We know climate change is happening, but it’s uncertain as to how the impacts will play out, to what extent, where, affecting whom. In the sixth chapter of Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World, I again look at models and how they act to mutually construct a particular set of global policy responses, often ignoring the challenges on the ground.
From the promise of prediction to the realities on the ground
As the chapter notes, “Climate change is perhaps the most challenging source of uncertainty faced by humanity today…. Climate events can upset stabilised knowledge about economies and financial systems; new technological innovations that facilitate transitions to low-carbon economies carry with them many uncertainties and so regulatory challenges; extreme climate-induced shocks can test any critical infrastructure and those trying to generate reliable supply of critical services; climate change can result in transformations of environments that entail the emergence of pandemic zoonoses and disasters and emergencies are frequently made worse by climate change, as droughts or floods for example become more extreme. Climate change therefore impinges on all facets of life, generating new uncertainties, even if we are now certain that change is accelerating. Yet different people – from UN officials to climate modellers to fishers and farmers… experience climate change in very different ways.”
The chapter asks how can the global science of climate change prediction and scenario development connect with the highly uncertain local conditions faced on the ground? The chapter moves from the IPCC process aiming at ‘scientific consensus’ to the UK Met Office that produces elaborate predictive climate models to the collaborative approaches to global circulation modelling before shifting to two places on the front-lines of climate change – the Sundarbans in India/Bangladesh and dryland farming areas of southern Zimbabwe. Here responses to climate change have to contend with uncertainties – even the increasingly sophisticated downscaled models are no use day-to-day. Zimbabwean farmers and Indian delta dwellers know full well that climate change is happening, but they need to adapt to survive.
Despite improvements in climate modelling, uncertainties remain. A more circumspect, humble approach to modelling is needed. As Andrea Saltelli and colleagues argue, “Mathematical models are a great way to explore questions. They are also a dangerous way to assert answers.” Instead, they argue, modelling needs to be aware of the assumptions that are in-built, avoid the hubris of assuming that models are right, be attentive to models’ framings, be aware of the unknowns and think about the consequences. There is a need therefore to establish “new social norms such that modellers are not permitted to project more certainty than their models deserve, and politicians are not allowed to offload accountability to models of their choosing.” This is a key lesson from the book, whether around pandemics, disasters or climate change.
The politics of climate adaptation
Today, there are many projects aiming to address climate change, climate-smart, climate-proofed, climate-resilient are all the buzzwords of contemporary development. But, as the chapter explains, “The problem is that once again such projects aim to ‘fix’ something through a technical-managerial intervention, aiming to return to stability in the face of variability or reducing ‘vulnerability’ to climate change. Rather, climate adaptation – as the term suggests – is more about living with uncertainties and working with inevitable variability in a warming world, at the same time as transforming the conditions that give rise to vulnerabilities in the first place. The trouble is that adaptation for some means isolating yourself from climate change – moving away from a flood plain, buying expensive insurance, installing more air conditioning – while for others it means coping and suffering under increasingly harsh conditions with limited means…. Climate change thus also intersects with wider class, race, gender and other politics.”
This suggests questions of climate justice. As the chapter shows, for many, “climate cannot be separated off from wider demands for land reclamation, asset redistribution and wider agrarian reform, alongside addressing questions of ‘loss and damage’ caused by climate change. Articulating climate change debates with wider considerations of justice is therefore essential…. not all uncertainties are the same for all people, as they emerge from the particular dynamics of capitalism and its uneven spatial and temporal impacts….
Accepting that climate change and capitalism, and so questions of justice and redistribution, are intimately bound up is essential and reminds us that uncertainties are not evenly distributed, and a neoliberal resort to individualised ‘flexible coping’ through market mechanisms is wholly inadequate. Addressing the fundamental, underlying causes of climate change remain urgent and must not be lost sight of.”
Co-constructing responses to climate change
Following Sheila Jasanoff, I ask: “How, at the levels of community, polity, space and time, will scientists’ impersonal knowledge of the climate be synchronized with the mundane rhythms of lived lives and the specificities of human experience? A global consensus on the meaning and urgency of climate change cannot arise on the basis of expert consensus alone.”
In addition to climate models, there is a need for “bottom-up adaptation assessments, collaborative modelling approaches, participatory scenario development, plural methodological approaches, such as combining arts approaches with scientific assessments, and appreciative inquiry of complex problems can therefore all be part of a reimagined science for climate change. This requires different types of expertise, including more hybrid, cross-disciplinary capacities, the ability to facilitate and integrate alongside knowledge brokers and connecting modelling and science ‘from above’ with the local context,” as Lyla Mehta and colleagues argue.
To tackle climate change effectively there therefore needs to be a greater commitment to what Jasanoff calls ‘co-construction’ – where modellers and local people on the front-lines interact to define problems and solutions together. As the chapter concludes, “addressing global climate change means engaging with how people living with climate-related uncertainties – and that means everyone, the world over. It thus means making responses more real, tangible and urgent than a generic, impersonal risk-based science can ever do.”
This series of blogs gives a taste of the different chapters, but you will have to read the book to get the full picture, as well as all the case study details, the references and footnotes! You can buy the book (or download it for free) through this link: Navigating Uncertainty: Radical Rethinking for a Turbulent World (politybooks.com). It comes out in the US tomorrow! Do come along to the remaining launches in October in Zurich (today!), Bern, Geneva and Paris, see BOOK: Navigating Uncertainty – Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience – PASTRES (or listen to the recording from the IDS event here: Navigating uncertainty: Radical rethinking for a turbulent World – Institute of Development Studies (ids.ac.uk)).
