Politics Of Climate Change Research Articles

Local Governments’ Capacity to Adapt to Climate Change in Ghana: Evidence From Bongo District

Global environmental policies require strong local actions to make an impact. However, the capacity for local action and impact are often taken for granted. This paper examines the institutional capacity of the Bongo district assembly to support the livelihood adaptation capacity of rural smallholder farmers. Twenty key informant interviews were done, and five focus group discussions were also conducted in five communities. The paper finds that the local government is too weak to facilitate climate change adaptation at the local level due to four institutional barriers: politics of climate change, barriers relating to centralized planning, limited funding stream, and absence of skilled manpower.

Unraveling the complexity! Exploring asymmetries in climate change, political globalization, and food security in the case of Pakistan

Climate change and global politics pose potential threats to food security by impacting crop productivity and food availability. Short-term variability resulting from climate change and global politics may disrupt the stability of entire food systems. The regional implications of these factors remain uncertain, prompting this study to investigate the relationship between climate change, global politics, global inflation, and food security. Using time series data spanning from 1981 to 2021, the Non-linear Auto Regressive Distributive Lag (NARDL) approach was used to examine the asymmetric effects of political globalization (proxied by political globalization) and environmental change (proxied by CO2 and Mean Temperature) on food security. Our findings indicate that mean temperature (MT), CO2 emissions, and political globalization (POLG) had an asymmetrical effect on food security as CO2_POS, CO2_NEG, and MT_POS, MT_NEG had a positive relationship with food security while POLG_POS, POLG_NEG had a negative relationship with food security. The current research proposes that Pakistan needs a holistic approach to address climate and food security, including sustainable farming, water management, climate-resilient infrastructure, social safety nets, and local food production. Government subsidies and incentives can encourage heat-tolerant crop cultivation, while international collaboration and alliances are needed to strengthen domestic agriculture, invest in research, implement social safety nets, and manage exchange rate fluctuations.

Global Climate Change Politics: Critical Appraisal of India’s Changing Role

Global warming and consequent climate change have emerged as serious issues and have started featuring on almost all multilateral forums with statements warning the global leadership to get increasingly proactive about addressing the issues. In world politics, countries are viewing climate change as an issue to gain influence in international politics. India is no exception to this rule and has been shaping its role as a rule-shaper and policy advocate and is an active participant in climate change negotiations. This article traces India’s role since the talks on climate change began as part of wider environmental concerns. It also enumerates the way global leadership viewed and addressed this pressing issue from time to time. The article provides a brief but critical account of India’s policy interventions at global and national levels to appraise India’s growing role and relevance.

Apples and Grapes: Thoreau, Latour, and the Land

After decades of studying technoscience as practiced across many disciplines, Bruno Latour turned his attention late in his career almost exclusively to the articulation of critical zones and politics during what he calls the “New Climactic Regime.” Using the same tools he honed throughout his career, the works from Facing Gaia onward try to lay out in clear terms the politics of climate change along with brief forays into possible forms of action. In his last books he presses the specific problem of how to live and attempt to know a specific geographical region without succumbing to isolationism and xenophobia. Many years previous, another irascible and humorous thinker worked similar soils. While Latour’s family has long labored in the Louis Latour vineyards, on the other side of the Atlantic, Henry David Thoreau was seeking wild apples for the long walk home. This essay examines how both thinkers produce a particular vision of a local understanding of place without the oversimplifications of the local/global binary.

‘Melting Worlds’ and ‘Climate Myths’: Diverging Stories of Climate Change in Longyearbyen, an Arctic ‘Frontline Community’

ABSTRACT Climate change is a powerful story in Longyearbyen, the largest settlement on Svalbard in the high Arctic. While most natural science agrees on accelerating climate change with profound environmental impacts, this article unpacks the multidimensionality of the topic locally. By approaching climate change as a discourse, we explore the reception and reproduction of the dominant climate change discourse locally and compare it to other stories about climate change and adaptation. With this, we aim to contribute to the growing field of reception studies in anthropology. Our data, gathered through ethnographic fieldwork including interviews and informal conversations, include counterstories that nuance and contest the dominant climate change discourse. They point to over-simplification, sensationalism and the (mis)use of the climate discourse for other purposes. Such counterstories must be listened to in order to move in the direction of fair, inclusive, and transparent climate change politics.

An evaluation of the cannabinoid content of the liquid and thermal degradation analysis of cannabis-labeled vape liquids.

Cannabidiol (CBD) vape pen usage has been on the rise given the changing political and scientific climate as well as the promotion of these delivery systems as a more accessible and lower-risk option for consumers. Despite being marketed as a safer way to use cannabis, CBD vape liquids are sold without restrictions or meticulous quality control procedures such as toxicological and clinical assessment, standards for product preservation, or investigative degradation analyses. Nine CBD-labeled vape liquid samples purchased and manufactured in the United States were evaluated and assessed for cannabinoid content. Quantification and validation of cannabinoids and matrix components was accomplished using gas and liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry analysis (GC-MS and LC-MS/MS) following liquid-liquid extraction with methanol. Samples degraded by temperature (analyzed by GC-MS) showed a greater disparity from the labeled CBD content compared with samples analyzed as purchased (by LC-MS/MS). Thermal degradation of the vape liquids showed increased levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Also, extended time and temperature degradation were evaluated in vape liquids by storing them for 15 months and then varying temperature conditions before analysis, which indicated CBD transformed into other cannabinoids leading to different cannabinoid content within the vape samples. Evaluation conducted on these vape liquids indicated the route of exposure, storage conditions, and length of storage could expose consumers to unintended cannabinoids and showed a concerning level of disagreement between the products' labeled cannabinoid content and the results generated by these analyses.

The hauntology of climate change: glacier retreat and dark tourism

In recent decades, glaciers have become infamous symbols of climate change, and as they thaw and retreat, they leave behind haunted spaces favorable for the development of dark tourism practices. Commemorative plaques and funerals, but also comparative before-and-after photographs, on-site interpretative boards indicating where glaciers used to be 20, 50 or 100 years ago, as well as more recent developments of virtual reality (VR) tools all participate in the production of specters of vanished glaciers. These all constitute practices where gone glaciers must live in the present. In parallel, little empirical evidence demonstrates if tourists engaging in glacier tourism develop follow-up pro-environmental behaviors, and if they do, if this lasts in the long-term. In this conceptual article, we contend that reframing glacier tourism as a form of dark tourism may transform people relationship with glaciers and speed up conservation efforts. Our analytical basis is grounded in Derrida’s framework of hauntology, wherein glaciers are considered as geographical specters (or ghosts), neither invisible nor visible, dead nor alive. This work critically explores the complex connections between dark tourism, glacier retreat and spectral geographies, and argues that framing glacier tourism as dark tourism can improve tourists’ pro-environmental behavior changes, as well as expand climate change discourses, ethics, and politics.

“Notre voisine méconnue”

Though Margaret Laurence’s Manawaka Cycle was met with success upon its publication in English, it is no obvious feat to translate such success across the borders of language, even within her own home country. This article attempts to chart the complex history of the translation of the Manawaka Cycle into French and its reception in Quebec. Drawing on reviews, advertisements, letters, and the books themselves, it establishes two periods of translation: the first in the 1970s and 1980s, the second in the early 2000s. It traces the challenges faced by publishers of these translations, and how they adapted to the changing literary and political climate of the second half of the twentieth century. It also touches on the complex relationship between French and French-Canadian publishers, as well as the reception of Laurence’s work in Quebec and translation spaces in the collective literary memory. Finally, it compares translations and retranslations of two of Laurence’s novels to garner insight into the differences between the two translation periods.

The impact of climate change news on the US stock market

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the impact of climate change news on the dynamics of US stock indices.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical basis of the study was 3,209 news articles. Sentiment analysis was performed by a pre-trained bidirectional FinBERT neural network. Thematic modeling is based on the neural network, BERTopic.FindingsThe results show that news sentiment can influence the dynamics of stock indices. In addition, five main news topics (finance and politics natural disasters and consequences industrial sector and Innovations activism and culture coronavirus pandemic) were identified, which showed a significant impact on the financial market.Originality/valueFirst, we extend the theoretical concepts. This study applies signaling theory and overreaction theory to the US stock market in the context of climate change. Second, in addition to the news sentiment, the impact of major news topics on US stock market returns is examined. Third, we examine the impact of sentimental and thematic news variables on US stock market indicators of economic sectors. Previous works reveal the impact of climate change news on specific sectors of the economy. This paper includes stock indices of the economic sectors most related to the topic of climate change. Fourth, the research methodology consists of modern algorithms. An advanced textual analysis method for sentiment classification is applied: a pre-trained bidirectional FinBERT neural network. Modern thematic modeling is carried out using a model based on the neural network, BERTopic. The most extensive topics are “finance and politics of climate change” and “natural disasters and consequences.”

Using formulations to maximize differences of opinion during televised climate change panel interviews

This paper discusses climate journalistic issues of polarization and ‘false balance’ based upon a study of Danish public service television panel interviews in which participants debate climate change politics. More specifically, the study uses Conversation Analysis to examine the host’s use of formulations. Formulations refer to utterances designed to give the gist (or its ‘natural’ upshots) of a co-participant’s preceding account. Analysis reveals that the host recurrently formulates a panelist’s assertion a bit stronger (e.g. more controversial), and subsequently makes an opposing participant comment upon this augmented version. The host, thus, actively solicits disagreement and rhetorically maximizes participants’ (latent) differences of opinion. This finding adds a new perspective to our understanding of the rise of the panel interview format, which is sometimes said to marginalize the host’s substantive journalistic role into a launcher of topics. It also offers points to ponder in a time where climate change communication researchers warn us that polarization is highly counter-productive in achieving shared understanding about the climate crisis, which we need to promote conversion.

From Gender-Blind to Gender Bind: Foregrounding Gender in the History of the UNFCCC

Abstract In this article, I argue that the Women and Gender Constituency (WGC) in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been remarkable in its efforts to mainstream gender in the Convention. The WGC has been at the forefront of the fight to embed a gender perspective into global climate change politics and has been the driving force for the UNFCCC’s progression from gender-blind in 1992 to a Gender Action Plan in 2017. Through an intersectional framework, I demonstrate that foregrounding gender as a political issue and feminist activism in the history of the UNFCCC makes visible a tricky strategic bind whereby an “insider” approach to influencing the negotiations has meant that while women–environment links are firmly embedded in UNFCCC discourse, gender–environment links are less well received. Understanding this strategic bind faced by feminist climate activists is important politically, to advance feminist arguments in global climate governance.

The politics of red meat consumption and climate change

Red meat production is one of the leading sources of carbon dioxide emission thus reducing meat production and consumption is crucial. Using a sample of American adults (n = 456), the link between right-wing sociopolitical ideologies and (i) attitudes towards red meat; (ii) willingness to reduce red meat consumption; (iii) willingness to pay more for red meat; (iv) belief about the impact of red meat consumption on the environment; and (v) and distrust (versus trust) of authorities was examined. Right-wing ideologies (i.e. right-wing-authoritarianism and social dominance orientation) were associated with more positive attitudes towards red meat, unwillingness to consume less red meat or pay more for red meat, disbelief that red meat negatively impacts the environment, and greater distrust of information from authorities that propose a link between red meat production and negative environmental impact. However, results varied by political ideology dimension. Findings suggest that attempts to alter peoples’ red meat consumption—as part of a strategy for tackling climate change—must incorporate a nuanced understanding of the impact of sociopolitical ideologies on attitudes towards red meat consumption and the need to raise awareness about its impact on the environment.

Analitički centri u Sjedinjenim Američkim Državama

The twentieth century in the United States of America brought numerous innovations in all aspects of social life, including politics and engagement in it. Local and state policies, which, until then, were strictly entrusted to elected officials, became the subject of interest of newly formed organizations in charge of collecting relevant data on policies, analyzing them, and, through conclusions, making recommendations on further actions needed to improve existing or create new policies in a certain sphere of politics. By looking at the century-long history of analytical centers in the United States of America, better known as "think tanks", it is possible to see how the changing political and socio-economic climate of the country affected the need to adapt such institutions, which gave rise to numerous new forms of activity and new spheres of interest for those centers in the USA. In addition, the development of new technologies forced the adaptation of analytical centers to them through the use of new systems for the presentation of achievements and advocating changes that their analyses deem necessary. By analyzing the methods of operation, the influence of different political ideologies, various ways of research result presentation, and also how these organizations are being financed, we get a better insight into the importance of such organizations and their activities in the modern political currents of one of the most powerful countries in the world.

Avoidance of healthcare service use and correlates among HIV-positive patients in Vietnam: a cross-sectional study

ObjectiveThe prevention of HIV/AIDS is not making sufficient progress. The slow reduction of HIV/AIDS infections needs to prioritise hesitancy towards service utilisation, including treatment duration, social support and social stigma....

A typology of the climate activist

As the climate crisis escalates and citizens increasingly come to understand the existential consequences of political inaction on our civilisation, they are demanding radical action. Although people are mobilising as climate activists in ever more creative and imaginative ways, our understandings about the variety of inside and outside climate activism lack conceptual clarity. Every year there are new accounts from different academic literatures about climate activists and their role in the vital politics of climate change. This paper argues that now is an appropriate time to draw together these accounts and begin a process of articulating a clearer sense of the contemporary climate activist. This paper offers an initial contribution to the endeavour by synthesising across literature a unified conception of the climate activist typologised in terms of their focal orientations and the theories of change they operate under. Utilising a matrix approach, it is argued that the climate activist seeks change relative to a specific endogenous or exogenous focus. Further, that climate activists orientate around collaborative or confrontational theories of change leading to 16 theorised-proposed mutually inclusive types of climate activists.

Media Review: The Politics of Climate Change

Media Review: The Politics of Climate Change

“Freeways without futures”: Urban highway removal in the United States and Spain as socio-ecological fix?

Urban highways are widely recognized to have devastating social, economic, and environmental consequences, locking in fossil energy dependence, racial and class segregation, and suburban sprawl. Today, as much of the infrastructure built during the peak of the midcentury road construction boom in the global North reaches the end of its lifespan, there is growing interest in removing highways and replacing them with parks, housing, and surface boulevards in the interest of economic development, repairing social divisions in urban space, and fostering more sustainable mobility. Based on preliminary research, this paper offers an empirically driven conceptual outline of highway removal projects in the United States and Spain. I argue that highway removal constitutes an opportunity for a “socioecological fix” for the emerging crisis of automobility, but in practice, highway removal projects may reinscribe the scalar contradictions of carbon-intensive urban-regional metabolisms. Through several empirical cases of highway removal projects, I examine three dimensions through which these contradictions can be understood: national policy changes in urban infrastructure planning and governance, material conflicts between demolition and tunneling and their implications for regional metabolisms, and local sustainable development politics and their distributional contradictions. Although the projects sketched here tend to fall short of their transformative promises, I emphasize that highway removal remains a critical arena of urban climate change politics.

Press Releases, Politics, and Gendered Language Frames: An Analysis of Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This study takes a case study approach to conduct a frame analysis of the press releases sent out by the Governor of New Mexico, Michelle Lujan Grisham, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study argues that the governor saliently employed feminine language frames in her press releases while using masculine language frames sparingly in a feminine way, which I attribute to the context of the pandemic as well as the culture of her state. The findings are relevant considering the changing political climate and the then-novel nature of the pandemic. I also discuss the broader implications of the results on health crisis communication.

Legal Ecologies der Klimawandelanpassung

Abstract. Accelerating and more comprehensive legislation and litigation indicate a new significance of law in recent years within climate change politics. However, this development has been scarcely reflected upon in German-language geographical research on climate change adaptation, which primarily focuses on climate adaptation politics and policies. In order to illuminate these issues, this article engages with the political and legal scientific debates on juridification; reflects these in the context of climate adaptation; and traces the processes of juridification of climate policies in the German context from a historical perspective. Intersecting with insights from legal geography, this contribution introduces the concept of „Legal Ecologies of Climate Change Adaptation“ as a novel and legally nuanced perspective. Within human geographic climate adaptation research, this perspective opens up new theoretical and conceptual interests, empirical domains, and possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration.

The AGM as a site of contestation: evaluating the tactics of environmental shareholder activists

ABSTRACT The politics of climate change in Australia remains highly fraught, this is despite the country experiencing acute impacts of a changing climate including mega-fires, floods, and severe and prolonged drought. Government inaction has led to limited market signals encouraging producers or consumers to move away from carbon intensive energy production to clean energy. In the absence of regulation, Australian shareholder activists are engaging directly with company boards and executives to reform corporate behaviour. This engagement, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) shareholder activism, has proliferated since 2017, much later than in comparable jurisdictions. Activists have targeted the mining, oil and gas, and finance sectors, due to their contribution to the Australian economy and their direct impact on global emissions. This paper explores the reasons for, and the implications of, the growth in ESG shareholder activism in Australia. It argues that the emergence of this activism in Australia was delayed due to complexities in the country's corporations' law. Regulatory attempts at stymying ESG shareholder activism resulted in the emergence of a duopoly of actors, at the cost of broader investor and civil society engagement. It is concluded that the rise of ESG shareholder activism in Australia is linked to growing tension between societal expectations, regulation, and the behaviour of firms. And, that ESG activists have been successful in leveraging this tension. There is evidence that large corporates have responded to activist claims, rendering this form of activism a potentially effective method for addressing some of the most pressing issues facing society.