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A Climate of Risks
Abstract
This chapter delves into the identity and character of climate and climate change risks. These risks are socially constructed and, as such, respond to dynamic changes in society. By examining climate and climate change risks from three contrasting temporal perspectives, the shifts in these risks can be brought to light. Historical, contemporary and future manifestations of climate change and climate risks are examined in turn. Climate change as a ‘threat multiplier’ that exacerbates pre-existing hazards and risks through environmental degradation and depletion of the earth’s resources is explained. The chapter finishes with a discussion of the distinctive character of climate risks.
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Adaptation strategies to ameliorate the impacts of climate change are increasing in scale and scope around the world, with interventions becoming a part of daily life for many people. Though the implications of climate impacts for health and wellbeing are well documented, to date, adaptations are largely evaluated by financial cost and their effectiveness in reducing risk. Looking across different forms of adaptation to floods, we use existing literature to develop a typology of key domains of impact arising from interventions that are likely to shape health and wellbeing. We suggest that this typology can be used to assess the health consequences of adaptation interventions more generally and argue that such forms of evaluation will better support the development of sustainable adaptation planning.
Effectively responding to intensifying climate change hazards requires identifying risks arising from each response, as well as risks arising from the dynamic interactions between responses. Using examples of managed retreat and solar geoengineering, we illustrate the importance of understanding response as a determinant of climate change risk. We highlight a continuum of severity of response risks, both at the site of deployment and across temporally and geographically distant contexts. While responses might moderate a specific hazard, due to the complexity of climate change risk they may be ineffective at reducing net climate-related risk for any given actor or system. How responses to climate change affect vulnerability, exposure, and other responses to climate change independent of the targeted hazard and can lead to maladaptation. We conclude by emphasizing the importance of integrating climate change responses together with other determinants of risk to better inform climate risk management and guide research on the feasibility of individual response options.
Social protection, as a vulnerability response tool, is well-placed to equip climate-vulnerable populations with resources that de-risk livelihoods and smooth consumption. This systematic literature review of 28 studies identifies evidence for how social protection has influenced beneficiaries’ migration decisions, experiences, and outcomes in the context of a changing climate, through cash transfers, public work programs, insurance, and health care. The review reveal three key interlinkages between social protection policies and climate-migration, where social protection is recognized as a policy tool that can (i) ease the financial barriers to migration as a means of de-risking climate change impacts, (ii) address adverse drivers and structural factors that may compel people to engage in maladaptive, distress migration and (iii) support those ‘left at home’ in maintaining their livelihoods when they do not wish to leave. Understanding how social protection can be leveraged to stimulate positive climate-migration outcomes can aid policymakers, development practitioners, local governments, and social protection beneficiaries capitalize the necessary support in circumstances of migration or immobility in the context of adverse climate conditions. Knowledge gaps remain regarding the optimal methods in which social protection can support vulnerable groups and encourage positive outcomes of climate-migration. We expand the knowledge base by making a case for the inclusion of social protection in climate change and human migration debates; highlighting research and policy gaps and missed opportunities; and advocating for further empirical research on interlinkages and documentation of approaches where social protection can support voluntary, planned migration decisions where long-term adaptation is no longer viable.
This paper discusses severe risks to food security and nutrition that are linked to ongoing and projected climate change, particularly climate and weather extremes in global warming, drought, flooding, and precipitation. We specifically consider the impacts on populations vulnerable to food insecurity and malnutrition due to lower income, lower access to nutritious food, or social discrimination. The paper defines climate-related “severe risk” in the context of food security and nutrition, using a combination of criteria, including the magnitude and likelihood of adverse consequences, the timing of the risk and the ability to reduce the risk. Severe climate change risks to food security and nutrition are those which result, with high likelihood, in pervasive and persistent food insecurity and malnutrition for millions of people, have the potential for cascading effects beyond the food systems, and against which we have limited ability to prevent or fully respond. The paper uses internationally agreed definitions of risks to food security and nutrition to describe the magnitude of adverse consequences. Moreover, the paper assesses the conditions under which climate change-induced risks to food security and nutrition could become severe based on findings in the literature using different climate change scenarios and shared socioeconomic pathways. Finally, the paper proposes adaptation options, including institutional management and governance actions, that could be taken now to prevent or reduce the severe climate risks to future human food security and nutrition.
Because of concerns that ongoing climate change could lead to a possible collapse of human civilization, the topic of societal (civilization) collapse has emerged as especially relevant, not least for the futures-oriented studies. While this has led to extensive research on societal collapse, there is a lack of consolidation and synthesis of the research. The purpose of this article is thus to systematize the extant research on societal collapse and suggest future research directions. This article offers a systematic multidisciplinary review of the existing literature (361 articles and 73 books) and identifies five scholarly conversations: past collapses, general explanations of collapse, alternatives to collapse, fictional collapses, and future climate change and societal collapse. The review builds the foundation for a critical discussion of each line of inquiry by focusing on theoretical tensions and themes within each scholarly conversation, ending with a discussion of how these conversations inform futures research.
This article provides a stocktake the adaptation literature between 2013 and 2019 to better understand how responses affect risk under the particularly challenging conditions of compound climate impacts. Across 39 countries, 45 response types to compound hazards display anticipatory (9%), reactive (33%) and maladaptive characteristics (41%), as well as hard (18%) and soft limits (68%) to adaptation. Low income, food insecurity, access to institutional resources and finance are the most prominent of 23 vulnerabilities observed to negatively affect responses. Risk to food security, health, loss of livelihoods and decreased economic outputs are commonly associated risks driving responses. Narrow geographical and sectoral foci of the literature highlight important conceptual, sectoral and geographic areas for future research to better understand the way responses shape risk. When responses are integrated within climate risk assessment and management there is greater potential to advance the urgency of response and safeguards for the most vulnerable.
The direct impacts of climate change on crop yields and human health are individually well-studied, but the interaction between the two have received little attention. Here we analyze the consequences of global warming for agricultural workers and the crops they cultivate using a global economic model (GTAP) with explicit treatment of the physiological impacts of heat stress on humans' ability to work. Based on two metrics of heat stress and two labor functions, combined with a meta-analysis of crop yields, we provide an analysis of climate, impacts both on agricultural labor force, as well as on staple crop yields, thereby accounting for the interacting effect of climate change on both land and labor. Here we analyze the two sets of impacts on staple crops, while also expanding the labor impacts to highlight the potential importance on non-staple crops. We find, worldwide, labor and yield impacts within staple grains are equally important at +3 °C warming, relative to the 1986-2005 baseline. Furthermore, the widely overlooked labor impacts are dominant in two of the most vulnerable regions: sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. In those regions, heat stress with 3 °C global warming could reduce labor capacity in agriculture by 30%-50%, increasing food prices and requiring much higher levels of employment in the farm sector. The global welfare loss at this level of warming could reach $136 billion, with crop prices rising by 5%, relative to baseline.
The Global Climate Risk Index 2021 analyses and ranks to what extent countries and regions have been affected by impacts of climate related extreme weather events (storms, floods, heatwaves etc.). The most recent data available for 2019 and from 2000 to 2019 was taken into account.The countries most affected in 2019 were Mozambique, Zimbabwe as well as the Bahamas. For the period from 2000 to 2019 Puerto Rico, Myanmar and Haiti rank highest.This year’s 16th edition of the Climate Risk Index clearly shows: Signs of escalating climate change can no longer be ignored – on any continent or in any region. Impacts from extreme-weather events hit the poor-est countries hardest as these are particularly vulnerable to the damaging effects of a hazard, have a lower coping capacity and may need more time to rebuild and recover. The Global Climate Risk Index indicates a level of exposure and vulnerability to extreme weather events, which countries should understand as warnings in order to be prepared for more frequent and/or more severe events in the future. The stormsin Japan show: Also high-income countries are feeling climate impacts more clearly than ever before. Ef-fective climate change mitigation and adaptation to prevent or minimize potential damage is therefore in the self-interest of all countries worldwide.
The triumph of the Gaia hypothesis was to spot the extraordinary influence of Life on the Earth. ‘Life’ is the clade including all extant living beings, as distinct from ‘life’ the class of properties common to all living beings. ‘Gaia’ is Life plus its effects on habitability. Life’s influence on the Earth was hard to spot for several reasons: biologists missed it because they focused on life not Life; climatologists missed it because Life is hard to see in the Earth’s energy balance; Earth system scientists opted instead for abiotic or human-centred approaches to the Earth system; Scientists in general were repelled by teleological arguments that Life acts to maintain habitable conditions. Instead, we reason from organisms’ metabolisms outwards, showing how Life’s coupling to its environment has led to profound effects on Earth’s habitability. Recognising Life’s impact on Earth and learning from it could be critical to understanding and successfully navigating the Anthropocene.
Climate change is expected to have adverse impacts and implications for a range of human-environment systems. However, our understanding of the extent to which these impacts may propagate as cascades, compounding to form multiple impacts across sectors, is limited. Cascades result from interdependencies between systems and sub-systems of coupled natural and socio-economic systems in response to changes and feedback loops. The combined effects of interacting stressors may affect the ability of individuals, governments, and the private sector to adapt in time, before widespread damage occurs. We discuss the origins of cascading impacts thinking and present the results of an investigation of cascading impacts and implications in New Zealand. A participatory and collaborative approach was used through workshops and semi-structured interviews with sector informants, including engineers, local government staff, and financial risk managers and analysts from the financial services sectors. Qualitative data collection was combined with network and systems analysis to examine increased frequency of high-intensity rainfall events, sea-level rise and drought, across urban water infrastructure and the financial services, and the implications of cascading climate change impacts for governance. Results demonstrate that closer consideration of the combined effects of linked stressors can facilitate a better understanding of the scope and scale of climate change impacts. By using critical systems thinking in characterising and assessing how climate change impacts cascade across domains, we show the implications of cascades for their governance and reveal where climate change adaptation interventions might be focused. The research methods and insights into cascades provide a conceptual and practical basis for further development, which can inform the design of additional studies in other domains and jurisdictions.
In this introduction, we situate the topic of this Special Issue on ‘narratives of change’ in the scholarly literature about how we inform climate risk governance, including through climate services. We argue that many places experience a persistent mismatch between predominantly science-based and technical framings of climatic risk, and the place-based understandings of climate extremes and responses of people living in these places. We introduce the case studies presented in this issue and highlight their common focus on ‘narratives of change’ as one missing link in climate governance. Narratives of change address the past, present and future of a specific place understood as a weather-world; adding a cultural dimension to climate change experienced as a succession of weather events and seasons. They focus on memories of weather events and how people coped with them, and they are tested for their potential to improve climate governance under future climatic change. Moreover, attention to local narratives expands the scope of issues covered by climate information and improves its integration into social and cultural life. We offer up seven lessons for why it is important to incorporate narratives in climate governance and suggest some creative methods for doing so. Post-normal science, art-science cooperation, and the inclusion of the humanities mark the difference that the individual contributions make to the literature about climate governance and democratic decision-making.
The paper covers the public debate on BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) between 2008 and 2018. Through a qualitative analysis of around 800 feature articles, editorials, and opinion pieces published in English, German, Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian in news media and debates sections of scientific media, we highlight conspicuous aspects of the debate and relate them to the theoretical concept of post-normal science. We find that the debate is characterized by an emphasis on values, scientific uncertainty and the integrity of science, premised on a pervading sense of urgency. To a significant extent, the debate can be understood as a “normal” view of science questioning what it perceives to be unscientific model-based climate scenarios, and the scenarios, in turn, can be seen as a response to post-normal circumstances. The urgency permeating the debate provides conditions for open debate about ethical and epistemological uncertainty. The debate goes through a period of polarization – corroborating findings from previous studies on the climate science debate after COP21 – between an intense critique of BECCS inclusion in climate scenarios and reluctant acceptance thereof. Towards the end of the studied period, emphasis shifts towards reluctant acceptance, indicating that post-normal debate may only occur as a temporary state always tending towards new consensus.
We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a "Hothouse Earth" pathway even as human emissions are reduced. Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies. Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System-biosphere, climate, and societies-and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values.
Cascading events and the disruption of interconnected critical infrastructure (CI) are a well-known challenge for emergency planning and management. Although new modelling and forecasting tools are increasing the availability of mitigation options, further work is needed to consolidate good policies and practices.
This paper presents a case study on London, United Kingdom (UK). It develops an integrative research process with local stakeholders aimed at applying the theory of cascading disasters in London's response and preparedness strategies. A mixed method approach is adopted to explore the awareness of cascading risk, the perception of possible mitigation measures, and the current levels of training amongst the stakeholders of the London Resilience Partnerships. Specific items investigate the relation of cascades with cross- border crisis management, and climate change.
The results propose new quantitative and qualitative evidence that highlights the divergence between risk awareness and its integration in policies and practices, discussing options for improving multi- agency coordination and organisational resilience. The conclusions define a list of actions that should be strategic priorities for policies and decision makers, such as the improvement of inter-modal coordination and the release of open access guidelines, proposing new open questions for scholars in the field.
Understanding the reasons of the disappearance of oasis civilizations along the ancient Silk Road will provide useful references for human’s adaptation to environmental changes in the extreme arid regions in the nowadays and future. Although some studies have associated the demise of complex societies with deteriorating climate in the world, the demise of the civilizations along the ancient Silk Road has remained unresolved. Here, this paper used the nearly 2000 years of climate characteristics revealed by Guliya ice cores, combined with the reconstruction of temperature from tree rings located in the west Kunlun Mountains around the Tarim Basin to examine the climate variations in the Northwestern China in the historical periods. Then this paper compared the demise time of the ancient oases civilizations along the ancient Silk Road from the relevant annals of states and counties. The results showed that climate change may be responsible for the rise and demise of past oasis civilizations in the ancient Silk Road. The periods of fourth to fifth centuries and the seventh to eighth centuries were characterized by long-term drought accompanied by cold climate; five ancient oases and seven ancient oases were demised, respectively, during these periods. Cold–dry climate could cause a deficiency in water resources for irrigation; thus, agricultural production fell and the society was destabilized. Recently, creation of a new “Silk Road economic belt” is realized. Modern oases will face more serious threat under the climate change. The region’s irrigation area increased 67.2 % over the past 30 years. The agricultural sector consumes 93 % of regional renewable water resources. Once the drought occurred, many modern oases—like their ancient counterparts—may well trigger more civil uprising and violent conflict in the already water-stressed regions.
Cascading effects and cascading disasters are emerging fields of scientific research. The widespread diffusion of functional networks increases the complexity of interdependent systems and their vulnerability to large-scale disruptions. Although in recent years studies of interconnections and chain effects have improved significantly, cascading phenomena are often associated with the ‘‘toppling domino metaphor’’, or with high-impact, low-probability events. This paper aimed to support a paradigm shift in the state of the art by proposing a new theoretical approach to cascading events in terms of their root causes and lack of predictability. By means of interdisciplinary theory building, we demonstrate how cascades reflect the ways in which panarchies collapse. We suggest that the vulnerability of critical infrastructure may orientate the progress of events in relation to society’s feedback loops, rather than merely being an effect of natural triggers. Our conclusions point to a paradigm shift in the preparedness phase that could include escalation points and social nodes, but that also reveals a brand new field of research for disaster scholars.
Based on the reconstructed temperatures, precipitation changes, and occurrences of extreme climate events, together with historical records on fiscal deterioration, food crises, and the frequencies of popular unrest, rebellions and wars, we identified three principal ways in which climate change contributed to the collapse in the Ming dynasty. Firstly, cooling, aridification, and desertification during a cold period destroyed the military farm system, which was the main supply system for the provisioning of government troops on the northern frontiers; these impacts increased the military expenditure from 64 % of total government expenditure in 1548-1569 to 76 % in 1570-1589 and thus aggravated the national fiscal crisis that occurred during the late Ming dynasty. Secondly, climate deterioration (e.g., cooling, aridification, and an increase in the frequencies of frost- and drought-related disasters, etc.) led to a 20-50 % reduction in the per capita production of raw grain in most areas of China, which resulted in widespread food crises and exacerbated the vulnerability of social structures during the last several decades of the Ming dynasty. Thirdly, the severe droughts occurring in 1627-1643 were a key trigger to the peasantry uprising. These droughts also played a significant role to promote the peasantry uprising, especially reviving the peasantry troops by recruitment of famine victims when they nearly perished in 1633 and 1638, and severely disrupting the food supply for the government troops, resulting in the final defeat of the government troops by the peasantry troops. This study contributes to an understanding of the climate-related mechanisms behind the collapse of the Ming dynasty, and provides a historical case study that enhances our understanding of the nature of interactions between climate change and social vulnerability.
The ‘Great Acceleration’ graphs, originally published in 2004 to show socio-economic and Earth System trends from 1750 to 2000, have now been updated to 2010. In the graphs of socio-economic trends, where the data permit, the activity of the wealthy (OECD) countries, those countries with emerging economies, and the rest of the world have now been differentiated. The dominant feature of the socio-economic trends is that the economic activity of the human enterprise continues to grow at a rapid rate. However, the differentiated graphs clearly show that strong equity issues are masked by considering global aggregates only. Most of the population growth since 1950 has been in the non-OECD world but the world’s economy (GDP), and hence consumption, is still strongly dominated by the OECD world. The Earth System indicators, in general, continued their long-term, post-industrial rise, although a few, such as atmospheric methane concentration and stratospheric ozone loss, showed a slowing or apparent stabilisation over the past decade. The post-1950 acceleration in the Earth System indicators remains clear. Only beyond the mid-20th century is there clear evidence for fundamental shifts in the state and functioning of the Earth System that are beyond the range of variability of the Holocene and driven by human activities. Thus, of all the candidates for a start date for the Anthropocene, the beginning of the Great Acceleration is by far the most convincing from an Earth System science perspective.
While there is much justifiable attention to the ecological implications of global climate change, the political implications are just as important for human well‐being and social justice. We posit a basic framework by which to understand the range of political possibilities, in light of the response of global elites to climate warming and the challenges it poses to hegemonic institutional and conceptual modes of governance and accumulation. The framework also suggests some possible means through which these responses might be thwarted, and political stakes in that construction of a new hegemony—which, to avoid suggesting we know or can yet determine the form it will take, we call “climate X”.
This article interrogates the relationship between two apparently disjointed themes: the consensual presentation and mainstreaming of the global problem of climate change on the one hand and the debate in political theory/philosophy that centers around the emergence and consolidation of a post-political and post-democratic condition on the other. The argument advanced in this article attempts to tease out this apparently paradoxical condition. On the one hand, the climate is seemingly politicized as never before and has been propelled high on the policy agenda. On the other hand, a number of increasingly influential political philosophers insist on how the post-politicization (or de-politicization) of the public sphere (in parallel and intertwined with processes of neoliberalization) have been key markers of the political process over the past few decades. We proceed in four steps. First, we briefly outline the basic contours of the argument and its premises. Second, we explore the ways in which the present climate conundrum is predominantly staged through the mobilization of particular apocalyptic imaginaries. Third, we argue that this specific (re-)presentation of climate change and its associated policies is sustained by decidedly populist gestures. Finally, we discuss how this particular choreographing of climate change is one of the arenas through which a post-political frame and post-democratic political configuration have been mediated.
At their core, societal decisions about climate policy—whether emissions reductions, adaptation to climate changes, or the implementation of geoengineering—hinge on collective judgments about the extent to which adverse effects to human welfare and ecosystem services will result from changes associated with anthropogenic release of greenhouse gases and the costs associated with the emissions reductions or adaptation activities. In this article, we discuss how risk is understood in the context of climate change, which presents particularly confounding, long-term, and pervasive threats to society and ecosystems. We review theoretical approaches to risk as applied to climate change and policy responses to climate change, focusing especially on the perspectives of individuals, governments, and firms with respect to traditional decision analysis frameworks. We also evaluate the peculiar role of uncertainty in climate debates and how it affects decision making; the origins and nature of the various uncertainties; and how uncertainty is represented, framed, and, at times, wielded by scientists, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the media, politicians, and others. We conclude by assessing the limitations of and appropriate venues for risk analysis in climate decision making.
The Working Group II contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a comprehensive assessment of the scientific literature relevant to climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. The report recognizes the interactions of climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, and human societies, and integrates across the natural, ecological, social and economic sciences. It emphasizes how efforts in adaptation and in reducing greenhouse gas emissions can come together in a process called climate resilient development, which enables a liveable future for biodiversity and humankind. The IPCC is the leading body for assessing climate change science. IPCC reports are produced in comprehensive, objective and transparent ways, ensuring they reflect the full range of views in the scientific literature. Novel elements include focused topical assessments, and an atlas presenting observed climate change impacts and future risks from global to regional scales. Available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Catastrophe has increasingly become a consumer product. Perhaps because of this, we have become desensitised to the idea of catastrophe, so much so that narratives that should elicit fear and anxiety due to their reflecting a truth about our current world do not causally produce the necessary affective responses that would motivate us to act. This is the case with climate change. Through a superficial engagement with the climate change issue through social media, media, films, television, and other literature, we experience catharsis daily. The release of the fear and anxiety that should lead us to action against climate change does not make us act against it. In this article, I put forth this argument by discussing how we superficially interact with climate change and catastrophe through the media, social media, films, television, and other literature. I refer to empirical evidence that supports my position. I consider how this superficial interaction leads to desensitization and causally produces a catharsis, leading to inaction. I put forth some initial remarks on how artmaking could be approached in a way that does not desensitize us to catastrophe by considering what Heidegger, Adorno, and Marcuse have to say about the function and origin of art.
Despite suffering significantly from the adverse impacts of climate change and human-induced hazards, many people at risk deliberately choose not to migrate from hazard-prone areas in coastal Bangladesh. As many of them encounter significant challenges in maintaining their livelihoods, ascertaining how and under what circumstances voluntary non-migration decisions occur is crucial. Only a handful of studies have investigated whether individuals and groups who decide to stay put in the face of climatic hazards consider their decision to be an adaptive action. In this regard, this study contributes to the existing literature by empirically investigating the voluntary non-migration decision as an adaptation strategy through an exploration of the factors affecting this decision. We employed a systematic random sampling technique and selected 627 respondents from two climatic hazard-prone coastal districts: Khulna and Satkhira. Using the Generalized Structural Equation Model (GSEM), we found that voluntary non-migrants (84% of total respondents) appeared to enjoy the significant advantage of access to their communities' basic need provision and social support. Furthermore, the social, psychological, and economic opportunities found at their existing location (e.g., better income prospects, affordable living costs, receipt of financial help during post-disaster periods, and skills allowing them to stay in that location), as well as their access to local natural resources, strengthened their social capital and thus influenced their desire to stay. Together, these factors enhanced people's adaptability to climatic shocks and motivated them to choose voluntary non-migration as an adaptation option.
Climate change may cause socio-economic tipping points (SETPs), where the state of a socio-economic system abruptly changes to a fundamentally different state. While their potential existence is recognized, a systematic method for policy-relevant research on SETPs is lacking. This study introduces a stepwise approach for identification of SETPs that supports decision making under uncertain climate and socio-economic conditions. The approach is demonstrated with a stylized case study on the collapse of house prices (a SETP) in a coastal city, due to increasing flood risk from sea level rise. We explore four dynamic adaptive management strategies under a wide range of possible futures. We find that under scenarios with very high and rapid sea level rise, tipping points in real estate prices occur if the market responds to sudden changes in perceived flood risk rather than gradually adjusting prices to changes in flood risk in a rational manner. Such SETPs can only be avoided with a proactive strategy and when flood protection measures are implemented rapidly. Our approach can guide future studies on SETPs and seeks to move the study of SETPs towards a concept that provides perspective of action for policy makers.
Q. Edward Wang’s unparalleled four-volume survey of historiography examines the nature and significance of history writing from ancient worlds to the present day. Taking a global approach, it presents and contextualizes classic works that portray the traditions of historical writing around the world. The collection also incorporates key essays and articles from the eighteenth century to the present that analyze the continuities and transformations that have existed and taken place within those traditions.
Edited by a world-renowned, leading scholar in the field, the four volumes cover the ancient and medieval eras, the Renaissance period through to the 18th century, the rise of the Rankean school and ‘scientific history’ in the West, and new developments in worldwide historiography from the 1990s to the present day. As well as substantial contextualizing editor introductions for each volume, there are 60 individual essays and extracts included across the set, with notions of time, antiquarianism, the Annales School and postcolonialism all key topics at the heart of this vital collection.
This is an essential resource for all scholars interested in historiography and the development of history as a discipline.
This book is a must-read for researchers and students interested in gaining a comprehensive overview of the political dimensions of climate change adaptation. The authors remind us that political analysis of adaptation processes is a productive and much needed scholarly endeavour that can shed light on the social complexities and pitfalls of the growing challenges ahead of us.
Hartmut Fünfgeld
Institute of Environmental Social Science and Geography, University of Freiburg, Germany
As the issue of climate change comes to be increasingly mainstream, we must pay close attention to how, by and for whom adaptation efforts are being undertaken. This book provides the perfect guide, bringing into sharp focus the ways in which adaptation is a fundamentally political matter. This book will be essential reading for students, researchers and practitioners alike.
Harriet Bulkeley
Department of Geography, Durham University, United Kingdom
In a world facing an accelerating climate emergency, the importance of climate change adaptation is increasing. This book provides a valuable approach for a political analysis of climate change adaptation focusing on power, knowledge, participation, and, ultimately, who benefits and who loses. This timely book will be indispensable reading for scholars, students, and practitioners interested in the climate crisis.
Charles F. Parker
Department of Government and the Centre of Natural Hazards and Disaster Science, Uppsala University, Sweden
This book examines the political themes and policy perspectives related to, and influencing, climate change adaptation. It provides an informed primer on the politics of adaptation, a topic largely overlooked in the current scholarship and literature, and addresses questions such as why these politics are so important, what they mean, and what their implications are. The book also reviews various political texts on adaptation.
Leigh Glover is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Climate and Safety at Karlstad University, Sweden. He is the former Director of the Australasian Centre for the Governance & Management of Urban Transport (GAMUT) at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Mikael Granberg is a Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for
Societal Risk Research at Karlstad University, Sweden, and a Senior Research
Fellow at the Center for Natural Hazards and Disaster Science (CNDS) at Uppsala
University, Sweden. He is also Honorary Professor at the Centre for Urban
Research (CUR), RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.
The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions. The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions. A plane flying over a river of meltwater on glacier in Alaska
This chapter examines how the lessons of the past and the economic fundamentals play out for the design of nuclear energy policy and their relevance to climate change. It first considers these lessons from the past, drawing in particular on the UK experience to indicate how not to design policy in the future. It then looks at the market failures which policy seeks to address, along with the appropriate policy responses to those failures, including sunk costs and long-term contracts, carbon and long-term carbon prices, and nuclear waste management and decommissioning. Finally, the chapter discusses the characteristics of a new energy policy framework for nuclear power and the consequences of failing to get it right.
Young's essay draws attention to practices of citizenship that can arise under a government at war and explores the logic of the masculine role of protector. A government at war, which Young calls a "security regime," protects its members in an overly aggressive fashion from external dangers as well as from internal dissension. A state acting as a security regime, however, threatens to undermine democratic practice by expecting uncritical obedience and submissiveness from its population. This role toward its citizens is analogous to the role a protective family patriarch plays toward the women and children of his family. Young argues that, even from a protective government, what adult citizens want instead are relationships that respect their autonomy and equality.
Human-influenced climate change is an observed phenomenon affecting physical and biological systems across the globe. The majority of observed impacts are related to temperature changes and are located in the northern high- and mid-latitudes. However, new evidence is emerging that demonstrates that impacts are related to precipitation changes as well as temperature, and that climate change is impacting systems and sectors beyond the Northern Hemisphere. In this paper, we highlight some of this new evidence—focusing on regions and sectors that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report (IPCC AR4) noted as under-represented—in the context of observed climate change impacts, direct and indirect drivers of change (including carbon dioxide itself), and methods of detection. We also present methods and studies attributing observed impacts to anthropogenic forcing. We argue that the expansion of methods of detection (in terms of a broader array of climate variables and data sources, inclusion of the major modes of climate variability, and incorporation of other drivers of change) is key to discerning the climate sensitivities of sectors and systems in regions where the impacts of climate change currently remain elusive. Attributing such changes to human forcing of the climate system, where possible, is important for development of effective mitigation and adaptation. Current challenges in documenting adaptation and the role of indigenous knowledge in detection and attribution are described. WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:121–150. doi: 10.1002/wcc.209
For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
Precaution is usually associated with the intuition that it is better to be safe than sorry, and/or that it is sometimes necessary to act in advance of scientific certainty to prevent harmful outcomes. At this point, we cannot entirely prevent climate change, but we can affect how harmful such change is. Adaptation may therefore be understood as a precautionary measure against the damage due to climate change. 'The' precautionary principle alone is too vague to shape adaptation policy, but a limited catastrophic precautionary principle may productively guide adaptation policy makers. I argue in this paper that an explicit commitment to a precautionary approach based on the catastrophic precautionary principle could and should be made to strengthen the adaptation policies introduced at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Climate change is no longer a distant possibility. Potentially harmful climatic changes are already underway. If we want to or believe we ought to minimize the harmfulness of eventual climate impacts it will therefore be necessary for us to adapt to our changing climate. As people will be differentially affected by climate impacts depending on when, where, and in what circumstances they live, adaptive measures will have to vary with context. It turns out that those least causally responsible for climate change are predicted to suffer the most from climate impacts. As these are disproportionally the world's poor and their vulnerability is partly due to their poverty, adaptation will often intersect with development. Determining who should be held responsible for meeting the costs of adaptation, the topic of this review, is therefore a difficult task. After reviewing the relevant literature, this review identifies the need for further work on the conceptual and practical issues that arise when thinking about the ethics of adaptation. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 687–700 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.132
This article is categorized under: Climate, Nature, and Ethics > Ethics and Climate Change
For at least as long as the birth of environmentalism, discourses of ecological crisis have adopted, both consciously and unconsciously, themes and concepts derived from Jewish and Christian Apocalypses. These are ancient texts remembered best for their cosmic and spiritual revelations about the world and the world to come. The scope and methods of this adoption have varied widely: from symbolic representation (images of the Four Horsemen, for instance) to the influence of end‐time belief upon environmental policy. More recently, references to apocalypse have accompanied the study of climate change specifically. However, they have tended to do so without more than a superficial engagement with the theological and philosophical underpinnings of apocalyptic faith. This review article addresses this issue by engaging the meanings of apocalyptic faith within four distinct areas in the interdisciplinary study of climate change: (1) Christian ecotheology; (2) critical and social scientific discourse; (3) policy and media communications; and (4) contemporary philosophy and ethics. WIREs Clim Change 2014, 5:233–246. doi: 10.1002/wcc.264
This article is categorized under: Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and Knowledge
Trans‐Disciplinary Perspectives > Humanities and the Creative Arts
In this essay Chakrabarty engages with Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene F. Stoermer's concept of the'anthropocene,'proposed in 2000 to describe the geological epoch in which humans exist as the main geological force. Chakrabarty asks how fierce and irreversible climat change impacts our thinkingabout human history. Analysingthe assumptions of classical historiography as well as current research on global warming, Charkabarty concludes that in the face of climate change it becomes necessary to supplement global histories of capital with a species history of humans.
A climate 'tipping point' occurs when a small change in forcing triggers
a strongly nonlinear response in the internal dynamics of part of the
climate system, qualitatively changing its future state. Human-induced
climate change could push several large-scale 'tipping elements' past a
tipping point. Candidates include irreversible melt of the Greenland ice
sheet, dieback of the Amazon rainforest and shift of the West African
monsoon. Recent assessments give an increased probability of future
tipping events, and the corresponding impacts are estimated to be large,
making them significant risks. Recent work shows that early warning of
an approaching climate tipping point is possible in principle, and could
have considerable value in reducing the risk that they pose.
Despite a history of problems, nuclear power is being discussed as a potentially useful and appropriate electricity source for both developed and developing countries. For example, expanding nuclear power's share of electricity portfolios could reduce, relative to a fossil-intensive baseline, greenhouse gas emissions that lead to climate change. Moreover, nuclear power has long been advocated as a route to energy security and indeed, for many of the nuclear nations, it could decrease dependence on oil imports under certain technological scenarios, such as an increased use of plug-in hybrid vehicles. The nuclear industry argues that a new generation of reactors, representing a refinement of existing technology, will enable this expansion. Because of these new motivations, some advocates have applied the term ‘nuclear renaissance’ to the possibility of a rapid expansion of nuclear power to satisfy a projected growing global electricity demand, while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This article outlines the primary challenges that this unique energy source presents for such a renaissance. Like other technologies, nuclear is situated in a social and political–economic matrix that influences its evolution. After reviewing the basic aspects of the technology, I discuss the history of the existing nuclear fleet, then address the prospects for advanced and next-generation nuclear technologies. I review the economics of nuclear power as it is currently deployed and the potential changes to these economics under potential future development. In examining future scenarios, I explore the effects of national and international policies on nuclear energy. WIREs Clim Change 2011 2 397–411 DOI: 10.1002/wcc.113
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Schemes to modify large-scale environment systems or to control climate have been seriously proposed for over 50 years, some to (1) increase temperatures in high latitudes, (2) increase precipitation, (3) decrease sea ice, (4) create irrigation opportunities or to offset potential global warming by spreading dust in the stratosphere to reflect away an equivalent amount of solar energy. These and other proposed geoengineering schemes are briefly reviewed from a historical perspective. More recently, many such schemes to advertently modify climate have been proposed as cheaper methods to counteract inadvertent climatic modifications than conventional mitigation techniques such as carbon taxes or pollutant emissions regulations. Whereas proponents argue cost effectiveness, critics of geoengineering argue that there is too much uncertainty to either (1) be confident that any geoengineering scheme would work as planned, or (2) that the many decades of international political stability and cooperation needed for the continuous maintenance of such schemes to offset century long inadvertent efforts is problematic. Moreover, there is potential for transboundary conflicts should negative climatic events occur during geoengineering activities since, given all the large uncertainties, it could not be assured to victims of such events that the schemes were entirely unrelated to their damages. Nevertheless, although I believe it would be irresponsible to implement any large-scale geoengineering scheme until scientific, legal and management uncertainties are substantially narrowed, I do agree that, given the potential for large inadvertent climatic changes now being built into the earth system, more systematic study of the potential for geoengineering is probably needed.
Climate engineering, or geoengineering, refers to large-scale climate interventions to lower the earth's temperature, either by blocking incoming sunlight or removing carbon dioxide from the biosphere. Regarded as ‘technofixes’ by critics, these strategies have evoked concern that they would extend the shelf life of fossil-fuel driven socio-ecological systems for far longer than they otherwise would, or should, endure. A critical reading views geoengineering as a class project that is designed to keep the climate system stable enough for existing production systems to continue operating. This article first examines these concerns, and then goes on to envision a regime driven by humanitarian agendas and concern for vulnerable populations, implemented through international development and aid institutions. The motivations of those who fund research and implement geoengineering techniques are important, as the rationale for developing geoengineering strategies will determine which techniques are pursued, and hence which ecologies are produced. The logic that shapes the geoengineering research process could potentially influence social ecologies centuries from now.
Climate change is increasingly been called a ‘security’ problem, and there has been speculation that climate change may increase the risk of violent conflict. This paper integrates three disparate but well-founded bodies of research – on the vulnerability of local places and social groups to climate change, on livelihoods and violent conflict, and the role of the state in development and peacemaking, to offer new insights into the relationships between climate change, human security, and violent conflict. It explains that climate change increasingly undermines human security in the present day, and will increasingly do so in the future, by reducing access to, and the quality of, natural resources that are important to sustain livelihoods. Climate change is also likely to undermine the capacity of states to provide the opportunities and services that help people to sustain their livelihoods. We argue that in certain circumstances these direct and indirect impacts of climate change on human security may in turn increase the risk of violent conflict. The paper then outlines the broad contours of a research programme to guide empirical investigations into the risks climate change poses to human security and peace.
