Robert W. Kates

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Robert William Kates (born January 31, 1929 in New York City , † April 21, 2018 in Trenton , Maine ) was an American geographer and environmental scientist . He is one of the founders of sustainability science .

Life

Kates, born in Brooklyn , first studied economics at New York University , where he met his future wife Eleanor (née Hackman). Without finishing his studies, he moved with her to the industrial town of Gary and started a family with three children. Kates worked in a steel mill for twelve years.

With the aim of becoming a teacher, he took evening classes at Indiana University Northwest in Gary. One of the courses was given by a student of Gilbert F. White , who introduced Kates to him. White worked to ensure that Kates could complete postgraduate studies at the University of Chicago , despite his lack of a college degree , and became his most important academic mentor.

After completing his doctorate in 1962, he was employed at Clark University until 1987 , from 1974 as a professor. From 1967 to 1969, Kates also served as director of the Bureau of Resource Assessment and Land Use Planning at the University College in Dar es Salaam , Tanzania . In 1986, Kates was appointed professor and director of the Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program at Brown University . From 1993 to 1994 he was President of the Association of American Geographers . Kates later worked as an institutionally independent scientist. At the University of Maine , he helped found the Sustainability Solutions Initiative .

Kates died in 2018 at the age of 89 in Trenton, Maine, where he had lived since the early 1990s.

Work and action

Similar to Gilbert F. White, Kates devoted himself to geographic risk research at the beginning of his career , but expanded his field of science to include the use of the earth by humans as a whole. With regard to the very general research questions that emerged, he formulated specific intermediate goals (such as reducing world hunger by half, which later became one of the Millennium Development Goals ), for the implementation of which he initiated practice-oriented research programs. In this way, he contributed significantly to the foundation of sustainability science (which sees itself as transdisciplinary ) .

This human-ecological- oriented, strongly normative approach, however, received sharp criticism from around the end of the 1970s on account of its lack of theoretical foundation and the disregard of political and economic connections.

Awards and honors

In 1981 Kates was one of the first MacArthur Fellows and in 1991 he received one of the most important state science awards in the United States, the National Medal of Science . Clark University (1993) and the University of Maine (2004) awarded him honorary doctorates.

Kates was also the recipient of the Lauréat d'Honneur of the International Geographical Union (2004) and the Charles P. Daly Medal of the American Geographical Society (2016), and an elected member or fellow of the National Academy of Sciences (1975), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1976), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1987) and the Academia Europaea (1993).

Fonts (selection)

Monographs

  • Robert W. Kates: Hazard and Choice Perception in Flood Plain Management (  Department of Geography, Research Paper . Volume 78 ). University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1962.
  • Clifford S. Russell, David G. Arey, and Robert W. Kates: Drought and Water Supply: Implications of the Massachusetts Experience for Municipal Planning . Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore 1970, ISBN 0-8018-1183-X .
  • Ian Burton, Robert W. Kates, and Gilbert F. White : The Environment as Hazard . Oxford University Press, New York 1978, ISBN 0-19-502221-1 .
  • Robert W. Kates: Risk Assessment of Environmental Hazard (=  SCOPE Report . Volume 8 ). Wiley, Chichester, et al. a. 1978, ISBN 0-471-09983-X .

Anthologies

  • Ian Burton and Robert W. Kates (Eds.): Readings in Resource Management and Conservation . University of Chicago Press, Chicago a. a. 1965, ISBN 0-226-08237-7 .
  • J. Eugene Haas, Robert W. Kates, and Martyn J. Bowden (Eds.): Reconstruction Following Disaster . MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. u. a. 1977.
  • Robert W. Kates, Jesse Ausubel and Mimi Berberian (Eds.): Climate Impact Assessment: Studies of the Interaction of Climate and Society (=  SCOPE Report . Volume 27 ). Wiley, Chichester, et al. a. 1985, ISBN 0-471-90634-4 .
  • Robert W. Kates, Christoph Hohenemser and Jeanne X. Kasperson (Eds.): Perilous Progress: Managing the Hazards of Technology . Westview Press, Boulder et al. a. 1985, ISBN 0-8133-7025-6 .
  • BL Turner II, Göran Hydén and Robert W. Kates (Eds.): Population Growth and Agricultural Change in Africa . University Press of Florida, Gainesville et al. a. 1993, ISBN 0-8130-1219-8 .

Essays

  • Ian Burton and Robert W. Kates: The Perception of Natural Hazards in Resource Management . In: Natural Resources Journal . tape 3 , no. 3 , 1964, pp. 412-441 , JSTOR : 24879760 .
  • Robert W. Kates: Natural Hazard in Human Ecological Perspective: Hypotheses and Models . In: Economic Geography . tape 47 , no. 3 , 1971, p. 438-451 , JSTOR : 142820 .
  • Thomas J. Wilbanks and Robert W. Kates: Global Change in Local Places: How Scale Matters . In: Climatic Change . tape 43 , no. 3 , 1999, p. 601-628 , doi : 10.1023 / A: 1005418924748 .
  • Robert W. Kates, William C. Clark, Robert Corell, J. Michael Hall, Carlo C. Jaeger, Ian Lowe, James J. McCarthy, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber , Bert Bolin, Nancy M. Dickson, Sylvie Faucheux, Gilberto C. Gallopin , Arnulf Grübler, Brian Huntley, Jill Jäger, Narpat S. Jodha, Roger E. Kasperson, Akin Mabogunje, Pamela Matson, Harold Mooney, Berrien Moore III, Timothy O'Riordan and Uno Svedin: Sustainability Science . In: Science . tape 292 , no. 5517 , 2001, p. 641-642 , JSTOR : 3083523 .
  • Thomas M. Parris and Robert W. Kates: Characterizing and Measuring Sustainable Development . In: Annual Review of Environment and Resources . tape 28 , 2003, p. 559-586 , doi : 10.1146 / annurev.energy.28.050302.105551 .
  • Robert W. Kates, William R. Travis, and Thomas J. Wilbanks: Transformational Adaptation When Incremental Adaptations to Climate Change are Insufficient . In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . tape 109 , no. 9 , 2012, p. 7156-7161 , doi : 10.1073 / pnas.1115521109 .

literature

  • Bridie McGreavy: Interview with Robert Kates, Pathfinder in Sustainability Science . In: Maine Policy Review . tape 21 , no. 1 , 2012, p. 14-21 ( online ).
  • Thomas J. Wilbanks: Kates, Robert (1929–) . In: Barney Warf (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Geography . Sage, Los Angeles et al. a. 2010, p. 1654-1655 , doi : 10.4135 / 9781412939591.n666 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Robert W. Kates. National Science & Technology Medal Foundation, accessed May 21, 2018 .
  2. ↑ a b c d Obituaries: Robert W. Kates January 31, 1929 - April 21, 2018. In: Bangor Daily News. April 30, 2018, accessed May 21, 2018 .
  3. ^ A b Samuel Shepherd: Scholar dead at 89. In: Mount Desert Islander. April 30, 2018, accessed May 21, 2018 .
  4. ^ Robert W. Kates: The Human Environment: Penultimate Problems of Survival (=  FMHI Publications . Volume 62 ). 1983 ( online ).
  5. ^ A b Thomas J. Wilbanks: Kates, Robert (1929–) . In: Barney Warf (Ed.): Encyclopedia of Geography . Sage, Los Angeles et al. a. 2010, p. 1654-1655 , doi : 10.4135 / 9781412939591.n666 .
  6. ↑ a b Robert Kates. Academia Europaea, accessed on May 21, 2018 .
  7. ↑ Martha Mitchell: Feinstein World Hunger Program. In: Encyclopedia Brunoniana. Brown University, accessed May 21, 2018 .
  8. ↑ a b c Robert Kates. Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, University of Maine, accessed May 21, 2018 .
  9. ↑ David Hart: Remembering Bob Kates. Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions, University of Maine, April 23, 2018, accessed May 21, 2018 .
  10. ↑ in summary: Michael J. Watts: On the Poverty of Theory: Natural Hazards Research in Context . In: Kenneth Hewitt (Ed.): Interpretations of Calamity from the Viewpoint of Human Ecology (=  The Risks & Hazards Series . Volume 1 ). Allen & Unwin, Winchester 1983, ISBN 0-04-301160-8 , pp. 231-262 .
  11. ^ Robert W. Kates. MacArthur Foundation, accessed May 21, 2018 .
  12. ^ Recipients of IGU Honors and Awards, 1976-2013. International Geographical Union, accessed May 21, 2018 .
  13. ^ Charles P. Daly Medal. American Geographical Society, accessed May 21, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Kates, Robert W.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kates, Robert William (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American geographer and environmental scientist
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1929
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH April 21, 2018
Place of death Trenton , Maine