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Diana Liverman's Lecture Notes and Links
on Climate and Society
Lecture I - History of climate-society research and current institutional research agendas
Lecture II - Theoretical perspecives on climate-society research
Lecture III - Methods in climate-society research - Part I: Statistics and simulation
Lecture IV - Methods in climate-society research - Part II: Surveys and interviews.
Lecture V - Ecoomics and climate - Some basic concepts.
Lecture VI - Climate variability and vulnerability assessment
Bibliography and links
Lecture I:
History of climate-society research and current institutional research agendas
Climate and Society
- Research into climate-society relationships has a long history
- Greek, Roman, Asian philosophers
- Colonial exploration (Relaciones, Humbolt)
- Climate correlation and environmental determinism (early 20C Huntington, Semple, Toynbee)
Climate and Society (cont.)
- Applied climatology
- Agricultural meteorology (Rosenberg)
- Climate and history (Lamb, Ladurie)
- Natural hazards (White)
- Climate impact assessment (Kates, Parry)
- Human dimensions of global environmental change
Human dimensions of global change
- Social causes, societal consequences, and responses to global environmental change (climate, biodiversity)
- Causes of change and of vulnerability
- Land use change and energy use
- Driving forces of population, consumption, technology, culture and institutions
- Consequences of change and variations for society
- Climate impacts(water, agriculture, ecosystems, health)
- Environmental change impacts
- Responses and policies
- Adaptation (adjust to change)
- Mitigation (prevent change)
- Integrated assessment
Disciplines working on Climate and Society
- Geography, Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, History, Sociology/Demography, Statistics, Psychology, Philosophy
- Resource management (Agronomy, Agricultural Economics, Forestry, Water resource management)
Public health, Law
Research Agendas
- US Global Change Research Program and Pathways
- International Human Dimensions Program
- Inter American Institute for Global Change Research
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
US Global Change Research Program
- Established in late 1980s as a funding program within the National Science Foundation
- Initially driven by concerns about global warming and with a focus on direct causes (emissions) and consequences (climate impacts)
- Also on costs and benefits of policy choices
- Expanded set of funding agencies (EPA, NOAA, NASA)
- Shift to a focus on driving forces and basic social processes (decision making, risk perception, demographic change, global economic restructuring), on integrated and regional assessment, and to climate variability and ecosystems
- Image problem - social science is "immature, not empirical"
- Read "Pathways Chapter 7
- Link to USCRP WWW page: http://www.usgcrp.gov
International Human Dimensions Programme IHDP
- Originated in early 1990s with International Social Science Council (ISSC)
- Now coordinated through International Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) as sibling to World Climate Research Program (WCRP) and International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP)
- Research Agenda
- Land Use Land Cover Change (LUCC-IGBP)
- Industrial Transformation
- Environmental Security
- Comparative institutions and policy
- Perception and attitudes
- Training, Conferences, Support for national HD programs
- Link to IHDP WWW page: http://ibm.rhrz.uni-bonn.de/IHDP/
Inter American Institute for Global Change : revised themes
- UNDERSTANDING CLIMATE VARIABILITY IN THE AMERICAS
- COMPARATIVE STUDIES OF ECOSYSTEMS, BIODIVERSITY, LAND USE AND WATER RESOURCES IN THE AMERICAS
- CHANGES IN THE COMPOSITION OF THE ATMOSPHERE, OCEANS AND FRESH WATERS
- INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT, HUMAN DIMENSIONS AND APPLICATIONS
- Link to IAI WWW page: http://www.iai.int/
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and FCCC
- Focus on scientific knowledge about climate change
- 1990: First assessment, greenhouse gas emission trends
climate impacts on agricultural, water etc.
- 1992: Framework convention on climate change
- 1995: Second assessment, vulnerability, economics, health, ecosystems, modeling of impacts, regional concerns
- 1998: Kyoto
- 2000: Third assessment ?
- Link to IPCC WWW page: http://www.ipcc.ch
Climate and Society discussion questions
- Why is social science important (or not!)?
- What are the most important "human issues?
- How does climate-society research contribute to sustainable development?
- What progress has been made in understanding human interactions with climate?
- What are the priority research areas proposed in "Pathways and are they policy relevant?
- Would you (or scientists in your country) emphasize different research priorities?
Lecture II:
Theoretical perspectives on climate-society research
Social science theory/explanation and climate studies - I
- There is no overarching theory of the human-environment relationship although individual scholars adhere strongly to certain explanations - this makes consensus and modeling difficult
- Relationship between theory, hypotheses, data, analysis, policy and politics
- Human-environment relationship - people under, over, in harmony with nature
- Basic human processes - individual psychology, behavior, social, economic, political interactions
Social science theory/explanation and climate studies - II
- Human-Environment
- Nature controls people (environmental determinism)
- People control nature (possibilism, technological optimism, anthropocentrism)
- People are part of nature (ecosystems, ecocentrism)
- Human-human
- People act as rational individuals in a free system (neoclassical economics)
- People act in accordance with individual psychological characteristics and/or their socioeconomic and family status (behavioral)
- Some people control others through institutions and structures of power and ideology (political economy,marxism, feminism)
- People are subjective, unique (humanism, postmodernism)
Environment and Society - theory I
- Biological explanations - human activity and behavior responds to basic biological drivers (physiology, reproduction)
- Environmental determinism - climatic correlations with human activity and productivity, economic development, cultural and racial character (description, speculation, statistical analysis)
- Possibilism and cultural ecology - human transformation and adaptation to environmental constraints through technology and social organization (e.g. engineering, irrigation) (Sauer, Kroeber)
- Economics (neoclassical) - individuals act according to rational assessment of costs and benefits (e.g. land use decisions maximize profit). Several modifications of economics include game theory, contingent valuation
- Behavioral - individuals (or groups) perceive and act according to their (shared) socioeconomic or psychological characteristics (e.g. attitudes and responses to natural disasters)
Environment and society - theory II
- Structural/marxist/political economy - political and economic structures serve the interests of a few powerful individuals and exploit others (e.g. nature pleads not guilty, poverty and famine, Hewitt, Watts, DeCastro)
- Humanism- human experience of nature is subjective/unique (representations of climate in literature, art, religion e.g. Musset)
- Postmodernism - human environment unpredictable/constructed by discourses (sociocultural construction of climatic threats and science e.g. Jasanoff)
- Feminism - gender differences in relation to nature; patriarchy vulnerability, and science (Seager, Merchant)
- Political ecology - interactions between structures, agents and nature
Forecast application simulation
- Three groups (MesoAmerica? Pacific South America? Northeastern South America?)
- Assume this is early 1998
- Discuss climatological forecast for region (wet/dry with what level of confidence)
- Identify 5-6 potential user groups for forecast (e.g. agricultural extension, reservoir managers, emergency relief agency)
- Each participant "role play a user to discuss response to forecast, one person to synthesize and report discussion
- is the information understandable, timely and certain enough to act ?
- is there an ability to respond to the forecast ?
- what are the implications of forecast errors ?
- Is there a need for social science or applications research to support the use of the forecast
- What are 3-5 main challenges or issues for users in each region?
- What does a User perspective tell the forecaster?
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Page Last Updated: July 23, 1999
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