Elites, climate change and agency in a developing society: the Chilean case

Faced with global climate change, local elites are confronted with the main dilemma of a developing country: development requires economic growth, but this effort also requires consideration of environmental factors and sustainable patterns of production and consumption. Based on empirical evidence from qualitative research on businesses and political elites in Chile—a paradigmatic South American middle-income country—this paper explores the extent to which local elites are aware of the severity of challenges posed by global climate change and identify main climate change concerns in their discourse. The degree to which domestic elites are aware of the paradigm shift they must assume toward clean industrial production is a key issue of environmental governance that involves private non-governmental actors. This paper gives clues to a better understanding of what is happening with strategic actors in developing nations and their understanding of their decision-making capacity concerning environmental policy and investments for facing global climate change. The main conclusion of the research is that awareness of climate change in local elites’ discourse is relative. It is not accompanied by a full acceptance of their agency and is not leading to a paradigm shift toward a clean model of development because of domestic elites’ position within globalization processes.     

Using Expert and Non-expert Models of Climate Change to Enhance Communication

Climate change is a significant global risk that is predicted to be particularly devastating to coastal communities. Climate change adaptation and mitigation have been hindered by many factors, including psychological barriers, ineffective outreach and communication, and knowledge gaps. This qualitative study compares an expert model of climate change risks to county administrators' “mental” models of climate change and related coastal environmental hazards in Crystal River, Florida, USA. There were 24 common nodes in the expert and the combined non-expert models, mainly related to hurricanes, property damage, and economic concerns. Seven nodes mentioned by non-experts fit within, but were not a part of, the expert model, primarily related to ecological concerns about water quality. The findings suggest that effective climate outreach and communication could focus on compatible parts of the models and incorporate local concerns to find less controversial ways to discuss climate-related hazards.     

Journalistic Norms,Cultural Values,and Coverage of Climate Change in the Philippines

Developing nations have tended to have been overlooked in studies of climate reporting. This study is based upon a content analysis of three daily newspapers in the Philippines to examine climate change coverage compared to reporting by Western wire services. In addition, the study draws on individualist–collectivist theory to theorize about differences in reporting between the Philippine and Western wire sources. Despite the historic influence of the American news system on Philippine journalism, the study finds that Western journalistic norms do not describe Philippine climate reporting well and that Filipino-penned articles are more likely to include the value of collectivism rather than individualism. This suggests that national cultural differences may be reflected in climate reporting.     

Visual Climate Change Communication: From Iconography to Locally Framed 3D Visualization

Climate change is an urgent problem with implications registered not only globally, but also on national and local scales. It is a particularly challenging case of environmental communication because its main cause, greenhouse gas emissions, is invisible. The predominant approach of making climate change visible is the use of iconic, often affective, imagery. Literature on the iconography of climate change shows that global iconic motifs, such as polar bears, have contributed to a public perception of the problem as spatially and temporally remote. This paper proposes an alternative approach to global climate change icons by focusing on recognizable representations of local impacts within an interactive game environment. This approach was implemented and tested in a research project based on the municipality of Delta, British Columbia. A major outcome of the research is Future Delta, an interactive educational game featuring 3D visualizations and simulation tools for climate change adaptation and mitigation future scenarios. The empirical evaluation is based on quantitative pre/post-game play questionnaires with 18 students and 10 qualitative expert interviews. The findings support the assumption that interactive 3D imagery is effective in communicating climate change. The quantitative post-questionnaires particularly highlight a shift in support of more local responsibility.     

Perceptions of climate change risks in primary resource use industries: a survey of the Canadian mining sector

A survey documenting how climate change is perceived, experienced, and responded to in the Canadian mining sector was administered to industry practitioners at the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada annual meeting. Nine key findings from the survey are discussed: (1) The Canadian mining sector is sensitive to climate-related conditions. (2) Climate change is perceived to be having a negative impact on mining operations. (3) Companies are taking action to manage the current impacts. (4) Cost and uncertainty are commonly identified barriers to adapting to current climate change. (5) Future climate change is expected to have impacts for the industry. (6) Climate change projections are perceived as threats by the majority of respondents. (7) Despite the perceived threat, companies are not currently taking action to plan for future impacts. (8) Cost and uncertainty are commonly identified barriers to adapting to future climate change impacts. (9) The mining sector is currently making efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The survey is exploratory in nature, establishing a baseline for targeted research to assess in greater detail the vulnerability of mining to climate change.     

Climate Change Reporting in Great Lakes Region Newspapers: A Comparative Study of the Use of Expert Sources

This study focuses on the use of science sources as experts in news stories about climate change coverage in the Great Lakes region of the US and Canada. We examine, using the hierarchy of influences model, whether the use of scientific sources in climate change coverage may be related to factors such as geographic location, reporting frequency, and authorship, in the prestige press as well as regional and local media. The study found that as many or more non-scientists than scientists are selected as sources regardless of geographic location, reporting frequency, or authorship. However, the study also found that the more stories reporters produce on this topic, the more likely their stories are to use and give prominence to science sources. In addition, the articles included few denier sources, but denier views are more likely to appear in a more prominent location in the articles than supporters when stories are framed as conflict over global warming. These results highlight the need for additional research examining the expertise of climate scientists in news stories to better understand news decision-making in the context of complex scientific reporting.     

Media Access and Political Efficacy in the Eco-politics of Climate Change: Canadian National News and Mediated Policy Networks

We use a discourse network analysis approach to answer two questions about national news coverage of climate change policy debate in Canada during the period 2006–2010. First, what is the media visibility of actors relevant to policy development and advocacy on climate change? Second, given the political and economic context of climate policy-making in Canada, does greater or lesser media visibility reflect effectiveness in climate policy advocacy? Multiple interpretive frameworks characterize Canadian political discourse about climate change, with fragmentation between the federal government, opposition political parties, provincial governments, and environmental organizations. Contrary to expectations, environmental organizations had high levels of media visibility while the relative invisibility of fossil fuel corporations was notable in the media coverage of Canadian climate discussions. Our findings challenge optimistic accounts of the relationship between media power and political power, and suggest that media power does not necessarily translate to political efficacy.     

Remembering the Past,Anticipating the Future: Community Learning and Adaptation Discourse in Media Commemorations of Catastrophic Wildfires in Colorado

Wildfire may be the clearest example to date of a socio-natural hazard that is being exacerbated by climate change, making wildfire an essential lens through which to investigate learning and adaptation in the Anthropocene. Here, we study discourse about simultaneous and recurring catastrophic wildfires in Colorado newspapers. We find that the wildfires’ anniversaries served as opportunities for critical reflection on hazard causality and mitigation in local media, particularly the first anniversary and especially for a community that experienced two catastrophic wildfires in a row. Two mediated prospective memory practices—invoking hindsight as foresight and recognizing a new normal—contributed to this discourse. However, learning and adaptation discourse faded in local media at later anniversaries. These findings contribute to learning and adaptation scholarship by connecting the concept of mediated prospective memory to disaster-related media studies and attending to the intricacies of anniversary commemoration under circumstances of simultaneous and recurring disasters.     

Present and future climate resources for various types of tourism in the Bay of Palma,Spain

The Bay of Palma, in Mallorca, is a leading region for beach holidays in Europe. It is based on a mass tourism model strongly modulated by seasonality and with high environmental costs. Main tourism stakeholders are currently implementing complementary activities to mitigate seasonality, regardless of climate change. But climate is—and will remain—a key resource or even a limitation for many types of tourism. Assessing the present conditions and exploring the future evolution of climate potential for these activities have become a priority in this area. To this end, the climate index for tourism (CIT)—originally designed to rate the climate resource of beach tourism—is adapted to specifically appraise cycling, cultural tourism, football, golf, motor boating, sailing and hiking. Climate resources are derived by using observed and projected daily meteorological data. Projections have been obtained from a suite of Regional Climate Models run under the A1B emissions scenario. To properly derive CITs at such local scale, we apply a statistical adjustment. Present climate potentials ratify the appropriateness of the Bay of Palma for satisfactorily practicing all the examined activities. However, optimal conditions are projected to degrade during the peak visitation period while improving in spring and autumn. That is, climate change could further exacerbate the present imbalance between the seasonal distributions of ideal climate potentials and high attendance levels. With this information at hand, policy makers and regional tourism stakeholders can respond more effectively to the great challenge of local adaptation to climate change.     

Knowledge-based Journalism in Science and Environmental Reporting: Opportunities and Obstacles

Recent calls for knowledge-based journalism advocate a new level of formal knowledge in news reporting to meet the professional challenges caused by rapid change in the news industry. Scientifically knowledgeable journalism has the potential to redefine the existing science–media relationship. However, the audience for such journalism is unclear, nor is it known how this new journalism would function within rapidly changing newsroom practices. Implementing knowledge-based journalism requires theory-based propositions to show the actual benefits of improved scientific understanding for news consumers and an understanding, from research into professional cultures, of why new practices in journalism are adopted or abandoned. This paper develops that theoretical basis by examining knowledge-based journalism’s potential and some of the intellectual and institutional barriers to it.     

Echo Chambers of Denial: Explaining User Comments on Climate Change

Although there is a broad consensus among scientists and journalists about the existence of anthropogenic climate change as a global problem, some segments of the population remain doubtful about the human impact on it. The internet provides citizens with opportunities to publicly voice their doubts and user comment sections of online media are a popular form of user-generated content. This study identifies factors that foster comments that are sceptical or supportive of basic assumptions of anthropogenic climate change, drawing on online news in the US, the UK, Germany, India, and Switzerland. The results show that users adapt to the dominant opinion within the respective media outlet: user comment sections serve as echo chambers rather than as corrective mechanisms. Climate change denial is more visible in user comment sections in countries where the climate change debate reflects the scientific consensus on climate change and user comments create niches of denial.     

Media Use and Public Perceptions of Global Warming in India

Media plays a vital role in informing the public about environmental threats. Although climate change is a global problem, developing countries such as India are often more vulnerable to the impacts due to poverty, illiteracy, and low public awareness. Using data from a nationally representative survey in India, this paper explores the relationships between media use, issue attention, and trust in informational sources on one hand and science-based climate change beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy support on the other. Results suggest that the Indian media, through consistent and accurate coverage of global warming using trusted sources, can play a positive role in increasing public engagement among a largely unaware population. Implications for climate change communication in India are discussed.     

Canadian Weathercasters’ Current and Potential Role as Climate Change Communicators

ABSTRACT

Climatologists worldwide are calling for urgent action to manage climate change, but public engagement remains a significant challenge. This lack of engagement is often attributed to psychological distance: climate change is perceived as something happening far away, to other people, or in a hypothetical future. TV weathercasters are ideally situated to communicate the geographically and temporally proximate impacts of climate change and increase public engagement. This study explores the status of climate change reporting amongst weathercasters in Canada, where no such research has been conducted. The respondents suggested that many, but not all, weathercasters are engaged with climate change and interested in presenting local, climate-related content; however, their on-air climate change communication behavior is highly limited. This analysis builds on research conducted with American weather broadcaster by indicating that Canadian weathercasters share their potential as effective climate change communicators, but are highly uncertain about their capacity to support this role.     

How Grammatical Choice Shapes Media Representations of Climate (Un)certainty

Although mass media continue to play a key role in translating scientific uncertainty for public discourse, communicators of climate science are becoming increasingly aware of their own role in shaping scientific messages in the news. As an example of how future media research can provide relevant feedback to climate communicators, the present study examines the ways in which grammatical and word choices represent and construct uncertainty in news reporting about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Qualifying and hedging language and other “epistemic markers” are analyzed in four newspapers during 2001 and 2007: the New York Times and Wall Street Journal from the USA and El País and El Mundo from Spain. Though the US newspapers contained a higher density of epistemic markers and used more ambiguous grammatical constructs of uncertainty than the Spanish newspapers, all four media sources chose similar words when questioning the certainty around climate change. Moreover, the density of epistemic markers in each newspaper either remained the same or increased with time, despite ever-growing scientific agreement that human activities modify global climate. While the US newspapers increasingly adopted IPCC language to describe climate uncertainties, they also exhibited an emerging tendency to construct uncertainty by highlighting differences between IPCC reports or between scientific predictions and observations. The analysis thus helps identify articulations of uncertainty that will shape future media portrayals of climate science across varying cultural and national contexts.     

Scapegoating in the Wild: A Burkean Analysis of Two Outdoor Adventures Gone Wrong

Aron Ralston and Christopher McCandless, two outdoor adventurers, have captured the hearts of many American environmentalists. Each has attained the status of cultural icons and inspired books and films to recount their tales. While entertainment media have romanticized both individuals, news media are not as easy on one—McCandless is vilified while Ralston is valorized. When reporting these stories, news media outlets attempted to retell each story in a way that conforms to the dominant American ideology of wilderness, where “progress” is marked by control over nature—control that both Ralston and McCandless clearly unsettled. In addition, both committed many of the same errors in being underprepared. Despite these similarities, why are they each presented so differently in the news media? This paper offers a rhetorical analysis of newspaper articles on each story, where the phenomenon of scapegoating alienates McCandless, and the phenomenon of mortification purifies Ralston, restabilizing this American environmental ideology in both stories. In conclusion, I argue that the essential difference between these two stories is that they present two opposing ideals of a human–nature relationship, with Ralston's ideology including a space for technology and industrial knowledge, and thus construed as more appropriate than McCandless' ideology.     

Climate change: an amplifier of existing health risks in developing countries

Global warming is perceived as one of the biggest global health risks of the twenty-first century and a threat to the achievement of sustainable (economic) development; especially in developing countries, climate change is believed to further exacerbate existing vulnerability to disease and food security risks, because their populations are, for example, more reliant on agriculture and more vulnerable to droughts and have a lower adaptive capacity. Furthermore, the health-related impacts of climate change are threatening to undo decades of development policies. The interactions between climate and non-climate factors are of vital importance in shaping human vulnerability to global warming. Climate change cannot be seen as ‘a stand-alone risk factor,’ but rather as an amplifier of existing health and food security risks and an additional strain on institutional infrastructures. In order to avoid a multiplication of health risks in the developing world, there is a need to better understand the multifaceted and complex linkages involved. This is further illustrated for two important climate change–induced health risks, namely malnutrition and malaria. As the amplification of existing and emerging health risks in the developing world might become the greatest tragedy of climate change, adaptation ranks high on developing countries’ agendas. Of particular importance are the discussions about the ‘Green Climate Fund,’ which aims to administer billions of dollars for mitigation and adaptation. Of course, making funds for adaptation available is an important first step, but we also need to ask ourselves the question how such adaptation policies and projects should take shape. This paper demonstrates that an adequate response to climate change health risks should take a systems approach toward adaptation, acknowledging the importance of the local context of the most vulnerable.     

Overview of regulatory/policy/economic issues related to carbon dioxide

This is an overview of Session 2c dealing with the regulatory, policy and economic issues related to carbon dioxide and its impact on global climate change. The information is taken from the two papers presented in this session (the U.S. Perspective by Dennis Leaf and the European Perspective by Hans J.H. Verolme) and from the panel discussion that took place at the end of the session. The overview focuses primarily on the policy responses of both the United States (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) to changes in global atmospheric pollution. To a lesser extent, the progress of policy responses to these changes is discussed. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been signed and ratified by over 180 countries. The UNFCCC contained no binding targets or timetables for emissions reductions. The Kyoto Protocol [United Nations. Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. UNEP.IUC/99/10. Chatlelaine, Switzerland: United Nations Environment Programme's Information Unit for Conventions, for the Climate Change Secretariat, 1997] to the UNFCCC did contain targets and timetables for reductions of greenhouse gases on the part of developed countries. The US has signed but not ratified the Kyoto Protocol. The US has experienced some movement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the part of various levels of government, as well as the private sector. The UK's commitment to reducing green house gases is laid down in the UK Climate Change Programme 2000. The UK is a member of the European Union (EU). In this context, an example of EU-wide progress, the voluntary agreement with car manufacturers to reduce CO(2) emissions in new vehicles, will be discussed. In addition, there will be some discussion on the UK CO(2) trading scheme that created the first market in the world in April 2001. Overall, the policy process is constantly informed by scientific research. In the case of climate change, much of this work is carried out under the auspices of international scientific panels.     

Legitimacy of urban climate change adaptation: a case in Helsinki

While there is general agreement on the necessity for local adaptation, there is a wide range of different understandings of what type of adaptation is seen as legitimate. It is often contested who should actively steer and take part in local adaptation, for which reasons and based on what kind of mandate, and with which methods. Planning theory can serve as a helpful reference point for examining the sources of legitimacy for adaptation in an urban context. From a planning perspective, adaptation is concerned with climate change as one out of many issues planning has to respond to. The layered co-existence of planning paradigms in practice suggests diverse, sometimes contradictory sources of legitimacy for urban planning and—as we claim here—also for climate change adaptation. This study examines the legitimacy of adaptation from a planning theoretical perspective in Helsinki, drawing on semi-structured interviews and social network analysis to show how adaptation is commonly understood from a rationalist perspective as an apolitical activity with local authorities’ experts designing and implementing adaptation. Nevertheless, some of the central actors understand adaptation as a communicative activity and a common deliberation of solutions. The co-occurrence of disparate paradigms results in ambiguous legitimacy that can impede the successful implementation of local climate change adaptation.     

Direct and indirect effects of climate and fishing on changes in coastal ecosystem services: a historical perspective from the North Sea

Humanity depends on the marine environment for a range of vital ecosystem services, at global (e.g. climate regulation), regional (e.g. commercial fisheries) and local scales (e.g. coastal defence and recreation). At the same time, marine ecosystems have been exploited for centuries, and many systems today are under stress from multiple sources. Recent studies have shown how both climate change and fishing have caused long-term changes in the marine environment. However, there is still poor understanding of how these changes influence change in coastal ecosystem services. In this paper, an integrated modelling approach is used to assess how the final delivery of marine ecosystem services to coastal communities is influenced by the direct and indirect effects of changes in ecosystem processes brought about by climate and human impacts, using fisheries of the North Sea region as a case study. Partial least squares path analysis is used to explore the relationships between drivers of change, marine ecosystem processes and services (landings). A simple conceptual model with four variables—climate, fishing effort, ecosystem process and ecosystem services—is applied to the English North Sea using historic ecological, climatic and fisheries time series spanning 1924–2010 to identify the multiple pathways that might exist. As expected, direct and indirect links between fishing effort, ecosystem processes and service provision were significant. However, links between climate and ecosystem processes were weak. This paper highlights how path analysis can be used for analysing long-term temporal links between ecosystem processes and services following a simplified pathway.     

Ideologies Overruled? An Explorative Study of the Link Between Ideology and Climate Change Reporting in Dutch and French Newspapers

This article studies the relationship between the ideology of newspapers and their climate change coverage. Previous research has focused on the British press (Carvalho, 2007; Carvalho & Burgess, 2005). Our research broadens this scope to the French and Dutch media. The results show that the ideology of newspapers in the Netherlands is not related to climate change coverage, while in France the ideology of newspapers is related to some key aspects of climate change coverage, i.e., the presentation of the necessity of actions against climate change and the tone of climate change coverage. The findings suggests that ideological cultures play a role in the coverage of climate change in countries in which global warming has brought about much discussion in the political field and that are characterized by a highly competitive media landscape which is historically related to the political field.