Knowing climate as a social-ecological-atmospheric construct

Clifford, Katherine R.; Travis, William R.

doi:10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2017.12.007

Cited by 39 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…In addition, tourism provides nearly 23% of the jobs (Department of Local Affairs 2010a ; 2010b ). Further, previous research in the Gunnison Basin found that residents had deep understandings of local weather and climate (Clifford and Travis 2018 ) and species-specific knowledge useful to conservation efforts (Knapp et al 2013 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating Climate Adaptation on Public Lands: How Views on Ecosystem Change and Scale Interact with Management Approaches

Clifford

Yung

Travis

et al. 2020

Environmental Management

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Managers are increasingly being asked to integrate climate change adaptation into public land management. The literature discusses a range of adaptation approaches, including managing for resistance, resilience, and transformation; but many strategies have not yet been widely tested. This study employed in-depth interviews and scenario-based focus groups in the Upper Gunnison Basin in Colorado to learn how public land managers envision future ecosystem change, and how they plan to utilize different management approaches in the context of climate adaptation. While many managers evoked the past in thinking about projected climate impacts and potential responses, most managers in this study acknowledged and even embraced (if reluctantly) that many ecosystems will experience regime shifts in the face of climate change. However, accepting that future ecosystems will be different from past ecosystems led managers in different directions regarding how to respond and the appropriate role of management intervention. Some felt management actions should assist and even guide ecosystems toward future conditions. Others were less confident in projections and argued against transformation. Finally, some suggested that resilience could provide a middle path, allowing managers to help ecosystems adapt to change without predicting future ecosystem states. Scalar challenges and institutional constraints also influenced how managers thought about adaptation. Lack of institutional capacity was believed to constrain adaptation at larger scales. Resistance, in particular, was considered impractical at almost any scale due to institutional constraints. Managers negotiated scalar challenges and institutional constraints by nesting different approaches both spatially and temporally.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating Climate Adaptation on Public Lands: How Views on Ecosystem Change and Scale Interact with Management Approaches

Clifford

Yung

Travis

et al. 2020

Environmental Management

Self Cite

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“…People also often seek to understand it in a familiar frame, embedded in their experience of place. For example, Clifford and Travis (2018) found that people use close, concrete proxies to track changes – such as hotter temperatures, abnormal rain, less snow-pack, and so forth – holding climate change as a social-ecological-atmospheric construct. Familiar metaphors that are close and concrete – such as to describe the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a ‘thickening blanket’ that ‘traps heat’ – has been found to help people to support climate action (Bostrom & Lashof, 2007).…”

Section: A Deeper Look At Responses To Change: Three Key Lensesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unearthing insights for climate change response in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic

Hochachka

2020

Glob. Sustain.

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Non-technical summary The COVID-19 pandemic can be considered an experiment forced upon the world community and, as such, responses to the pandemic can provide lessons about socio-ecological systems as well as processes of transformative change. What enabled responses to COVID-19 to be as effective as they were, right at a time when climate action is notably lagging behind what intergovernmental panels have called for? This paper examines key differences in the COVID-19 response compared to that of climate change, examining the ‘deeper’ human dimensions of these global issues. Unearthing insights into the responses to both issues provides important lessons for climate change engagement.

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“…Though climate trends are more or less beyond the scope of the lay observer, climate change has permeated the spaces of the everyday in ways that are highly politicised and contested, and which support individual, collective and institutional responses (Brace and Geoghegan 2011). Such knowledge is culturally situated and relational; that is, climate change becomes significant for individuals in relation to other kinds of environmental and culturally salient issues rather than as an issue in itself (Clifford and Travis 2018;Boykoff et al 2009;Macnaghten 2003). Consequently, a growing body of studies mainly from within cultural geography, anthropology and sociology, have sought to examine the climate-relevant understandings and responses of individuals and communities in different places (for example, Barnes and Dove 2015;Adger et al 2012;Brace and Geoghegan 2011;Norgaard 2011).…”

Section: Climate Understandings and Everyday Lifementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In summary, we approach everyday understandings of climate-relevant issues as cultural phenomena, whereby culture is instantiated in communication as a form of cultural practice. In accordance with a cyclic, mutually constitutive approach to climate as a cultural phenomenon, these cannot be separated and can be observed in accounts of material conditions and situated life experiences such as commuting, work and leisure, that both determine those practices and concomitantly shape climate understandings on the basis of that locally grounded, culturally rich experience (Clifford and Travis 2018 ; Brace and Geoghegan 2011 ; Geoghegan and Leyson 2012 ; Rudiak-Gould 2012 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local climate change cultures: climate-relevant discursive practices in three emerging economies

et al. 2019

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In recent decades, greater acknowledgement has been given to climate change as a cultural phenomenon. This paper takes a cultural lens to the topic of climate change, in which climaterelevant understandings are grounded in wider cultural, political and material contexts. We approach climate-relevant accounts at the level of the everyday, understood as a theoretically problematic and politically contested space This is in contrast to simply being the backdrop to mundane, repetitive actions contributing to environmental degradation and the site of mitigative actions. Taking discourse as a form of practice in which fragments of cultural knowledge are drawn on to construct our environmental problems, we investigate citizens' accounts of climate-relevant issues in three culturally diverse emerging economies: Brazil, South Africa and China. These settings are important because greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are predicted to significantly increase in these countries in the future. We conducted semistructured interviews with a range of citizens in each country using a narrative approach to contextualise climate-relevant issues as part of people's lifestyle narratives. Participants overwhelmingly framed their accounts in the context of locally-salient issues, and few accounts explicitly referred to the phenomenon of climate change. Instead, elements of climate changes were conflated with other environmental issues and related to a wide range of cultural assumptions that influenced understandings and implied particular ways of responding to environmental problems. We conclude that climate change scholars should address locally relevant understandings and develop dialogues that can wider meanings that construct climaterelevant issues in vernacular ways at the local level.

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Knowing climate as a social-ecological-atmospheric construct

Cited by 39 publications

References 39 publications

Navigating Climate Adaptation on Public Lands: How Views on Ecosystem Change and Scale Interact with Management Approaches

Navigating Climate Adaptation on Public Lands: How Views on Ecosystem Change and Scale Interact with Management Approaches

Unearthing insights for climate change response in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic

Local climate change cultures: climate-relevant discursive practices in three emerging economies

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