A Marshall Plan for the 21st century: Addressing climate change in the Asia-Pacific through diplomacy, development, and defense.

The inevitable climate challenges facing the Asia-Pacific territory require a massive whole-of--government approach comparable to the Marshall Plan of 1948. While many political leaders have called for such a plan, no policy currently exists for this region or purpose. With nearly eight trillion dollars in trade revenue passing through crucially strategic straits daily, seven of the 10 largest militaries in the world (five of which are nuclear capable) operating throughout this territory, and a forecast for nearly exponential population growth, the geopolitical provenance of the United States (US), ties inextricably to this portion of the globe. A document analysis assessing existing diplomatic, developmental, and defensive policies concludes that a modern-day Marshall Plan for the 21st century Asia-Pacific is achievable by realigning lines of effort within current frameworks. As long as the US continues to deny climate change, other nation-state actors within the area will rise to fill the void. The US must commit to the funding, development, and proliferation of clean and sustainable energy solutions, which evolve past current fossil-fuel reliant technologies and, most importantly, be open-source in description and shared with other large polluters throughout the world. Finally, the nations of the Asian-Pacific realm should contemplate a theater-specific treaty organization. As climate change threatens to destabilize the region, a unified force intent on providing stabilization efforts, preventing internal conflict and escalation, and enforcing international law deserves consideration and deliberation.

A paradigm shift in disaster management: Incorporating a human rights-based approach to disaster risk reduction.

Understanding disasters as socially constructed events represents a departure from current and historic ways in which disasters are characterized, requiring a focal shift in thinking from forces of nature toward social order. Changing societal reactions to evolving natural occurrences restores disasters within the social order, introducing law as an essential framework in approaching disasters as injustices as opposed to misfortunes. International attention is starting to shift strategies intended to reduce risks to natural or man-made hazards and increasing attention on methods toward minimizing their impact known as disaster risk reduction (DRR). DRR is "a policy aimed at preventing new and reducing existing disaster risk and managing residual risk, all of which contribute to strengthening resilience and therefore to the achievement of sustainable development." The development of normative frameworks to reinforce disaster governance is a significant component in enhancing disaster management systems. Disaster law is an emerging tool to regulate "governance, ethics, and decisions on the demands of a sustainable, inclusive, and healthy planet." International legal frameworks heavily influence disaster prevention and preparedness with an increased central focus on implementing International Human Rights Law in DRR practices. Legal structures protecting human rights in DRR initiatives positively obligate states to take proper and necessary actions to prevent harm from future disasters. The application of human rights standards fosters the paradigm shift from evaluation of the hazards impact toward assessments of states' negligence of risks. Interactions among the natural environment, socio-demographics, and the built environment are strong predictors for disaster losses, thus "the regulatory potential for avoiding disasters and reducing their consequence is obvious." Preventative action becomes a crucial element if the catalyst of the disaster event is failure to adequately prepare and social vulnerability. Disaster law encompasses participation, damage control, and local habitat management as mandatory conditions of governance, assigning criminal liability to public administrators' negligence toward disaster planning and/or enforcement. Disaster law produces a "sustainable, reliable, and cost-effective model for addressing disasters," empowering communities to participate in disaster management efforts, one of the strongest methods of building resilience and reducing risk to disasters.

Utilizing teachers to enhance student recovery through emergency educational programming: A case study analysis of Hurricane Maria.

Emergency educational programing after disasters contributes to the physical, cognitive, and psychological protection of students when they are at their most vulnerable. The Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies framework details the need to incorporate specific domains throughout implementation and asserts that teachers and educational institutions play a significant role in supporting disaster-affected youth in the classroom. Following the detrimental impact of Hurricane Maria on Puerto Rico, teachers became critical agents for maintaining the well-being of children at school, so the goals of this analysis are to (1) examine teachers' post-hurricane experiences to find out how the event impacted physical teaching environments and students' learning capacity, (2) investigate how teachers adapted and developed lesson plans to facilitate students' processing of the event, and (3) explore what resources, training, and emotional support teachers needed to continue their work in the classroom post-disaster. Findings reveal how teachers assumed the role of first responders to restore their physical learning spaces, improvised classroom activities, and discussions to aid in students' cognitive and emotional recovery, and found ways to navigate and address the psychological needs of learners following this traumatic event. This research will contribute to an increased understanding of how teachers can be utilized to enhance students' recovery through the successful implementation of emergency educational programing.