Climate change decision-making: science, policy and economics

1998 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohan Munasinghe
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Science Policy

Medialization, Scientists, and Climate Change

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Peter Peters
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Global Climate Change ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Public Communication ◽  
The Public ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
The Media

This is an advance summary of a forthcoming article in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science. Please check back later for the full article. Global climate change is one of the risks that have become known to the public and to decision makers only through scientific research. Climate scientists were the dominant communicators in the early climate-change discourse, putting the issue on the public agenda, and they remained important communicators in later discourse stages. Among the scientists visible in the mass media coverage on climate change are climate researchers as well as researchers from other disciplines dealing with technical or socioeconomic aspects of global climate-change mitigation and adaptation. Surveys among scientists involved in research on climate change and content analyses of media coverage on climate change show the widespread involvement of scientists in public communication and inform us about their communication-relevant beliefs, preferences, attitudes, and perception of their role as public communicators. Two theoretical perspectives can be used to understand the role of climate researchers as public communicators: medialization of science and specification of the “public expert” role in the science-policy context of climate change. Peter Weingart’s medialization of science framework points to the media orientation of scientific communicators in the climate-change discourse. The medialization thesis assumes that scientists and scientific organizations have a strong interest in increasing their visibility and caring for their image in the media in order to build legitimacy and raise support for their demands and persuasive goals. The thesis further argues that scientists interested in public visibility tend to adjust their communication behavior and public messages to media expectations and also consider media criteria such as public attention and recognition when making decisions about research and scholarly communication. According to this thesis, the media orientation of science not only affects the public representation of science but also has repercussions for scientific inquiry, which threatens scientific autonomy and constitutes a risk to the quality of scientific knowledge. The science-policy context of the public discourse on global climate change has important implications for scientists' role as public communicators. Whether or not they themselves recognize it, scientists in the climate-change discourse are not primarily involved as popularizers of their research but as “public experts” whose messages are received—and probably most often intended—as contributions to the understanding, assessment, and governance of risks resulting from global climate change. Scientists construe their expert role in different ways, however. One dimension of variation concerns the readiness of scientists in public communication to go beyond relatively certain facts and also offer interpretations, generalizations, or projections that are uncertain and may be controversial within science. A second dimension concerns its relation to decision making: assuming a guarded role as provider of reliable knowledge to inform opinion formation and decision making of (imagined) clients such as public or politics versus an advocacy role aiming at pushing public opinion and decisions into a particular direction. Some perceptions of the expert role conform more with traditional scientific norms of objectivity and responsibility than others.

scholarly journals Nature-Based Solutions for Urban Climate Change Adaptation: Linking Science, Policy, and Practice Communities for Evidence-Based Decision-Making

BioScience ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (6) ◽  
pp. 455-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niki Frantzeskaki ◽  
Timon McPhearson ◽  
Marcus J Collier ◽  
Dave Kendal ◽  
Harriet Bulkeley ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Urban Climate ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Evidence Based Decision Making

Megadrought and Collapse

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Agricultural Landscapes ◽  
15Th Century ◽  
Societal Collapse ◽  
The Face ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Paleoclimate Proxy ◽  
Habitat Tracking

This is the first book to treat the major examples of megadrought and societal collapse, from the late Pleistocene end of hunter–gatherer culture and origins of cultivation to the 15th century AD fall of the Khmer Empire capital at Angkor, and ranging from the Near East to South America. Previous enquiries have stressed the possible multiple and internal causes of collapse, such overpopulation, overexploitation of resources, warfare, and poor leadership and decision-making. In contrast, Megadrought and Collapse presents case studies of nine major episodes of societal collapse in which megadrought was the major and independent cause of societal collapse. In each case the most recent paleoclimatic evidence for megadroughts, multiple decades to multiple centuries in duration, is presented alongside the archaeological records for synchronous societal collapse. The megadrought data are derived from paleoclimate proxy sources (lake, marine, and glacial cores; speleothems, or cave stalagmites; and tree-rings) and are explained by researchers directly engaged in their analysis. Researchers directly responsible for them discuss the relevant current archaeological records. Two arguments are developed through these case studies. The first is that societal collapse in different time periods and regions and at levels of social complexity ranging from simple foragers to complex empires would not have occurred without megadrought. The second is that similar responses to megadrought extend across these historical episodes: societal collapse in the face of insurmountable climate change, abandonment of settlements and regions, and habitat tracking to sustainable agricultural landscapes. As we confront megadrought today, and in the likely future, Megadrought and Collapse brings together the latest contributions to our understanding of past societal responses to the crisis on an equally global and diverse scale.

Dryland Degradation and Expansion: Implications for Mexican Policies from the Earth System Perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Gabriel Lopez Porras
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Science Policy ◽  
Land Degradation ◽  
Water Scarcity ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Earth System ◽  
Sustainable Land Management ◽  
System Perspective ◽  
The Earth

Despite international efforts to stop dryland degradation and expansion, current dryland pathways are predicted to result in large-scale migration, growing poverty and famine, and increasing climate change, land degradation, conflicts and water scarcity. Earth system science has played a key role in analysing dryland problems, and has been even incorporated in global assessments such as the ones made by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. However, policies addressing dryland degradation, like the ‘Mexican programme for the promotion of sustainable land management’, do not embrace an Earth system perspective, so they do not consider the complexity and non-linearity that underlie dryland problems. By exploring how this Mexican programme could integrate the Earth system perspective, this paper discusses how ’Earth system’ policies could better address dryland degradation and expansion in the Anthropocene.

Wise Ancestors, Good Ancestors: Why Mindfulness Matters in the Promotion of Planetary Health

Challenges ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Alan C. Logan ◽  
Susan H. Berman ◽  
Richard B. Scott ◽  
Brian M. Berman ◽  
Susan L. Prescott
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Health Inequalities ◽  
Environmental Degradation ◽  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Resource Depletion ◽  
Global Burden ◽  
Non Communicable Diseases ◽  
Planetary Health ◽  
Cultural Aspects

The concept of planetary health blurs the artificial lines between health at scales of person, place, and planet. It emphasizes the interconnected grand challenges of our time, and underscores the need for integration of biological, psychological, social, and cultural aspects of health in the modern environment. Here, in our Viewpoint article, we revisit vaccine pioneer Jonas Salk’s contention that wisdom is central to the concept of planetary health. Our perspective is centered on the idea that practical wisdom is associated with decision-making that leads to flourishing—the vitality and fullest potential of individuals, communities, and life on the planet as a whole. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has illustrated the acute consequences of unwise and mindless leadership; yet, wisdom and mindfulness, or lack thereof, is no less consequential to grotesque biodiversity losses, climate change, environmental degradation, resource depletion, the global burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs), health inequalities, and social injustices. Since mindfulness is a teachable asset linked to both wisdom and flourishing, we argue that mindfulness deserves much greater attention in the context of planetary health.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document