Tai Koester

Tai Kondo Koester is a Ph.D. student in the School of Geography, Development, & Environment at University of Arizona and a Junior Research Fellow with the Climate and Community Institute. His research approach draws from political ecology, Indigenous geographies, and critical development studies to study environmental politics in the US West and examines how global energy shifts from fossil fuels to alternative energy technologies are shaping the political and economic futures of rural communities and tribal nations. He has also published articles on the role of US public lands in the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and the role of Community Benefit Agreements (CBAs) in managing the impacts of resource extraction. Before coming to the University of Arizona, Tai worked as a community organizer for a grassroots conservation and family agriculture non-profit in rural Montana and as a field tech at the University of Colorado’s Mountain Research Station. He received an M.A. in Geography at the University of Arizona and B.A.s in Geography and Ecology/Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder.