Julie L Snorek

United Nations University, Environmental Vulnerability and Ecosystem Services, Graduate Student

Dartmouth College, Environmental Studies, Post-Doc

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A social ecologist, I seek to make evident hidden narratives and perspectives about climate change adaptation. I’ve carried out ethnographic research regarding social ecological transitions in seven countries (six in Sub-Saharan Africa) and engage with a diversity of concepts and disciplines, including political ecology and science and technology studies. Currently, I am a postdoctoral scholar in Geography at Dartmouth College working to understand the diversity of perceptions about regenerative agriculture as part of a 3-year grant from the National Science Foundation. I possesses an intricate understanding of the Sahel and Sahara where I lived and worked amongst rural peoples for over twelve years. I cut my teeth as an Alaska marine biologist and later served as a US AmeriCorps (Cape Cod) and Peace Corps Volunteer (Niger). During my doctorate, I won a fellowship from the United Nations University in Germany and advised several international organizations, including the European Commission and US Agency for International Development. My work focuses on the role of marginality in environmental conflicts that are framed by extractive or colonial processes and the just transitions movements arising from such conflicts. I hold a PhD in Environmental Science and Technology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona and speaks six languages including two West African languages. I am an avid gardener, swimmer, and have performed in acapella and opera groups in Europe and the US.
Supervisors: Fabrice G. Renaud and Christos Zografos
Address: Washington, DC

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Relationships of regeneration in Great Plains commodity agriculture

by Julie L Snorek and Susanne Freidberg

In recent years regenerative agriculture has attracted growing attention as a means to improve so... more In recent years regenerative agriculture has attracted growing attention as a means to improve soil health and farmer livelihoods while slowing climate change. With this attention has come increased policy support as well as the launch of private sector programs that promote regenerative agriculture as a form of carbon farming. In the United States many of these programs recruit primarily in regions where large-scale commodity production prevails, such as the Great Plains. There, a decades-old regenerative agriculture movement is growing rapidly, but not due to the incentives offered by companies’ carbon programs. On the contrary, farmers are adopting regenerative practices to cut their dependence on corporate agrochemical inputs and expertise, and to thereby achieve technology sovereignty. These practice changes often strain farmers’
existing social relationships while drawing them into new and previously neglected ones, including the more-than-human relations necessary for building soil health. These new relationships and the knowledge they generate may in turn lead farmers to think differently about their own autonomy. These findings provide insight into farmers’ skepticism of private sector carbon farming programs, and highlight the value of attention to the multiple types of relationship change that accompany and facilitate regenerative transitions.

The production of contested landscapes: Enclosing the pastoral commons in Niger

Journal of Rural Studies, Apr 1, 2017

Divergent adaptation to climate variability produces unequal adaptive capacities between user gro... more Divergent adaptation to climate variability produces unequal adaptive capacities between user groups and contributes to a contested landscape. This article examines divergent adaptations in the context of land tenure shifts in the pastoral zone of Niger. The management of the pastoral commons is shifting from a commonly-shared to private regime as former pastoralists take up new livelihoods, such as irrigated gardening. A method combining political ecology and remote sensing is used to study social ecological system (SES) dynamics in order to demonstrate the relationship between divergent adaptation, water-based conflict, land tenure shifts and land use/land cover change. Examining pastoral and agro-pastoral users' historical perceptions of land use and tenure change, results indicate that disputes over the access to and use of commonly shared natural resources are linked to increasing enclosures of ephemeral and permanent lakes in the pastoral zone of Niger. Remote sensing-derived information is used to identify and quantify the area and volume of enclosures around commonly shared water sources in the northern pastoral zone of Niger from 2003 to 2013. The study identifies the government-supported development of irrigated gardens in the pastoral zone as a divergent adaptation with its related conflict dynamics between user groups and highlights the land tenure shifts from a commonly to a privately managed regime. The findings have broader implications for the wider Sahel and provide recommendations as to how adaptation programs could be better designed and implemented in the pastoral system.

Julie L Snorek

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