Leigh Johnson

I am a human geographer focusing on disaster and climate risk, vulnerability, finance, nature, and labor. Fundamentally, I am interested in how efforts to reduce vulnerability can create more just and emancipatory environmental futures.

My work spans multiple regions and scales. One longstanding focus is climate risk.  Why and how have insurance, reinsurance, and other risk transfer tools become solutions of choice to address climate change, and what are the impacts for climate governance, justice, livelihoods, and landscapes? My empirical studies have included a hallmark drought insurance program for livestock in Northern Kenya, a continental-scale sovereign insurance pool for humanitarian drought relief in sub-Saharan Africa, and catastrophe bond markets for natural disaster risks around the globe. 

More recently, my research program has grown to include the labor of ecological repair and climate adaptation – the often undervalued work of modifying and repairing socioecological systems to bear the brunt of environmental change.  I am interested in how this labor is organized, valued, distributed, and governed, and the prospects for more equitable and just models of repair.  A current project studies how labor and value materialize in ecosystem-based adaptation and restoration projects in East African rangelands.

A third focus is the financing and organization of forestry and fire suppression labor in the U.S. West, exploring how Western states are mobilizing incarcerated labor for fire suppression amidst unprecedented fire regimes and labor shortages.

In 2024, I was Verena Meyer Visiting Professor at the University of Zurich's Department of Geography, and Visiting Professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In 2023, I was a Academic Fellow of the Digital Society Initiative at the University of Zurich. 

Prospective Students: I am not accepting new students for the 2025 admissions cycle.
 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS BY THEME

CLIMATE ADAPTATION & LABOR

Johnson, L., M. Mikulewicz, P. Bigger, R. Chakraborty, A. Cunniff, P. J. Griffin, V. Guermond, N. Lambrou, M. Mills-Novoa, B. Neimark, S. Nelson, C. Rampini, P. Sherpa, & G. Simon. 2023. “The invisible labor of climate change adaptation”, Global Environmental Change 83: 102769

Johnson, L., T. Brundidge, C. Klein, M. Gonzalez, E. McCall, & J. Merson. 2024. "Carceral Firefighting in Oregon" The Pacific Northwest Atlas of Essential Work. Eds. J. Arroyo, S. LeMenager, J. Merson, E. Steiner, A. Steingisser, and S. Stoeckl. Just Futures Institute, University of Oregon

INSURANCE IN DEVELOPMENT

Johnson, L., T. S. Mohamed, I. Scoones, M. Taye. 2023  “Uncertainty in the drylands: Reimagining in/formal insurance from pastoral East Africa”, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space doi: 10.1177/0308518X231168396

Johnson, L. 2022 "Rents, Experiments, and the Perpetual Presence of Concessionary Weather Insurance" Annals of the Association of American Geographers  112(5): 1224-1242

Johnson, L. 2021 "Paying ex gratia: Parametric insurance after calculative devices fail" Geoforum 125: 120-131

Johnson, L. 2021 "Rescaling index insurance for climate and development" Economy and Society 50(2): 248-274

Johnson, L. 2020. “Sharing Risks or Proliferating Uncertainties? Insurance, Disaster and Development”, in Ian Scoones and Andy Stirling (eds), The Politics of Uncertainty: Challenges of Transformation. London: Earthscan/Routledge. 

Erikson, S. and L. Johnson. 2020 "Will financial innovation transform pandemic response?" The Lancet Infectious Diseases, (20)5 529-530 

Christophers, B., P. Bigger, and L. Johnson. 2020  “Stretching scales? Risk and sociality in climate finance” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space. 52(1): 88-110

Johnson, L., B. Wandera, N. Jensen, and R. Banerjee. 2019 "Competing expectations in an index-based livestock insurance project", Journal of Development Studies 55(6): 1221-1239

Müller, B., L. Johnson, and D. Kreuer. 2017 "Maladaptive outcomes of climate insurance in agriculture", Global Environmental Change 46: 23-33

INSURANCE, FINANCIALIZATION, AND CATASTROPHE BONDS

Ouma, S., L. Johnson, P. Bigger. 2018 “Rethinking the financialization of nature”, Environment and Planning A. (50) 500-511

Johnson, L. 2015 “Catastrophic fixes? Cyclical devaluation and accumulation through climate change impacts”, Environment and Planning A (47) 2503-2521

Johnson, L. 2015 “Near futures and perfect hedges in the Gulf of Mexico”, in M. Watts, A. Mason and H. Appel (eds), Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Johnson, L. 2014 “Geographies of securitized catastrophe risk and the implications of climate change”, Economic Geography (90) 155-185

Johnson, L. 2013 “Index insurance and the articulation of risk-bearing subjects”, Environment and Planning A (45) 2663-2681

Johnson, L. 2013 “Catastrophe bonds and financial risk: Securing capital and rule through contingency”, Geoforum (45) 30-40

THE POLITICS OF CLIMATE EXPERTISE

Johnson, L. and C. Rampini. 2017. “Are climate models global public goods?”, in D. Tyfield, R. Lave, S. Randalls, and C. Thorpe (eds), Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Science. London: Routledge.

Lave, R., M. Wilson, E. Barron, C. Biermann, M. Carey, M. Doyle, C. Duvall, L. Johnson, M. Lane, J. Lorimer, N. McClintock, D. Munroe, R. Pain, J. Proctor, B. Rhoads, M. Robertson, J. Rossi, N. Sayre, G. Simon, M. Tadaki, and C. Van Dyke. 2014 "Intervention: Critical Physical Geography", The Canadian Geographer (58) 1-10

Johnson, L. 2010 “Climate change and the risk industry: The multiplication of fear and value” In R. Peet, P. Robbins & M. Watts (eds), Global Political Ecology. London: Routledge.

POLICY/RESEARCH BRIEFS

Banerjee, R., L. Johnson, A. Mude. 2022 “Eliciting pastoralist experience for a livestock asset protection program in arid and semi-arid lands” ILRI Research Brief 113. Nairobi: International Livestock Research Institute.

Müller, B., L. Johnson, D. Kreuer. 2017 “Risks of maladaptation: Climate insurance in agriculture” Briefing Paper 22/2017. Bonn: German Development Institute/ Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik

Mburu, S., L. Johnson, A. Mude. 2015 “Integrating index-based livestock insurance with community savings and loan groups in northern Kenya” ILRI Research Brief 60. Nairobi: International Livestock Research Institute