmental action. The state worked to quantify air particulates and water pollution while CU students created corresponding narratives — expected as of press time to launch in June 2022 — featuring impacted communities.

“Scientific language can be hard to dive into,” said Albidrez. “When people understand more, they can take the information they’ve learned, act on it, shift policy changes and hold the government accountable.”

Funded by grants from , Payden Teaching Excellence, the and the Department of Environmental Studies Colloquium Series, the course gave students a chance to help Colorado policy makers understand the local impacts of climate change — and engage community members for solutions.

“Even if a place is identified as one of the most polluted, it’s also a beloved place to people who live and work there,” said Pezzullo.

The course aligns with the work of the Center for Creative Climate Communication and Behavior Change (C3BC), which Pezzullo co-directs. In partnership with other campus groups like the Just Transition Collaborative and RISE: Resilient Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity, the C3BC’s multidisciplinary faculty and students connect with communities whose voices have been excluded from conversations about climate policy.

“To fix climate chaos, we have to engage people,” said Pezzullo. “It’s a people problem — not a wolf problem or a whale problem. Humans are the major drivers of climate chaos, and we have to transform our own species to solve it.”

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Research shows human activity is gradually increasing Earth’s temperature and causing more frequent natural disasters. These disasters have enormous impacts on human life — from more frequent droughts and wildfires to polluted air and deforestation that threatens traditional and Indigenous ways of life. These seven stories examine the ways CU students, faculty and alumni are exploring the impacts of climate change on human life and human rights.

Turning Stories into Action

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The Colorado-Brazil Program on Sustainable Development Education

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Alum Aims to Improve Nepal’s Air Quality

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After a Wildfire, What Happens to Water?

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Class Action: Fighting Climate Change Through Girls’ Education

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Climate Change Fueling Violence, Hunger for East African Pastoralists

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How Natural Disasters Impact Vulnerable Populations

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Illustrations by Sally Deng; Photos Phaedra Pezzullo; iStock/dutourdumonde; iStock/TriciaDaniel; iStock/brittak

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