Perceptions of climate change: Linking local and global perceptions through a cultural knowledge approach

Understanding public perceptions of climate change is fundamental to both climate science and policy because it defines local and global socio-political contexts within which policy makers and scientists operate. To date, most studies addressing climate change perceptions have been place-based. While such research is informative, comparative studies across sites are important for building generalized theory around why and how people understand and interpret climate change and associated risks. This paper presents a cross-sectional study from six different country contexts to illustrate a novel comparative approach to unraveling the complexities of local vs global perceptions around climate change. We extract and compare ‘cultural knowledge’ regarding climate change using the theory of ‘culture as consensus’. To demonstrate the value of this approach, we examine cross-national data to see if people within specific and diverse places share ideas about global climate change. Findings show that although data was collected using ethnographically derived items collected through place-based methods we still find evidence of a shared cultural model of climate change which spans the diverse sites in the six countries. Moreover, there are specific signs of climate change which appear to be recognized cross-culturally. In addition, results show that being female and having a higher education are both likely to have a positive effect on global cultural competency of individuals. We discuss these result in the context of literature on environmental perceptions and propose that people with higher education are more likely to share common perceptions about climate change across cultures and tentatively suggest that we appear to see the emergence of a ‘global’, cross-cultural mental model around climate change and its potential impacts which in itself is linked to higher education.     

Knowing like a global expert organization: Comparative insights from the IPCC and IPBES

In this paper we draw on Science and Technology (STS) approaches to develop a comparative analytical account of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The establishment of both of these organizations, in 1988 and 2012 respectively, represented important ‘constitutional moments’ in the global arrangement of scientific assessment and its relationship to environmental policymaking. Global environmental assessments all share some similarities, operating at the articulation between science and policy and pursuing explicit societal goals. Although the IPCC and IPBES have different objectives, they are both intergovernmental processes geared towards the provision of knowledge to inform political debates about, respectively, climate change and biodiversity loss. In spite of these similarities, we show that there are significant differences in their knowledge practices and these differences have implications for environmental governance. We do this by comparing the IPCC and IPBES across three dimensions: conceptual frameworks, scenarios and consensus .We argue that, broadly speaking, the IPCC has produced a ‘view from nowhere’, through a reliance on mathematical modelling to produce a consensual picture of global climate change, which is then ‘downscaled’ to considerations of local impacts and responses. By contrast IPBES, through its contrasting conceptual frameworks and practices of argumentation, appears to seek a ‘view from everywhere’, inclusive of epistemic plurality, and through which a global picture emerges through an aggregation of more placed-based knowledges. We conclude that, despite these aspirations, both organizations in fact offer ‘views from somewhere’: situated sets of knowledge marked by politico-epistemic struggles and shaped by the interests, priorities and voices of certain powerful actors. Characterizing this ‘somewhere’ might be aided by the concept of institutional epistemology, a term we propose to capture how particular knowledge practices become stabilized within international expert organizations. We suggest that such a concept, by drawing attention to the institutions’ knowledge practices, helps reveal their world-making effects and, by doing so, enables more reflexive governance of both expert organizations and of global environmental change in general.     

Climate change and the transgenic adaptation strategy: Smallholder livelihoods,climate justice,and maize landraces in Mexico

Climate change will affect agricultural production by subsistence farms in crop centers of origin, where landraces are conserved in situ. Various strategies for adaptation to climate change have been proposed. In this paper we examine the prospects of what we call the ‘transgenic adaptation strategy’, i.e. the appeal to use transgenic seeds to adapt to climate change, through the lens of smallholder maize farming in Mexico. Landraces are the bedrock of maize production in Mexico. We consider how maize farmers may respond to climate change and the effects of those responses on crop diversity. In this paper, we argue that the promotion of the transgenic adaptation strategy is problematic for biological and social reasons. Smallholder livelihoods in southern Mexico could suffer a disproportionate negative impact if transgenic technology is privileged as a response to climate change. Agroecological and evolutionary approaches to addressing the effects of climate change on smallholder agriculture provides an alternative adaptive strategy.     

The ‘co’ in co-production of climate action: Challenging boundaries within and between science,policy and practice

Effective action taken against climate change must find ways to unite scientific and practice-based knowledges associated with the various stakeholders who see themselves as invested in the global delivery of climate governance. Political decision-makers, climate scientists and practitioners approach this challenge from what are often radically different perspectives and experiences. While considerable work has been done to develop the idea of ‘co-production’ in the development of climate action outputs, questions remain over how to best unite the contrasting epistemological traditions and norms associated with different stakeholders. Drawing on the existing literatures on climate action co-production and from translational perspectives on the science-policy interface, in this paper we develop the concept of ‘boundary agency’. Defining this as the agency ‘possessed’ when willing and able to translate between different epistemological communities invested in a similar policy and governance challenge such as climate change, we offer it as a useful means to reflect on participants’ understanding of the ‘co’ in co-production. This is in contrast to the more established (often academic-led) focus on what it is that is being produced by co-production processes. We draw from two complementary empirical studies, which explicitly encouraged i) engagement and ii) reflection on cross-boundary co-production between climate action stakeholders from different backgrounds. Reflecting on the two studies, we discuss the benefits of (and barriers to) encouraging more active and sustained engagement between climate action stakeholders so as to try to actively blur the boundaries between science and policy and, in doing so, invent new epistemological communities of practice.     

Planning for the past: Local temporality and the construction of denial in climate change adaptation

Climate change is upon us. While debates continue over how to mitigate emissions, it is evident that many parts of the world will need to adapt to an increasingly unstable climate. However, the persistence of climate denial presents a significant barrier to climate change response; if a future in which the climate has dramatically changed cannot be imagined, there is little motivation to act. Using qualitative interview data, our research investigates community responses to climate change adaptation planning in a coastal region of Australia identified as highly vulnerable to future sea level rise. While the local council engaged in extensive consultation to develop an adaptation plan, community opposition to proposed development changes ultimately resulted in a ‘wait and see’ response. We show how the community’s local understandings of place informed temporalities that led to a practice of climate denial. We outline three processes by which climate denial is socially organised: anchoring the past via historical reference; projecting continuity through a nostalgic lens of managing disaster; and enclosing the present by prioritising existing economic value. We show how these processes result in the social organisation of climate denial, and an inability to plan for a climate changed future.     

The first climate refugees? Contesting global narratives of climate change in Tuvalu

Climate change effects such as sea-level rise are almost certain. What these outcomes mean for different populations, however, is far less certain. Climate change is both a narrative and material phenomenon. In so being, understanding climate change requires broad conceptualisations that incorporate multiple voices and recognise the agency of vulnerable populations. In climate change discourse, climate mobility is often characterised as the production of ‘refugees’, with a tendency to discount long histories of ordinary mobility among affected populations. The case of Tuvalu in the Pacific juxtaposes migration as everyday practice with climate refugee narratives. This climate-exposed population is being problematically positioned to speak for an entire planet under threat. Tuvaluans are being used as the immediate evidence of displacement that the climate change crisis narrative seems to require. Those identified as imminent climate refugees are being held up like ventriloquists to present a particular (western) ‘crisis of nature’. Yet Tuvaluan conceptions of climate challenges and mobility practices show that more inclusive sets of concepts and tools are needed to equitably and effectively approach and characterise population mobility.     

Colonial dynamics limit climate adaptation in Oceania: Perspectives from the Marshall Islands

In the island states of Oceania, colonial power dynamics profoundly shape climate vulnerability and response. Largely as a result of their colonial history, island nations are dependent on outside funders to adapt to climate change, reproducing colonial subordination by depriving island states of sovereignty over their adaptation strategies. We empirically demonstrate the sovereignty-depriving effects of the current adaptation process through a case study from the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). Recent scholarship suggests that, without swift and large-scale adaptation, RMI will be uninhabitable by mid-century, threatening a population-scale forced migration. Our research indicates that Marshallese leaders are committed to adapting in place in order to preserve national identity and sovereignty, but they view reliance on external funding as a major barrier to implementing the measures that could enable RMI to survive in the face of climate change. Marshallese decision-makers in this study perceive that aid institutions discount the existential implications of failing to pursue aggressive adaptation, assuming instead that migration is inevitable, economically rational, and even desirable. Such a proposal is particularly painful given the history of forced migration in RMI caused by U.S. nuclear weapons testing there. These neocolonial dynamics not only deprive island states of sovereignty over their adaptation strategies but also threaten permanent abrogation of national sovereignty and selfdetermination through loss of a habitable territory. To uphold global commitments to decolonization and human rights, our research indicates the need to return sovereignty over climate adaptation decision-making to affected states.     

Climate change: a profile of US climate scientists’ perspectives

Climate scientists have played a significant role in investigating global climate change. In the USA, a debate has swirled about whether a consensus on climate change exists among reputable scientists and this has entered the policy process. In order to better understand the views of US climate scientists, we conducted an empirical survey of US climate scientists (N?=?468) in 2005, and compared the results with the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) physical science report and policy summaries. Our results reveal that survey respondents generally agree about the nature, causes, and consequences of climate change, and are in agreement with IPCC findings. We also found that there is strong support for a variety of policy initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.     

Governing-by-aspiration? Assessing the nature and implications of including negative emission technologies (NETs) in country long-term climate strategies

In order to address the pressing challenge of climate change, countries are now submitting long-term climate strategies to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. These strategies include within them potential future use of ‘negative emissions technologies’ (NETs). NETs are interventions that remove carbon from the atmosphere, ranging from large-scale terrestrial carbon sequestration in forests, wetlands and soils, to use of carbon capture and storage technologies. We assess here how NETs are discussed in 29 long-term climate strategies, in order to ascertain the risk that including the promise of future NETs may delay the taking of short-term mitigation actions. Our analysis shows that almost all countries plan to rely on NETs, particularly enhanced use of natural carbon sinks, even as a wide array of challenges and trade-offs in doing so are highlighted. Many strategies call for improved accounting systems and market incentives in realizing future NETs. While no strategy explicitly suggests that NETs can be a substitute for short-term mitigation, most estimate substantial potential for future use of NETs even in the face of acknowledged uncertainties. This, we suggest, may have the consequence of resulting in what we describe here as ‘a spiral of delay’ characterized by the promise of future NET options juxtaposed with the simultaneous uncertainty around these future options. Our analysis highlights that this inter-connected delaying dynamic may be intrinsic to what we term ‘governing-by-aspiration’ within global climate politics, wherein the voicing of lofty future ambition risks replacing current action and accountability.     

Great-power politics,order transition,and climate governance: insights from international relations theory

The complex politics of climate change cannot be properly understood without reference to deeper geopolitical trends in the wider international system. Chief among these is the growing resurgence of ‘great-power politics’ between China and the US, along with failures of socialization and enmeshment into global governance structures in relation to these two powers. Traditional theoretical frameworks have failed to adequately account for these developments. Nonetheless, this current great-power contestation is at the core of an order transition that has prevented the large-scale institutional redesign required to remove deadlocks in existing global governance structures, including climate governance. Examples from the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference provide ample evidence for these claims. The slow progress of the climate change negotiations are due not just to the politics of the issue itself, but to the absence of a new political bargain on material power structures, normative beliefs, and the management of the order amongst the great powers. Without such a grand political bargain, which could be promoted through a forum of major economies whose wide-ranging remit would go beyond single issues, the climate change regime is only ever likely to progress in a piecemeal fashion.

Policy relevance

Despite the achievements of the 2012 Doha Climate Change Conference, the climate negotiations are not on course to limit warming to 2 °C, and thereby avoid ‘dangerous’ climate change. Several factors have been invoked to account for such slow progress: notably, the nature of the climate change problem itself, the institutional structure of the climate regime, and lack of political will among key players. An alternative explanation is proposed such that the failure to seriously address climate change – as well as other global problems – reflects a resurgent meta-struggle between the ‘great powers’ of China and the US over the nature of the global order. Without such a broader understanding of the deeper dynamics underlying the stalemates of the climate change negotiations, there is little chance of turning those negotiations around.     

Identifying the exposure of two subsistence villages in Alaska to climate change using traditional ecological knowledge

Dramatic climatic change in the Arctic elevates the importance of determining the risk of exposure for people living in vulnerable areas and developing effective adaptation programs. Climate change assessment reports are valuable, and often definitive, sources of information for decision makers when constructing adaptation plans, yet the scope of these reports is too coarse to identify site-specific exposure to the impacts of climate change and adaptation needs. Subsistence hunters and gatherers in the Arctic are valuable knowledge holders of climate-related change in their area. Incorporating both their traditional ecological knowledge and information found in climate science assessment reports can offer adaption planners a deeper understanding of exposure to climate change and local adaptation needs. In this study, we compare information found in assessment reports of climate change in the Arctic with what we have learned from the Alaskans Sharing Indigenous Knowledge project from 2009 to 2012, a research project documenting traditional ecological knowledge in two Native villages in Alaska, Savoonga and Shaktoolik. Content analysis of the interviews with hunters and gatherers reveal the site-specific impacts of climate change affecting these two villages. We find that their traditional ecological knowledge is complimentary and largely corroborates the climate science found in assessment reports. Traditional ecological knowledge, however, is more current to the social and local conditions of the villages, and presents a more unified social and biophysical portrayal of the impacts of climate change. If taken together, these two forms of knowledge can focus adaptation planning on the pertinent needs of the communities in question.     

Public engagement with marine climate change issues: (Re)framings,understandings and responses

Climate change impacts on marine environments have been somewhat neglected in climate change research, particularly with regard to their social dimensions and implications. This paper contributes to addressing this gap through presenting a UK focused mixed-method study of how publics frame, understand and respond to marine climate change-related issues. It draws on data from a large national survey of UK publics (N = 1,001), undertaken in January 2011 as part of a wider European survey, in conjunction with in-depth qualitative insights from a citizens’ panel with participants from the East Anglia region, UK. This reveals that discrete marine climate change impacts, as often framed in technical or institutional terms, were not the most immediate or significant issues for most respondents. Study participants tended to view these climate impacts ‘in context’, in situated ways, and as entangled with other issues relating to marine environments and their everyday lives. Whilst making connections with scientific knowledge on the subject, public understandings of marine climate impacts were mainly shaped by personal experience, the visibility and proximity of impacts, sense of personal risk and moral or equity-based arguments. In terms of responses, study participants prioritised climate change mitigation measures over adaptation, even in high-risk areas. We consider the implications of these insights for research and practices of public engagement on marine climate impacts specifically, and climate change more generally.     

Estimating baselines for climate change for less developed countries: the case of the Sahel

Abstract

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol provide mechanisms for assisting less developed countries that are adversely affected by climate change. Such assistance would need a baseline, which ideally would set a precise date for specific impacts of climate change. This article presents the results of statistical tests that we carried out and, for the African region of the Sahel, finds that for precipitation (affecting food supply), impacts due to climate change can be ‘dated’ to the year 1967, when precipitation fell drastically, affecting the local food supply. Such a statistically robust benchmark would be useful to the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) of the UNFCCC. The method illustrates how other baselines may be established for the important work of the SBSTA.     

Dealing with climate science denialism: experiences from confrontations with other forms of pseudoscience

Climate science denialism is a form of pseudoscience. This contribution provides proposals for how to counter it, based on previous research on the demarcation between science and pseudoscience and on the author’s experience of tackling other forms of pseudoscience. Science denialism has much in common with other variants of pseudoscience, but it also has characteristics of its own. In particular, it is much more prone than other forms of pseudoscience to seek conflicts with genuine science. Like other science denialists, those attacking climate science have fabricated a large number of fake controversies in issues where there is no authentic scientific controversy. The defence of climate science against science denial has to take this into account. There is no reason to accept the denialists’ agenda or to treat their claims as legitimate alternatives to science. Climate science should primarily be presented to the public in ways that are independent of denialist activities, rather than reactively in response to those activities. Disclosures of the strategies, motives and funding of denialism are important contributions to the public understanding of the fake controversies. It is also important to document the scientific consensus and make it known. The public defence of climate science is an important and urgent undertaking, and active contributions by as many scientists as possible are needed.

Key policy insights

• Climate science denialism is a form of pseudoscience, and much can be learned from confrontations with other types of pseudoscience.

• The creation of fake controversies is a key strategy of climate science denialism. It is important to expose this strategy and not to accept denialists’ choice of an agenda.

• ‘Equal time’ arrangements should be rejected since they put the truthful side at a disadvantage. It takes more time to refute a single lie than to deliver ten new ones.

• The experience from fighting tobacco science denialism shows that it is highly efficient to expose the hidden operations, funding and motives behind denialism.

• As many scientists as possible should take part in the public defence of climate science. This is one of the best ways to show our consensus.

     

Experiences of modernity in the greenhouse: A cultural analysis of a physicist “trio” supporting the backlash against global warming

This paper identifies cultural and historical dimensions that structure US climate science politics. It explores why a key subset of scientists—the physicist founders and leaders of the influential George C. Marshall Institute—chose to lend their scientific authority to this movement which continues to powerfully shape US climate policy. The paper suggests that these physicists joined the environmental backlash to stem changing tides in science and society, and to defend their preferred understandings of science, modernity, and of themselves as a physicist elite—understandings challenged by on-going transformations encapsulated by the widespread concern about human-induced climate change.     

Think global,act local? The relevance of place attachments and place identities in a climate changed world

Two decades ago, an article was published in Global Environmental Change proposing the importance of place attachments, at local and global scales, for understanding human responses to climate change (Feitelson, 1991). Despite concluding that ‘studies of individual's attachment to place may provide important inputs for strategies to enhance the prospects for sharing the globe’ (p. 406, 1991), the article remains overlooked. This article takes up and extends Feitelson's argument for more systematic research on place attachments and climate change. First, the paper critically reviews interdisciplinary literature on place attachment and the related concept of place identity, drawing on scholarship in human geography, environmental and social psychology. The review identifies a lack of cross-disciplinary dialogue, as well as several limitations to the ways that scalar aspects have been researched. Second, climate change research, encompassing adaptation, mitigation and communication that has incorporated place related attachments and identities is critically reviewed; in particular, emerging research on the role of ‘psychological distance’ is critiqued. The article concludes with five recommendations for future research: to capture place attachments and identities at global as well as local scales; to integrate qualitative and quantitative methods that capture constructions of place as well as intensity of attachments and identifications; to investigate links between attachments, identities and collective actions, particular ‘NIMBY’ resistance to adaptation and mitigation strategies; to apply greater precision when investigating spatial frames of risk communication; and to investigate links between global attachments and identities, environmental worldviews and climate change engagement. Finally, the implications of such research for evaluating area-based climate interventions are discussed.     

Who determines transformational change in development and climate finance?

The language of transformational change is increasingly applied to climate policy, and particularly in climate finance. Transformational change in this context is used with respect to low-carbon development futures, with the emphasis on mitigation and GHG metrics. But, for many developing countries, climate policy is embedded in a larger context of sustainable development objectives, defined through a national process. Viewed thus, there is a potential tension between mitigation-focused transformation and nationally driven sustainable development. We explore this tension in the context of operationalizing the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which has to deal with the fundamental tension between country ownership and transformational change. In relation to climate finance, acceptance of diverse interpretations of transformation are essential conditions for avoiding risk of transformational change becoming a conditionality on development. We further draw lessons from climate governance and the development aid literature. The article examines how in the case of both the Clean Development Mechanism and Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions, there has been limited success in achieving both development objectives and ‘nationally appropriate’ mitigation. The development aid literature points to process-based approaches as a possible alternative, but there are limitations to this approach.

Policy relevance

The concept of transformational change has gained prominence in climate finance. The conundrum facing the GCF is that it seeks to support transformational change in the climate realm, in a context where countries may have competing priorities. Balancing or even transcending this tension is a fundamental design challenge for the GCF. A primary focus on mitigation, particularly if metrics of performance are tied exclusively to GHG reduction, raise concerns about diluting ownership by recipient countries and evokes concerns of conditionality or worse. The literature on development assistance has explored options notably conditions on process and adequate capacity, and suggests that there are no short cuts to building domestic ownership. Actors on climate change need to avoid the risk that transformational change is perceived as, and becomes, an imposed condition. The risk that transformation change, operationalized in the context of unequal power relations, becomes an imposition on development, needs to be avoided.     

Cartographic design and the quality of climate change maps

Maps are essential in climate change research and policymaking, and are primary tools for communicating climate change information to the public. The consequences of cartographic design are potentially significant to understanding climate change and effectively informing policymakers. Yet, the cartographic design and quality of climate change maps have not been critically assessed nor systematically evaluated. We suggest that evaluating the quality of climate change maps is both timely and essential, and offer one approach as a demonstration. We use cartographic design principles to evaluate a ‘high visibility’ climate change map from the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Our specific goals are to demonstrate the need and value of cartographic critique, describe how such evaluation can be accomplished, and make a case for cartographers’ engagement with climate change scientists in mapping activities. We suggest a research and policy agenda for the cartographic evaluation and design of climate change maps.