Climate Change Narratives Research Articles

Gender and climate change ‘through other eyes’: Grassroots women’s responses to changing environments in southern Africa

abstract In this article we draw on the first-hand experience and close walk that the first author (Dorah Marema) has had implementing various projects over a 10-year period with GenderCC Southern Africa – Women for Climate Justice (GenderCCSA), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) working on the intersection between climate change and gender in South Africa. In particular, we examine how issues of vulnerability, agency and gender are used/misused and understood in the contexts of the period of the first author’s work with GenderCCSA. We first trace the shifts in the climate change narratives and discourse, examining how terms such as gender and vulnerability are used or misused, before presenting some of the initial assessments of how ‘transformational’ and ‘empowering’ the projects that were implemented have or have not been for the participants who were engaged in the projects. The article draws from three cases, illuminating the diverse roles, many of them related to leadership and agency, and actions that women are taking when faced with current and past climate risks. We interrogate the ‘northern gaze’ of climate issues and pay particular attention to what a ‘southern view’ may offer – is this different to ours, similar and why and what can we learn and gain from the perspectives and views on enhanced agency in the face of climate stresses and challenges? The role of funders in shaping the work that GenderCCSA has been involved in over the years and how has this support either enhanced or weakened women’s agency in climate change, is also interrogated. By illuminating the valuable experiences derived from the three climate action projects over a decade of effort and actions viewed through a gendered lens, we hope to enhance and add to the critical work that points to the need for a more nuanced appreciation of grassroots women’s experience and learnings in the Southern climate change experience.

Summer Storms, Food and Representations of the Climate Crisis in Brit Bildøen’s Sju Dagar I August and Agnar Lirhus’s Liten Kokebok

"Summer Storms, Food, and Representations of the Climate Crisis in Brit Bildøen’s Sju dagar i august and Agnar Lirhus’s Liten kokebok. This article discusses representations of climate change in contemporary realistic fiction from Norway. I first focus my attention on the depiction of extreme weather and “risk society” in Brit Bildøen’s Sju dagar i august (Seven days in august, 2014) and then explore the concept of “ecological masculinities” and expressions of care in Agnar Lirhus’s Liten kokebok (Little cookbook, 2016). Although the two novels I discuss thematise climatic disruptions in different ways, they are similarly intertwining characters’ experiences of the natural world with personal feelings of loss and grief. I thus suggest that climate change imagery in Norwegian realistic fiction is often interwoven with an affective dimension. Finally, the aim of this article is to illustrate how the climate crisis has pervaded Norwegian literature, while providing some examples of how texts that lay outside of what is typically considered the cli-fi novel have the potential to engage with this theme. Keywords: climate change narratives, contemporary Norwegian fiction, risk society, extreme weather, ecological masculinities, care, Brit Bildøen, Agnar Lirhus"

Presidential stories of fear: Focusing congressional climate change mitigation attention in the United States

AbstractDo presidential climate change narratives increase related congressional attention in the United States? Narrative theory says since narratives leverage cognitive heuristics, they should focus policy‐making attention in institutions more efficiently than non‐narrative statements. This study identifies and tests climate change statements and narratives, including those focused on solutions, or “stories of hope,” and those focused on problems and victims, “stories of fear,” for relationships with congressional attention using time series analysis. Findings suggest a relationship between narrative and hearings, but not for non‐narrative statements and hearings. Furthermore, while narratives are related to hearings generally, stories of fear have larger effects, but only in conditions of single party control of the US Presidency and Congress. This analysis supports theory about narratives and institutional influence and offers the additional concept of stories of fear and hope as impactful on political institutions.

Felled Forests and Fallowed Fields: Establishing a Narrative of Ecological and Climate Change in Mongol-Era Goryeo

Abstract: Goryeo (918–1392) was a politically and commercially integrated part of the wider Mongol Empire (1206–1368), while also temporally situated in the difficult transition from the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) to the Little Ice Age (LIA). Yet narratives of Goryeo’s incorporation into the Mongol world remain overwhelmingly focused on politics, economics, and culture. Since Alfred Crosby’s Ecological Imperialism , scholars have increasingly been sensitive to the ecological impacts of imperialism and colonialism, while Geoffrey Parker has highlighted the integral role of climate in human history. This study seeks to combine these two approaches and argues that the confluence of Mongol imperialism and climate change was profoundly impactful on Goryeo’s environment and ecologies. Invasion and incorporation into the Mongol Empire spurred processes of deforestation and agro-ecological transformation, as armies traversed the peninsula, populations were displaced, and capitals were (re)built. Therein, an arguably drier, cooler, and less stable climate compounded anthropocentric agro-ecological dislocation and sylvan ecological disruption. Consequently, political transitions, as in the 1258 fall of the Choe dictatorship and the end of Goryeo itself in 1392, cannot be separated from the climate destabilization of the MWP-LIA transition.

Influential Spanish Politicians’ Discourse of Climate Change on Twitter: A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Study

This piece of research explores language use in a sample of unprecedentedly studied discourse which is that of climate change communication by influential Spanish politicians via Twitter. For that purpose, we created a specialized corpus composed of tweets tackling climate change that were posted by influential Spanish politicians during the past decade. Our aim was to reveal prominent linguistic patterns that are susceptible of conveying a specific worldview (i.e.: the wording of reality) of climate change to Twitter users. Our analysis started with keywords analysis in order to gather quantitative data about the lexical choices deployed in our corpus, then by means of qualitative analysis based on semantic classification of keywords and the examination of their concordances we were able to point out distinctive features of our corpus’ discourse. Our results have revealed the prevalence of specific linguistic patterns, metaphors and frames that contribute to create a narrative of climate change as a villain and the human race, specifically political leaders, as the saviour.

Law, justice and the role of courts in changing the social superstructure narrative in climate litigation

Law, justice and the role of courts in changing the social superstructure narrative in climate litigation

Powerful stories of local climate action: Comparing the evolution of narratives using the “narrative rate” index

AbstractThe complex relationship between local climate action and reducing global emissions is often difficult to grasp and cities might scale back their ambitions if they realize that the way is hard and rocky. We analyze local climate change narratives through the lens of the narrative policy framework (NPF). Following the NPF, policy actors use narratives to communicate information to change an existing system in order to achieve a specific goal. For our study, this implies that local climate action can be improved by using narratives to communicate information to achieve climate neutrality. We focus on the position and interplay of the most important and dominant actors and concepts in the plot of the narratives. To better analyze the main actors and content of the NPF plot in a systematic and comparable way, we offer the “narrative rate index” to dynamically trace the narratives. To include the dynamics and effects of global significant developments in the plots of the NPF narratives, we selected three phases between January 2018 and June 2021. What are the main characters and dominant actors in the plot of the narratives in the two cases? Are the narratives different depending on the context of the city, and are there general observable patterns? Our findings identify the central actors in the narratives of both cities: the science institute in Karlsruhe and the City Administration in Mannheim. Karlsruhe, a climate change pioneer, has slowed down its climate change activities somewhat, while Mannheim is a latecomer with high ambitions.

Ancestral Lands and Genders

The revitalization of Indigenous ways of knowing and being with land is central to addressing the devastating impacts of climate change. This article contributes to growing research in Indigenous Climate Change Studies by focusing on connections between ecology, sexuality, and gender. To track the histories of gendered violence for Two Spirit peoples is to also follow the marked wounds of land dispossession, excavation, and exploitation. Conversely, Two Spirit futures are deeply imbricated in not only surviving but also flourishing among post-apocalyptic conditions. Through socio-linguistic analyses of western animacy hierarchies and a historical analysis of colonial fables which casted the racialized-gendered other as monstrous, this article critiques popularized end-of-the-world discourses on climate change narratives. Alternatively, the article concludes by offering a reading of Indigiqueer speculative science fiction, gleaning methods of not only survival and resistance but also resilience amongst post-apocalyptic conditions. Ultimately, this paper argues that the revitalization of Indigenous genders is in-part linked to the present revitalization and protection of ecological life-worlds, centering Two Spirit knowledge at what settlers may fear to be “the end of the world.”

The United Nations Narrative of Climate Change: The Logic of Apocalypse

Abstract: This paper emphasizes the crucial role that language use plays in climate change communication. In particular, this paper examines UN public discourse and narratives about climate change. It will be shown that the climate change is often described as a "threat to human wellbeing" and as an external enemy—the Other. On the other hand, humanity is often portrayed as a victim of climate change. The consequence of this rhetoric and logic of apocalypse is insufficient action in relation to climate change. The narrative construction of the Other that is described as a threat is founded on binary oppositions: we/they, self/other, culture/nature, human/nonhuman and so forth. As long as climate change is described as an external enemy and "independent matter" and climate policy is based on binary oppositions, action to combat climate change will remain insufficient.

“Why aren’t people terrified!” Analysing the efficacy of the apocalyptic narrative of climate change

“Why aren’t people terrified!” Analysing the efficacy of the apocalyptic narrative of climate change

Bomb and Climate Change in Fact and Fiction

This essay counterpoints two existential threats in our lifetimes—nuclear apocalypse and climate catastrophe—comparing how they have been recorded in historical documents and how they have registered in the American imagination. It surveys non-fiction and fiction, including a few films, to uncover persistent patterns of American denial that may lead—in fact, scientists increasingly believe will lead—to climate apocalypse. Strong historical and thematic similarities exist until, surprisingly and even shockingly, they diverge at their imagined endpoints. My essay turns to examples from the United States’ history as a nuclear power. These include governmental suppression of information after the bombing of Hiroshima, willful distortions of how the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved, and controversial museum exhibitions since 2000. I also analyze American perceptions of climate change, as directly informed by numerous, but flaccid, reports, conferences, and summits on “global warming” that activist youth groups now parody in postings and memes. The essay examines the kind of doom-laden fantasies that I myself once had about the threat of nuclear annihilation. It looks to the worlds of fiction and film for iterations of the same kind of dread and doom. Imaginative projections in fiction include motifs such as “empty cities” with no sense of human responsibility for the absence of people, strong themes of racial disparity, and the exploration of human depravity versus the possibility of cooperation and community. Primary fictional examples of nuclear plots include Cormac McCarthy and Octavia Butler, and the suppressed 1959 racial drama The World, the Flesh, and the Devil, starring Harry Belafonte and Inger Stevens. For cli-fi fiction, the essay touches on similar preoccupations in novels by Butler, Kim Stanley Robinson, and a host of 21st-century others. My topic has renewed urgency in 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reintroduced the nuclear threat and forestalled action to slow climate change. But—and this emerges as an important payoff in the essay—nuclear and climate change narratives differ strongly in how we conceive of their endpoints. Despite sporadic fears about terrorists after 9/11, about North Korea, and now about Ukraine, Americans still by and large expect that, absent a true madman (Putin being a chief suspect), nuclear restraint will hold. In contrast, with regard to climate catastrophe, an increasing number of examples in both fact and fiction now expect climate catastrophes that will end humanity but (unlike nuclear winter), not end life on Earth which will remain, and increasingly become, both inventive and fecund. The essay ends with a meditation on the possible, even likely, consequences of expecting, and even accepting, the inevitability of climate apocalypse on a human scale. Archive: Selected 20th and 21st-century American novels, grouped by theme and outcome and cited briefly; a few 20th and 21st-century films; best-selling non-fiction books: Schell’s The Fate of the Earth. Weisman’s The World Without Us, the History Channel’s Life After People, Scranton’s We’re Doomed, Now What? Wallace-Wells’ The Uninhabitable Earth, Rich’s Losing Earth and others. Academic books by Nixon, Scranton, Ghosh, Purdy, McClintock, and others.

False climate change narratives undermine health sector engagement

False climate change narratives undermine health sector engagement

NARRATIVE EMPATHY

Understanding the reasoning behind diverse views grows empathy and can help strengthen democracy. This study examines narratives and their influence on individuals, to see if individuals only empathize with narratives from those with whom they share identity. Using an experimental design, we test empathy with working class climate change narratives. Results showed participants who agreed with anthropogenic climate change, who were given both evidence and a narrative, empathized with the narrator (either an organic farmer or a mechanic) that told a pro-climate change narrative. The greatest empathy was for the mechanic telling a pro-climate change narrative. Conversely, participants who did not agree with human-caused climate change and who were given evidence without narrative had more empathy for the organic farmer (over the mechanic) who told a pro-climate change narrative. Overall, we found some identity issues negatively influenced empathy, but we also found examples where individuals moved beyond their identity.

Study protocol: International joint research project 'climate change resilience of Indigenous socioecological systems' (RISE).

BackgroundAnthropogenic changes in the environment are increasingly threatening the sustainability of socioecological systems on a global scale. As stewards of the natural capital of over a quarter of the world’s surface area, Indigenous Peoples (IPs), are at the frontline of these changes. Indigenous socioecological systems (ISES) are particularly exposed and sensitive to exogenous changes because of the intimate bounds of IPs with nature. Traditional food systems (TFS) represent one of the most prominent components of ISES, providing not only diverse and nutritious food but also critical socioeconomic, cultural, and spiritual assets. However, a proper understanding of how future climate change may compromise TFS through alterations of related human-nature interactions is still lacking. Climate change resilience of indigenous socioecological systems (RISE) is a new joint international project that aims to fill this gap in knowledge.Methods and designRISE will use a comparative case study approach coupling on-site socioeconomic, nutritional, and ecological surveys of the target ISES of Sakha (Republic of Sakha, Russian Federation) and Karen (Kanchanaburi, Thailand) people with statistical models projecting future changes in the distribution and composition of traditional food species under contrasting climate change scenarios. The results presented as alternative narratives of future climate change impacts on TFS will be integrated into a risk assessment framework to explore potential vulnerabilities of ISES operating through altered TFS, and possible adaptation options through stakeholder consultation so that lessons learned can be applied in practice.DiscussionBy undertaking a comprehensive analysis of the socioeconomic and nutritional contributions of TFS toward the sustainability of ISES and projecting future changes under alternative climate change scenarios, RISE is strategically designed to deliver novel and robust science that will contribute towards the integration of Indigenous issues within climate change and sustainable agendas while generating a forum for discussion among Indigenous communities and relevant stakeholders. Its goal is to promote positive co-management and regional development through sustainability and climate change adaptation.

Multispecies storytelling in botanical worlds: The creative agencies of plants in contested ecologies

This paper argues for engaging in multispecies storytelling with plants to better conceptualise the ethics and contested ecologies associated with biodiversity loss. It focuses specifically on proteas, the iconic species of South Africa's threatened fynbos biome, to explore the possibilities of an ethical dialogue between human and more-than-human diversities, and to consider what might be gained from understanding plants as both agentic in contested ecologies and as storytelling figures worthy of attention. The paper draws on John Ryan’s conceptualization of phytography as a way of engaging in multispecies storytelling with plants. It teases out interwoven botanic and human histories, and the ways in which iconic proteas have written themselves into the narratives of their human interlocutors in the context of European settler colonialism, conservation, floral nativism and post-apartheid nation-building. The case for phytography is developed through an examination of the corporeal rhetoric of proteas in two examples. The first concerns the Mace Pagoda, a protea that resists narratives of extinction by writing back its percipience, agency, and resilience into human stories of anthropogenic habitat loss. The second focuses on botanical traces that result from absence, specifically the non-appearance in recent years of proteas in the Cederberg area of the Western Cape. The paper suggests that absence is a form of corporeal rhetoric through which plants write themselves into narratives of rapid climate change and multispecies loss. The final section of the paper explores questions of ethics that emerge from engaging with plants as storytellers, reflects on the kinds of human-plant relationships that are possible in the context of environmental catastrophe, and examines the possibilities that phytography provides for more-than-human engagements with plant life.

Situating climate change narrative for conceptualizing adaptation strategies: a case study of coffee growers in South India

Situating climate change narrative for conceptualizing adaptation strategies: a case study of coffee growers in South India

Blue bird in a coal mine: How 2020 Democratic presidential candidates framed climate change on Twitter

ABSTRACT Climate change is a consensus issue among US Democrats, yet even within this agreement there can be divergence. Rooted in scholarship on rational choice theory and framing, this study content analyzes how the top four 2020 Democratic presidential candidates differentially framed climate change on Twitter. Results revealed that (a) progressive versus moderate Democrats constructed climate change narratives befitting their intraparty ideologies, (b) candidates created cohesive framing strategies across Entman’s framing functions and a newly proposed function of framing called ”affected publics,” and (c) climate change frames were integrated with the campaign’s overarching themes and issue foci.

Developing Survey Methods for Collecting Individual Policy Narratives: A case study of climate change narratives using an engaged convenience sample

We examine the assumption of individuals as ‘homo narrans’ and the effect of their demographics and beliefs in shaping policy narratives, using climate change as a case. To do so we use a version of the Narrative Policy Framework codebook to analyze open-ended survey responses in a highly liberal and knowledgeable convenience sample. We use two different ways of collecting narratives in surveys. The first method relies on priming participants to consider certain narrative elements, while the other primes participants to consider the overarching narrative instead of individual elements. In line with public opinion research, we find that conservative ideology and media choices are associated with the use of fewer victims and policy problems. Finally, we find that wording a question in a way that primes overall narratives and problems produces a more reliable result in terms of complete policy narratives than do questions geared toward other narrative elements. We conclude that open-ended survey questions provide a valuable and underutilized, but limited, source of data for scholars interested in the NPF.

Interplays between changing biophysical and social dynamics under climate change: Implications for limits to sustainable adaptation in food systems.

Climate change scenarios have significant implications for the livelihoods and food security of particular groups in society and will necessitate a range of adaptation actions. While there is a significant literature on the social as well as biophysical factors and limits to adaptation, less is known about the interactions between these, and what such interactions mean for the prospects of achieving sustainable and resilient food systems. This paper is an attempt at addressing this gap by examining changing biophysical and social factors, with specific consideration of vulnerable groups, across four case studies (Ghana, Malawi, Norway and Spain). In each case, future climate change scenarios and associated biophysical limits are mapped onto four key social factors that drive vulnerability and mediate adaptation, namely, scale, history, power and politics, and social differentiation. We then consider what the interaction between biophysical limits and socio-political dynamics means for the options for and limits to future adaptation, and how climate may interact with, and reshape, socio-political elements. We find that biophysical limits and socio-political factors do not operate in isolation, but interact, with dynamic relationships determining the 'space' or set of options for sustainable adaptation. By connecting the perspectives of biophysical and social factors, the study illuminates the risks of unanticipated outcomes that result from the disregard of local contexts in the implementation of adaptation measures. We conclude that a framework focusing on the space for sustainable adaptation conditioned by biophysical and social factors, and their interactions, can help provide evidence on what does and does not constitute sustainable adaptation, and help to counter unhelpful narratives of climate change as a sole or dominant cause of challenges in food systems.

BRICS Countries in International Climate Policy

The article presents an analysis of the BRICS countries climate policies at the global and national levels. The authors consider the positions of these states within the framework of both international climate conferences (Conference of the Parties) held under the auspices of the UN since 1992, and the summits of BRICS member states in the years 2011-2020. The paper covers strategies and results of national climate policies implemented in these countries. Using structural, comparative, and content analysis methods, the authors emphasize that BRICS countries play a key role in stabilizing the climate of our planet today. It is impossible to achieve the main aim of the Paris Agreement without a comprehensive transformation of environmental practices in these societies. BRICS adheres to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in its position towards international climate policy; the BRICS countries stand for sustainable economic growth through the introduction of new environmental technologies, and against restrictive measures that impede their economic development. At the same time, the Russian economys dependence on the extraction and export of fuel resources complicates environmental transformation. Russia is dominated by a negative narrative of climate change, where the urgent ecological modernization of the economy is seen as a threat to key sectors (oil and gas) of the economy. The implementation of international agreements to reduce the carbon intensity of the Russian economy, the creation of conditions for the transition to climate-neutral technologies, would contribute not only to the fight against global climate change, but would become a powerful incentive for the modernization of the economy, accelerating innovation and increasing its competitiveness.