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A science of loss

Authors:
Jon Barnett at University of Melbourne
Jon Barnett
Petra Tschakert at Curtin University
Petra Tschakert
Lesley Head
Lesley Head
Lesley Head
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W. Neil Adger at University of Exeter
W. Neil Adger
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Abstract

Avoiding losses from climate change requires socially engaged research that explains what people value highly, how climate change imperils these phenomena, and strategies for embracing and managing grief.
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Barnett,!J.,!Tschakert,!P.,!Head,!L.!and!Adger,!W.!N.!(2016)!A!science!of!loss.!
Nature'Climate'Change'6(11),!976-978.!
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A"Science"of"Loss"
!
Jon!Barnett,!Petra!Tschakert,!Lesley!Head!and!W.!Neil!Adger!
!
"
Avoiding"and"ameliorating"losses"from"climate"change"requires"
interdisciplinary"and"socially"engaged"research"that"explains"what"people"
value"highly,"how"climate"change"imperils"these"most"valued"phenomena,"
and"strategies"for"embracing"and"managing"grief."
!
!
Industrialization,!land!use!change,!colonization!and!mobility!have!effected!a!step!
change!in!the!loss!of!places,!populations,!social!practices!and!species!over!the!
past!five!hundred!years.!Climate!change!threatens!to!accelerate!losses!across!
social!and!ecological!domains,!leading!the!UNFCCC!to!establish!a!mechanism!to!
address!these!potential!losses1.!However,!the!concept!of!loss!remains!poorly!
theorised!and!methods!to!explain!it!are!few2.!We!outline!key!elements!of!a!
science!of!loss!that!can!better!explain!how!losses!arise!and!help!minimise!
regrettable!and!irreversible!outcomes!of!climate!change.!
!
!
Loss""
!
Loss!arises!when!people!are!dispossessed!of!things!that!they!value,!and!for!which!
there!are!no!commensurable!substitutes.!For!example,!almost!all!people!value!
their!health,!personal!safety,!sense!of!belonging,!esteem,!and!relative!freedom3.!
These!are!known!as!the!primary!goods!that!are!essential!for!a!free!and!dignified!
life,!and!they!are!the!raison!d'être!of!collective!action,!legal!rights,!and!the!state.!
Climate!change!amplifies!the!risk!of!their!loss!through!many!pathways,!including!
increases!in!water-borne!illnesses,!damage!to!housing!from!extreme!events,!
displacement!of!communities,!and!climate-induced!poverty!traps.!!
!
Yet!there!are!many!more!phenomena!that!people!value!that!are!at!risk!from!
climate!change,!but!which!are!overlooked!because!they!cannot!be!captured!by!
standard!metrics.!These!include!phenomena!that!constitute!the!meaning!of!
entire!societies,!for!example!landscapes!(such!as!ice!fields);!places!(such!as!
neighbourhoods);!cultures!(such!as!those!of!Indigenous!peoples);!and!social!
cohesion!(such!as!belonging!to!a!community!of!knowledge!or!practice).!They!also!
include!valued!phenomena!that!arise!at!very!fine!spatial!and!temporal!scales!of!
experience,!for!example!personal!items!(such!as!photographs);!material!artefacts!
(such!as!the!graves!of!ancestors);!daily!practices!(such!as!gardening);!and!
occupational!identities!(such!as!those!of!farmers!and!fishers).!
!
!
2!
When!widespread,!some!losses!lead!to!cascading!social!and!environmental!
problems.!For!example,!the!loss!of!places!and!homes!and!lives!due!to!weather!
extremes!and!slow!onset!processes!can!in!turn!cause!problems!associated!with!
migration,!personal!safety,!resource!degradation,!and!public!health!and!security4.!!!
!
Although!there!are!many!processes!that!can!ameliorate!the!effects!of!
dispossession!of!highly!valued!material!and!non-material!phenomena,!there!can!
be!no!effective!compensation!for!their!loss!because!they!are!incommensurable!
(cannot!be!compared)!with!any!possible!substitutes5.!This!observation!is!backed!
by!evidence!from!anthropology,!human!geography!and!social!psychology6.!This!
incommensurability,!the!likely!uneven!distribution!of!losses!within!and!between!
generations,!and!the!failure!of!responsible!actors!to!mitigate!emissions!and!
facilitate!adaption!all!make!the!issue!of!loss!a!profound!ethical!problem.!
!
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A"science"of"loss"
!
A!science!of!losses!arising!from!climate!change!therefore!requires!knowledge!of!
three!distinct!dimensions:!1)!what!people!value!highly,!how!things!come!to!be!
valued,!and!how!values!vary!over!space!and!time;!2)!the!climatic!and!social!
drivers!of!undesirable!changes!that!put!at!risk!things!that!people!value;!and!3)!
should!losses!arise,!the!means!and!extent!to!which!suffering!can!in!turn!be!
minimised.!!
!
What'people'value'
!
Value!formation!is!not!well!understood!in!any!discipline!despite!a!diversity!of!
theories,!approaches,!and!methods.!Values!are!constructed!through!cultural!
influences!and!worldviews,!narratives!that!help!make!sense!of!places!and!ways!
of!living,!markets!and!marketing,!family!and!social!networks,!and!people’s!lived!
experiences,!relationships!with!nature,!memories!and!aspirations7.!!!
!
While!there!is!still!much!to!know!about!how!things!come!to!be!valued,!there!is!
far!more!certainty!about!the!nature!of!valued!things!and!how!these!vary!across!
space.!For!example,!much!recent!research!from!anthropology,!geography,!and!
psychology!shows!that!artefacts,!heritage,!homes,!knowledges,!places,!practices,!
and!social!relations!are!at!risk!from!climate!change8.!!
!
Values!are!‘situated’!in!specific!social!contexts!in!that!they!are!influenced!by!
peoples’!experiences!and!daily!practices,!and!the!places!and!cultures!in!which!
these!are!embedded.!Knowledge!of!loss!therefore!requires!understanding!this!
situated9!and!inherently!subjective!nature!of!values,!and!how!these!vary!across!
the!diversity!of!human!experiences.!Producing!such!knowledge!is!a!core!task!for!
those!social!sciences!able!to!ground!loss!in!the!social!and!environmental!milieu!
of!people’s!lives,!and!to!ascertain!the!aspirations!of!those!who!stand!to!lose.!It!is!
an!exciting!science!characterised!by!innovative!methodologies,!including!
experimental!psychology!and!economics,!ethnographies,!participatory!methods,!
methods!to!understand!how!people’s!bodily!experiences!and!senses!influence!
!
3!
their!cognition,!landscape!value!mapping,!mobility!mapping,!and!the!use!of!
mobile!technologies10.!
!
Drivers'of'change'
!
The!second!element!of!a!science!of!climate!loss!is!to!understand!how!loss!might!
arise!through!climate!and!other!associated!drivers!of!change,!and!how!the!risk!of!
loss!varies!across!social!groups!and!places.!It!is!now!well!understood!that!
vulnerability!to!climate!change!is!as!much!socially!produced!through!
demographic,!economic,!political!and!cultural!factors!as!it!is!a!function!of!
changes!in!climate11.!These!social!determinants!of!vulnerability!to!climate!
change!are!documented!across!a!wide!range!of!risks!and!contexts,!but!they!are!
very!difficult!to!factor!into!attribution!models!12.!New!forms!of!spatial!analysis!
promise!better!integration!of!social!and!ecological!factors!for!the!purposes!of!a!
more!integrated!understanding!of!the!drivers!loss!13.!
!
Given!the!challenges!of!attribution,!the!science!of!loss!must!be!cautious.!Even!in!
small!and!supposedly!highly!vulnerable!places!such!as!atolls!the!response!of!
ecosystems!to!climate!change!is!uncertain!and!the!scope!for!adaptation!to!avoid!
loss!is!even!less!well!known!14.!Thus,!a!minimum!standard!for!a!science!of!loss!is!
that!it!does!not!claim!to!predict!where!and!when!losses!will!arise,!but!rather!
identifies!where,!for!whom,!and!why!certain!losses!would!be!unacceptable!and!
intolerable.!
!
Predictions!of!loss!may!themselves!contribute!to!loss.!Dramatic!narratives!about!
future!crises!have!been!shown!to!influence!the!risk!of!crises!occurring.!Several!
studies!explain!how!talk!of!catastrophic!climate!futures!rarely!leads!to!mitigation!
and!adaptation!but!instead!results!in!fatalism,!self-blame,!underinvestment!in!
vulnerable!places,!and!even!accelerated!degradation!of!natural!resources!-!all!of!
which!amplify!the!drivers!that!create!loss15.!This!situation!has!parallels!in!the!so-
called!green!paradox!where!the!possibility!of!fossil!fuels!depreciating!gives!
signals!for!increased!unsustainable!extraction!in!the!present!day.16!
!
Nevertheless,!denying!the!possibility!of!loss!is!naïve!given!that!the!Intended!
Nationally!Determined!Contributions!(INDCs)!under!the!Paris!Agreement!fall!
short!of!avoiding!significant!levels!of!climate!change!with!their!associated!
biophysical!and!social!consequences17,!and!there!is!limited!progress!on!
adaptation!in!vulnerable!places.!Failure!to!confront!the!possibility!of!loss!also!
contributes!to!increased!anxiety!for!individuals,!and!collective!paralysis!in!
climate!change!mitigation!and!adaptation18.!!
!
The!risk!that!increased!emphasis!on!loss!may!create!perverse!incentives!can!be!
circumvented!by!research!with!rather!than!about!the!people!who!stand!to!lose.!
In!the!same!way!that!a!science!of!loss!requires!situated!knowledge!about!those!
highly!valued!aspects!of!life!and!well-being!that!are!at!risk,!it!also!requires!
grounded!knowledge!about!desired!futures,!the!contextual!drivers!of!loss,!and!
existing!and!potential!adaptations.!This!is!best!done!through!co-production!of!
knowledge!where!affected!communities!and!researchers!work!together!to!
generate!knowledge!and!engage!with!decision!makers.!An!accurate!and!practical!
!
4!
science!of!loss!must!therefore!engage!with!the!people!and!places!where!loss!is!
likely!to!be!experienced.!
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!
!
Engaging'with'loss''!
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Though!unsettling,!embracing!the!possibility!of!loss!may!be!the!best!means!of!
offsetting!its!harm.!Co-produced!and!situated!research!with!communities!where!
loss!is!likely!can!give!them!ownership!of!the!knowledge!of!loss!and!help!them!to!
come!to!terms!with!it.!Such!engagement!has!the!potential!to!stimulate!collective!
responsibility,!creativity,!and!new!skills19.!It!can!also!change!expectations!of!the!
future!in!ways!that!transform!perceived!losses!to!something!less!existentially!
troubling.!For!example,!anticipatory!history!approaches!that!highlight!the!
dynamic!nature!of!the!past!and!link!these!to!dynamic!futures!have!palliative!
potential!through!describing!and!visualising!landscapes!as!dynamic,!transient,!
and!liable!to!change20.!
!
There!is!a!long!tradition!of!memorialising!places,!practices,!and!peoples!who!
have!been!lost,!and!these!take!diverse!forms!including!films,!graves,!museums,!
paintings,!photographs,!rituals,!sculptures,!shrines,!stories,!and!songs.!These!help!
to!manage!grief!and!sustain!the!association!with!what!would!otherwise!have!
been!forgotten.!A!science!of!loss!should!therefore!combine!approaches!to!
anticipate!future!loss!with!insights!and!methods!from!critical!heritage!studies,!
archaeology!and!museum!studies,!all!of!which!engage!with!people’s!relationships!
with!places,!and!help!to!understand!and!remember!loss21.!!!
!
Loss!can!be!planned!for!better,!or!ignored!for!worse.!For!example,!research!on!
community!resettlement!shows!that!while!resettlement!should!be!avoided,!the!
harms!that!arise!can!be!minimized!given!adequate!time!for!consultation!and!
planning,!and!through!practices!such!as!compensating!people!for!economic!
losses,!maintaining!community!cohesion!and!social!networks,!and!directing!
resources!to!both!resettled!and!host!communities22.!!
!
Legal!cases!where!Indigenous!groups!have!sought!reparations!for!losses!reveal!
both!the!incommensurable!nature!of!loss!and!the!limits!to!legal!processes!in!
recognising!and!responding!to!loss23.!Legal!systems!tend!to!interpret!loss!
through!the!lens!of!property,!which!in!the!case!of!land!not!only!narrows!the!
scope!of!the!issue,!but!also!leads!to!decisions!that!fail!to!account!for!the!ways!of!
knowing,!social!relations,!forms!of!identification,!cultural!practices,!and!senses!of!
place!and!community!bound!in!land.!!
!
The!tragedy!of!loss!underscores!the!importance!of!risk!aversion!in!decision-
making.!In!decision!theory!the!risk!of!irreversible!loss!is!addressed!through!
precautionary!approaches!that!avoid!the!worst!possible!outcome!of!any!
decision.24!Indeed,!these!principles!are!embodied!in!the!UNFCCC’s!ultimate!
objective!to!avoid!‘dangerous’!climate!change,!and!the!requirement!that!Parties!
act!in!a!precautionary!manner.!In!this!sense!the!contemporary!‘loss’!agenda!in!
climate!policy!is!a!powerful!reminder!that!climate!impacts!are!best!avoided!
!
5!
through!mitigation.!
!
The!risk!of!losses!arising!from!climate!change!is!high!and!cannot!be!ignored.!
Priorities!for!a!science!of!loss!outlined!here!can!help!better!understand!and!
prepare!for!loss.!Understanding!loss!requires!a!more!situated!and!socially!
engaged!science!that!combines!theories!and!methods!from!the!humanities!and!
the!social!and!natural!sciences.!Researchers!need!to!get!into!the!field!and!work!
with!affected!communities!as!this!is!both!a!sine'qua'non!of!robust!knowledge!
about!loss!and!an!important!means!by!which!communities!can!understand!the!
risk!of!loss!and!begin!to!respond!in!ways!that!lessen!future!suffering.!Such!a!
science!must!go!well!beyond!the!frontiers!of!contemporary!climate!change!
research!to!include!knowledge!of!values,!processes!of!coproduction,!and!
courageous!attempts!to!engage!with!loss!to!capture!its!productive!possibilities!
and!minimize!its!destructive!consequences.!
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  • Oct 2024
  • REG ENVIRON CHANGE
The uneven burden of climate-related losses and damages and its implications for equity and social justice are receiving growing attention in science and policy. Smallholder farmers, indigenous groups, and ethnic minorities are often identified as particularly vulnerable and likely to experience a greater burden of climate-related loss and damage. However, limited attention has been paid to experiences of climate-related loss and damage in contexts of agrarian change and related struggles, especially around land. In this paper, we analyse experiences of climate-related loss amongst smallholder farmers in Ratanakiri province, northeast Cambodia. We derive an analytical framework from political economy of vulnerability and sociology of loss to explain farmers’ sense of loss from climate change and foreground intangible dimensions of climate-related loss. We use a mixed-methods approach with a hierarchical regression analysis of a household survey (n = 295), individual interviews, and focus group discussions across eleven villages. We find that a higher number of livelihood activities, greater values related to land, types of negative impacts experienced, and stronger perception of changes in extreme weather events are associated with a greater sense of loss. Meanwhile, a higher ability to repay loans and secure land tenure is associated with a lower sense of loss. Our results demonstrate how experiential, relational, and normative dimensions of climate-related loss are co-produced through processes of agrarian change such as financialization and histories of land struggles (i.e. through debt failure and fear of loss of access to land). This study contributes a deeper understanding of people’s lived experiences of loss arising from climate change impacts in agrarian contexts and their implications for climate justice.
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Place attachment and lived values in Western Australian communities
Article
Full-text available
  • Oct 2024
  • APPL GEOGR
Substantial research exists on attachments people have to places and the phenomena and objects they value. However, insights on how values vary between different locations and across demographics and how place attachment differs between rural and urban areas are more limited. These understandings are needed to design meaningful adaptation strategies for people and communities at risk from climate change. This study examines attachment to place and things people value in eight communities in Western Australia, using a survey with 403 participants. Results showed that residents across the rural communities shared similar values, but that the values of urban communities were differentiated socioeconomically. Contrary to our hypothesis, place attachment was not stronger among the rural compared to the urban sites. The findings point to the importance of incorporating place-based, lived values and needs, particularly from less affluent residents, into inclusive adaptation planning.
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Resistance, resurgence, and wellbeing: climate change loss and damages from the perspective of Māori women
Article
  • Nov 2023
Drawing on ethnographic research with Māori women in northern Aotearoa (New Zealand) I use this paper to encourage reflection on how the loss and damages (L&D) discourse might better engage with Indigenous peoples’ lived realities of climate change. I argue L&D scholarship and policy-making is dominated by reductive economic, hazard-focussed, and fatalistic framings of climate impacts and adaptation that are largely misaligned with Indigenous (and specifically Māori) approaches to loss and damage. I illustrate recurrent themes in the research using the narratives of two Māori women who employ forms of cultural resurgence to revitalise health-giving relationships with the land and offset multiple losses, damages, and harms to health and wellbeing sustained through settler colonialism, neoliberalism, and climate change. The narratives re-frame loss, damage, and adaptation from the perspective of Māori women. They provide much-needed empirical evidence of intangible, non-economic, lived, and felt L&D, their socio-political (as opposed to simply biophysical) drivers, and the actions Indigenous women employ to transform vulnerability, adapt to change, and secure intergenerational wellbeing in line with their view of the world. Together, the narratives underscore the vital importance of engaging social context when conceptualising and responding to L&D, support the move towards Indigenous-led, decolonised adaptation, and reaffirm the important role of Indigenous women in responding to climate change and leading social transformation.
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Assessing the risk of loss and damage: Exposure, vulnerability and risk to climate-related hazards for different country classifications
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2015
Preventing and reducing loss and damage due to extreme events is an important topic for the international community, especially in the context of climate change negotiations and disaster risk reduction. The paper outlines the latest state-of-the-art approaches to assess loss and damage and the risk of loss and damage. Against this background, a more in-depth analysis is provided on how to assess the risk of loss and damage in different country groups (i.e., World Bank income groups) focusing on selected slow- and sudden-onset climate-related hazards using the concept of the WorldRiskIndex. The results underscore that the risks of loss and damage for low- and high-income countries are significantly different, but also that global risk patterns differ significantly regarding sudden-onset versus slow-onset hazards. In the first step of analysis, the results show that not only does exposure to extreme events influence the risk of loss and damage, but equally important are the vulnerability and adaptive capacities of societies. The second step of analysis shows that target-oriented adaptive strategies to the various impacts of climate-related hazards are crucial in reducing the respective risk of loss and damage.
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Destruction or persistence of coral atoll islands in the face of 20th and 21st century sea-level rise?
Article
Full-text available
  • Jul 2015
The future of low‐lying reef islands has been the subject of international concern, scientific debate, and media interest in the last decade. As a result of sea‐level rise, atoll islands are expected to become increasingly unstable and to be susceptible to potential depopulation by the end of the 21st century. Some have suggested that sea‐level rise has already resulted in widespread erosion and inundation of atoll islands. Here, we analyze the physical changes in over 200 islands on 12 atolls in the central and western Pacific in the past few decades when sea level in the region increased at rates three to four times the global average. Results show little evidence of heightened erosion or reduction in island size. Instead island shores have adjusted their position and morphology in response to human impacts such as seawall construction and to variations in climate–ocean processes. These changes are reviewed and the role of sea‐level rise is evaluated. The implications of this analysis are addressed in two parts. First, we consider the proposition that future sea‐level rise will destabilize atoll islands to such an extent that their inhabitants will be forced to migrate offshore. And second, we identify a series of new challenges relating to risk reduction and adaptation policy for atoll island governments, international agencies, and island communities. These require a substantial shift away from the present adaptation paradigm of external migration and focus on the persistence of atoll islands and in‐country solutions. WIREs Clim Change 2015, 6:445–463. doi: 10.1002/wcc.350 This article is categorized under: Paleoclimates and Current Trends > Earth System Behavior Assessing Impacts of Climate Change > Evaluating Future Impacts of Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate Change > Learning from Cases and Analogies
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An Introduction to the Green Paradox: The Unintended Consequences of Climate Policies
Article
Full-text available
  • Jul 2015
How important is the Green Paradox? We address this question in three ways. First, we present a simple model explaining how announcing a future climate policy may increase carbon emissions today – the Green Paradox effect. This effect is a result of fossil fuel producers increasing their extraction today as a response to a reduction in future resource rents. Second, we examine the theoretical and empirical literature to assess whether green paradoxes are likely to occur, and if they are, whether they are big enough to be of concern for policy makers. We consider several factors that affect the existence of the green paradox, including long-term extraction costs, short-term extraction capacities, the mix of policy instruments, and potential spatial carbon leakage to countries that have no climate policy. We find that these and other factors can sometimes strengthen, but mostly weaken, the case for concern about the green paradox. Third, we identify the lessons the literature offers for policy makers. We argue that in designing climate policy, policy makers need to consider the supply side of the fossil fuel market.
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Famine that Kills Darfur, Sudan
Book
  • Oct 2023
When news of the Darfur famine in the ’80s broke in the West, relief experts predicted that, without massive food aid, millions of people would starve to death. Food aid on this scale did not arrive, but millions did not starve to death. Analyzing the famine from the perspective of the rural people in the region who suffered it, Alex de Waal uncovers a number of new and important insights into the dynamics of famine and famine relief. The author argues that deaths during the famine were not due to starvation, but instead were caused by disease, which ensued in the aftermath of the social disruption caused by the famine. In addition, the priority for rural people during the crisis was not to try to save every possible life, but to preserve their way of life for the future. Consequently, he concludes, the huge international relief effort was largely irrelevant to their survival. De Waal’s findings have profound implications, not just for famine relief, but for our very conception of ‘famine’ itself. Already a classic in the field, this revised edition Famine that Kills provides critical background and lessons of past intervention for a region that finds itself in another moment of humanitarian crisis.
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Paris Agreement climate proposals need a boost to keep warming well below 2 °C
Article
  • Jun 2016
The Paris climate agreement aims at holding global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and to “pursue efforts” to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To accomplish this, countries have submitted Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) outlining their post-2020 climate action. Here we assess the effect of current INDCs on reducing aggregate greenhouse gas emissions, its implications for achieving the temperature objective of the Paris climate agreement, and potential options for overachievement. The INDCs collectively lower greenhouse gas emissions compared to where current policies stand, but still imply a median warming of 2.6–3.1 degrees Celsius by 2100. More can be achieved, because the agreement stipulates that targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are strengthened over time, both in ambition and scope. Substantial enhancement or over-delivery on current INDCs by additional national, sub-national and non-state actions is required to maintain a reasonable chance of meetin
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Hope and Grief in the Anthropocene: Re-conceptualising human–nature relations
Book
  • Feb 2016
The Anthropocene is a volatile and potentially catastrophic age demanding new ways of thinking about relations between humans and the nonhuman world. This book explores how responses to environmental challenges are hampered by a grief for a pristine and certain past, rather than considering the scale of the necessary socioeconomic change for a 'future' world. Conceptualisations of human-nature relations must recognise both human power and its embeddedness within material relations. Hope is a risky and complex process of possibility that carries painful emotions; it is something to be practised rather than felt. As centralised governmental solutions regarding climate change appear insufficient, intellectual and practical resources can be derived from everyday understandings and practices. Empirical examples from rural and urban contexts and with diverse research participants - indigenous communities, climate scientists, weed managers, suburban householders - help us to consider capacity, vulnerability and hope in new ways.
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Strategies for coping with the wicked problem of climate change: A natural heritage perspective
Article
  • Jan 2015
The sustainability “problem” is a product of the human mind, born out of a unique ability to ask “why?,” to envision and pursue an aspirational future and manipulate the natural world (Schooneveldt 2010). The human capacity for “doing” is a defining legacy, currently characterized by unsustainable living strategies designed constantly and increasingly to alter physical, biological, social, and economic systems to maintain or increase consumption (Steffen et al. 2004). Effects include biodiversity loss, stratospheric ozone depletion, ocean acidification, depletion of freshwater aquifers, land clearing for agriculture and urbanization, and climate change, all of which are currently compromising the integrity of ecosystems everywhere on Earth and will be inherited by the successive generations that follow (Rockström et al. 2009) (Figure 11.1). Belief in the domination of nature as a necessary and attainable objective is misguided because nature is impossible to control and fraught with unknowable surprises resulting in a mismatch between ecospheric reality and human comprehension of that reality (Rowe, personal communication). Repeated and ongoing attempts to control nature have not only failed but fostered a genre of so-called wicked problems resulting from great underlying complexity, greed, uncertainty, and solutions that continually turn into problems (Table 11.1) (Rittell and Webber 1973; Conklin 2005; Purchase 2013). The intersection of climate change and heritage conservation is a wicked problem. Wicked problems defy resolution using traditional reductive scientific methods because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize, and the absence of complexity thinking that helps decision-makers account for anticipated and unexpected responses resulting from people interacting with the world (Morin 2008: 3; Rogers et al. 2013). Anthropogenically induced climate change has been implicated in a myriad of coincident effects, including perturbations to temperature regimes and precipitation patterns, extreme weather events, sea level rise, and reformation of ecosystem composition, structure, and function (Alexander et al. 2013). Climate change will significantly alter many social-ecological systems (SES; i.e. a “bio-geo-physical unit and its associated social actors and institutions;” Glaser et al. 2008) and invariably lead to the formation of new systems with significant socioeconomic ramifications. In this chapter, we examine some strategies and techniques available to organizations seeking to protect natural heritage values from the effects of climate change and other wicked problems and suggest how conservation professionals can lead by example.
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Potential and limitations of the attribution of climate change impacts for informing loss and damage discussions and policies
Article
  • Jun 2015
  • CLIMATIC CHANGE
The issue of climate related loss and damage (L&D) has re-emerged and gained significant traction in international climate policy in recent years. However, many aspects remain unclear, including how aspects of liability and compensation in relation with L&D will be treated under the UNFCCC, human rights and environmental law. Furthermore, the type of scientific evidence required to link climate change impacts for each of these L&D mechanisms needs to be clarified. Here we analyze to which degree different types of scientific evidence can inform L&D discussions and policies. We distinguish between (i) L&D observation, (ii) understanding causation, and (iii) linking L&D to anthropogenic emissions through attribution studies. We draw on three case studies from Australia, Colombia and Alaska to demonstrate the relevance of the different types of evidence. We then discuss the potential and limitations of these types of scientific evidence, in particular attribution, for informing current L&D discussions and policies. Attribution (iii) sets the highest bar, but also provides the most complete set of information to support adaptation, risk reduction and L&D policies. However, rather than suggesting that attribution is a necessary requirement for L&D policies we want to highlight its potential for facilitating a more thematically structured, and thus hopefully a more constructive, policy and justice discussion.
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