“Other people’s initiatives”: exploring mediation and appropriation of place as barriers to community-based climate change adaptation

Adaptation planning at the community level takes on various forms. It generally involves a process of defining climate impacts, vulnerabilities, and actions that can build community resilience. Typically, these processes rely on climate experts and policy-makers to define what is at risk, and therefore what is worthy of investment and protection. Emerging approaches to community-based adaptation-planning advocate for stronger community control over these processes. Drawing on a place-based approach to adaptation, this paper examines place meaning as a co-constructed process. It explores how this process shapes opportunities for community-based climate action in Churchill, Canada. Results indicate that community members acknowledge many competing threats to their sense of place, and suggest that this competition may reduce the perceived need to prioritise climate action to protect connections to place. Results also reveal a concern among community members that local place identity has been appropriated for economic gain, which may further reduce the drive to act in protection of an already exploited sense of place. Overall, findings support calls to adopt place-based perspectives to enhance the capacity of adaptation planning to understand local needs, values, and levers for action.     

Incorporating Climate and Ocean Change into Extinction Risk Assessments for 82 Coral Species

Many marine invertebrate species facing potential extinction have uncertain taxonomies and poorly known demographic and ecological traits. Uncertainties are compounded when potential extinction drivers are climate and ocean changes whose effects on even widespread and abundant species are only partially understood. The U.S. Endangered Species Act mandates conservation management decisions founded on the extinction risk to species based on the best available science at the time of consideration—requiring prompt action rather than awaiting better information. We developed an expert‐opinion threat‐based approach that entails a structured voting system to assess extinction risk from climate and ocean changes and other threats to 82 coral species for which population status and threat response information was limited. Such methods are urgently needed because constrained budgets and manpower will continue to hinder the availability of desired data for many potentially vulnerable marine species. Significant species‐specific information gaps and uncertainties precluded quantitative assessments of habitat loss or population declines and necessitated increased reliance on demographic characteristics and threat vulnerabilities at genus or family levels. Adapting some methods (e.g., a structured voting system) used during other assessments and developing some new approaches (e.g., integrated assessment of threats and demographic characteristics), we rated the importance of threats contributing to coral extinction risk and assessed those threats against population status and trend information to evaluate each species’ extinction risk over the 21st century. This qualitative assessment resulted in a ranking with an uncertainty range for each species according to their estimated likelihood of extinction. We offer guidance on approaches for future biological extinction risk assessments, especially in cases of data‐limited species likely to be affected by global‐scale threats. Incorporación del Cambio Climático y Oceánico en Estudios de Riesgo de Extinción para 82 Especies de Coral     

Over-reaction and under-reaction in climate policy: an institutional analysis

In what circumstances do organizations react to changes in their operating environment by adopting proportionate policy responses? And drawing on institutional theory, what expectations can we formulate in relation to the proportionality of policy responses to climate change? These two research questions frame this article, which seeks to make new connections between the emerging perspective of proportionality in policy-making and existing institutional theories. We find that institutional theories are well suited to formulating expectations concerning the (dis)proportionality of policy responses, but their explanatory power can be further improved by taking the characteristics of specific climate policy problems into account. While there are many different problems nested in the ‘meta’ problem of climate change, we find that most of them have characteristics which suggest that policy under-reactions are more, not less likely. Amongst institutional theories, rational choice institutionalism provides the clearest expectation that proportionate policy responses are unlikely. Policy entrepreneurship is identified as one obvious way in which to stimulate proportionate policy responses, through fostering new ways of thinking within organizations.     

Analyzing the effectiveness of international environmental policies: The case of the Kyoto Protocol

We study the effectiveness of emission targets under the Kyoto Protocol with respect to reducing CO₂ emissions. Using country-level and US state-level panel data and employing the synthetic control method, we find very little evidence for an emission reduction effect for the major emitters among the Annex B countries with binding emission targets. More generally, we also show that evaluating the effectiveness of international environmental policies at the country level comes with a number of empirical challenges that may invalidate findings based on more traditional panel data approaches.     

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.     

中美两国选择不同时间开始减排二氧化碳的模拟研究

气候保护是一个国际性问题,气候保护政策的有效实施,离不开世界各国的共同努力.中国和美国作为世界上主要的两个碳排放大国,对世界气候保护进程具有重要的影响.本文通过建立一个多国气候保护宏观动态经济模拟系统,模拟中美两国在不同时期开始减排对世界主要国家经济和全球气候变化的影响.模拟发现,在研究中国减排进入时间的问题时,相对不减排情况,中国在讨论的五个情景里参与减排都会给中国的经济带来损失,而且越早参与减排,GDP损失的越多.世界其他国家都从中国的减排方案中获得了利益.和讨论的中国进入方案相似,美国实施减排政策与不实施减排政策相比,本国的累积GDP会损失,而世界其他国家累积GDP会增加.从对世界温度的影响来看,两国实施减排与不实施减排的影响程度较为接近.从对全球累积GDP的影响来看,美国的减排政策对全球GDP的影响要大于中国的减排政策对全球GDP的影晌.     

Climate Change Discourses and Citizen Participation: A Case Study of the Discursive Construction of Citizenship in Two Public Events

Citizen participation is a recurrent and democratically important issue in the ongoing debate about climate change. However, different meanings are ascribed to citizen participation in different contexts, ranging from top-down involvement to bottom-up engagement, thus creating tension between conflicting ideals. Focusing on public engagement and its construal in different situational contexts, we explore how citizens are discursively included or excluded from participation, as various climate change discourses unfold in two forums where local needs and global concerns interact. Furthermore, we address some opportunities and barriers regarding citizen participation in climate change issues.     

Prolepsis and the Environmental Rhetoric of Congressional Politics: Defeating the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003

As a device of argumentative anticipation, prolepsis use generally is considered a positive rhetorical strategy. Turning to the Climate Stewardship Act (CSA) of 2003, this article contributes to our understanding of environmental communication, political argumentation, and rhetorical theory by examining how proleptic miscalculation can actually produce devastating consequences against one's cause when used as a source of invention. Proponents of the CSA relied on creating proleptic arguments grounded in a scientific understanding of climate change to such an extent that they mistakenly downplayed the economic arguments against the Act. This orchestrated miscalculation was encouraged and strengthened by key US senators. This article concludes by discussing contributions to scholarly understanding of prolepsis use in public policymaking and offers practical suggestions for improving communication in future considerations of environmental legislation.     

Climate Communications: Conflicts and Opportunities

The occasion for this forum was sparked by a front-page story in the New York Times by John M. Broder entitled, “Seeking to Save the Planet, with a Thesaurus” (May 1, 2009, p. A11). The article focused on the non-profit EcoAmerica's report, “Climate and Energy Truths: Our Common Future,” which shares research on communication approaches to engaging climate change and energy issues. The Broder article included commentary from Robert J. Brulle, Professor of Sociology and Environmental Science at Drexel University. In response, George P. Lakoff, Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at UC-Berkeley, published an essay in The Huffington Post, “Why Environmental Understanding, or ‘Framing,’ Matters: An Evaluation of the EcoAmerica Summary Report” (May 19, 2009). The discussion about this report and differing approaches to environmental communication continued on blogs, in emails, and through various other forums. The editorial leadership team of this journal thought such prominent attention to environmental communication in the nexus of so many disciplines and professional investments was exciting. We are pleased the following scholars and practitioners are willing to elaborate on the stakes of this discussion in this forum.     

Narratives,Rhetorical Genres,and Environmental Conflict: Responses to Schwarze's “Environmental Melodrama”

The appearance of Steven Schwarze's essay, “Environmental Melodrama” (Schwarze, 2006) as the lead article in a recent issue of The Quarterly Journal of Speech marks an important moment of recognition for environmental communication scholarship. Schwarze's essay demonstrates how studies of environmental rhetoric can contribute to rhetorical theory more generally, while addressing practical questions regarding the rhetorical aspects of environmental conflict. The contributors to this forum respond to Schwarze's arguments, drawing in part upon their own case studies of rhetorical action and narrative in environmental conflict.