Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. AbstractDrawing on a local study on Nepal's Terai, this paper explores the nature of livelihood exposure to shocks and stresses amongst rural households in two Village Development Committees in Sunsari District. The primary data are derived from a 117 household survey supplemented by 19 purposefully sampled follow-up interviews. The paper opens with a discussion of the changing nature of exposure in the global South, distinguishing between inherited vulnerability and produced precarity. We then provide background to the research site and the research methods. In the core empirical part of the paper we unravel and distinguish between the livelihood threats and opportunities faced by households in the area and use these to reflect on the nature of 'exposure', its historical origins and contemporary (re)production. The final part of the paper uses the Nepal case to build a more general argument, proposing that if we are to understand the puzzle of continued livelihood exposure and uncertainty in the context of aggregate economic expansion we need to identify and interrogate the processes that may, at the same time, produce wealth and reduce vulnerability, while also generating precarity.

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In order to defend infrastructure, economy, and settlement in Southeast Louisiana, we must construct new land to mitigate increasing risk. Links between urban environments and economic drivers have constrained the dynamic delta landscape for generations, now threatening to undermine the ecological fitness of the entire region. Static methods of measuring, controlling, and valuing land fail in an environment that is constantly in flux; change and indeterminacy are denied by traditional inhabitation.Multiple land building practices reintroduce deltaic fluctuation and strategic deposition of fertile material to form the foundations of a multi-layered defence strategy. Manufactured marshlands reduce exposure to storm surge further inland. Virtual monitoring and communication networks inform design decisions and land use becomes determined by its ecological health. Mudscapes at the threshold of land and water place new value on former wastelands. The social, economic, and ecological evolution of the region are defended by an expanded web of growing land.Keywords: Risk, Coastal, Adaptive, Mudscapes SUBHEAD REQUIREDThe Coastal Sustainability Studio is a transdisciplinary research and design operation at Louisiana State University. Including architects, landscape architects, urban planners, civil engineers, and coastal scientists, the workshop is a collaborative effort incorporating the College of Art+Design, the College of Engineering, and the School of the Coast & Environment. The studio addresses issues stemming from coastal erosion and wetland disintegration, incorporating the needs of specific design projects and their relationships with ecological, institutional, industrial, and socioeconomic systems amongst the built environment. The works of CSS aim to reduce economic losses and protect assets, promote a sustainable coastal system by incorporating natural and constructed processes, provide sustainable habitats to support an array of commercial and recreational heritage, and sustain the unique coastal heritage of the state of Louisiana.Along with increased storm frequencies and intensities, coastal environments around the world are facing growing challenges of subsidence, land loss, saltwater intrusion, and sea level rise. These zones at the thresholds of land and water are often densely inhabited, both by spectrums of urban settings and the industries and infrastructures that sustain them. Incorporating gradients of population, trade, investment, and regulation, the stretch of shore between Houston, Texas and Mobile, Alabama presents one of the most vulnerable megaregions throughout the entirety of the United States. Annual land loss exposes urban cores and embedded industries to increased risk as the wetland fabric that formerly sheltered the region subsides. Amongst the silts of the Mississippi River Delta, contradictions between human and geologic time become visible; static methods to quantify, control, and value land fail in an Infrastructure and Extreme Events

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