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Robert W. Kates (born 1929) is an American geographer and independent scholar in Trenton, Maine, and University Professor (Emeritus) at Brown University. Trenton is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States, near Acadia National Park. Brown University is a highly esteemed private University located in Providence, Rhode Island and is a member of the Ivy League.

Kates was born in New York City. He never took an undergraduate degree, but while working in Illinois, he sought study advice from Gilbert F. White at the University of Chicago. Gilbert Fowler White ( November 26, 1911 in Chicago – October 5, 2006 in Boulder Colorado) was a prominent American The University of Chicago is a Private university located principally in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago. White recognized his abilities and steered him through an MA and eventually a PhD in Geography. Kates taught at the Graduate School of Geography, Clark University from 1962 until the mid 1980s. Clark University is a private University and Liberal arts college in Worcester Massachusetts. From 1986 to 1992 he was Professor and Director of the World Hunger Program at Brown University.

Kates's research focuses on long-term trends in environment, development, and population, and he is particularly known for his work on natural hazards mitigation, driven by a Quaker belief in relevance to human society. Kates defines his central question as "What is and ought to be the human use of the Earth?" This has led him to address the human use of natural resources and human response to hazards. His approach is to set up "natural" experiments, and then to develop a set of comparative observations or analogs. This led to several studies of natural and technological hazards, rural resource and water development, and methodologies for studying people's perception of the environment, the assessment of risk, and the impacts of climate on society. Since retiring from Brown University he has continued to work on:

Following the devastation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Kates returned to his earlier work on hazards and published a research perspective on the reconstruction of New Orleans (Kates et. Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the costliest hurricane, as well as one of the five deadliest in the history of the United States al, 2006).

Kates helped to establish the international Initiative for Science and Technology for Sustainability, was Executive Editor of Environment magazine for many years, and is still a Senior Associate at Harvard University. In previous years, he worked in Africa with Clark colleagues, and also developed and directed a resource assessment centre at the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. At Clark University he founded CENTED (the centre for technology, environment, and development), now part of the Marsh Institute, where he remains a Distinguished Scientist.

Among several honours he is a recipient of the 1991 National Medal of Science, and the MacArthur Prize Fellowship (1981–85). The National Medal of Science is an honor bestowed by the President of the United States to individuals in Science and Engineering who have made important He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Academia Europaea. The National Academy of Sciences (NAS is a corporation in the United States whose members serve Pro bono as "advisers to the nation on science The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS is an organization dedicated to scholarship and the advancement of learning The American Association for the Advancement of Science (or AAAS) is an organization that promotes cooperation between Scientists defends scientific freedom encourages He was awarded an honorary DSc from Clark University for his many contributions to hazards research. Clark University is a private University and Liberal arts college in Worcester Massachusetts.

Critique

Kates and White's work on hazards, and their 'human ecology' approach, some of it coauthored with Ian Burton, has attracted critique from scholars including Michael Watts (1983a,b) and former student Ben Wisner (1976, 2004). Michael J Watts is "Class of 1963" Professor of Geography and Development Studies at the University of California Berkeley, and in the eyes of some a leading The insight of these critiques is that "natural" hazards are in fact exacerbated by political and economic forces, and they should be seen as "social" not "natural". To suggest that severe drought - or even the flooding of New Orleans - as "natural" underplays the ways that neoliberalism, and powerful political and economic interests, make people more vulnerable. Humans cannot "adapt" or, in Kates's language, "adjust" successfully to hazards when a population is highly vulnerable or even exploited (Watts, 1983a). Mitigating natural hazards is therefore a social justice issue, not a case of adjustment. This has been much-debated in Wisner et. al. 's At Risk (2004).

Selected publications

References

Institute of Development Studies.

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