Climate change studies and the human sciences

doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.05.006

Global and Planetary Change

Volume 156, September 2017, Pages 115-122

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.05.006 Get rights and content

Highlights

•
Humanities and social sciences offer important insights for our understanding of global change.
•
Policy advice, including the IPCC, draws from a crucially skewed, restricted knowledge pool.
•
Disciplinary preference is for economic specialists.
•
IPCC reports show increased awareness of the value of historical insight but stop short of including historical expertise.
•
IPCC reports have set a research agenda to be followed up by experts but it is not clear that the agenda has been followed up.
•
We suggest an Integrative Platform to channel human science insights to mitigation advice.

Abstract

Policy makers have made repeated calls for integration of human and natural sciences in the field of climate change. Serious multidisciplinary attempts began already in the 1950s. Progress has certainly been made in understanding the role of humans in the planetary system. New perspectives have clarified policy advice, and three insights are singled out in the paper: the critique of historicism, the distinction between benign and wicked problems, and the cultural critique of the ‘myths of nature’. Nevertheless, analysis of the IPCC Assessment Reports indicates that integration is skewed towards a particular dimension of human sciences (economics) and major insights from cultural theory and historical analysis have not made it into climate science. A number of relevant disciplines are almost absent in the composition of authorship. Nevertheless, selective assumptions and arguments are made about e.g. historical findings in key documents. In conclusion, we suggest to seek remedies for the lack of historical scholarship in the IPCC reports. More effort at science-policy exchange is needed, and an Integrated Platform to channel humanities and social science expertise for climate change research might be one promising way.

Section snippets

The need for the historical sciences in climate change research

A number of public policy documents emphasize the need for radical interdisciplinary collaboration between the natural and the human sciences, such as ‘Challenges of a Changing Earth: Global Change Open Science Conference’ held in Amsterdam in July 2001; European Science Foundation ‘Forward Look’ 2002; International Council for Science ‘Visioning Process’ 2009; International Council for Science ‘Future Earth – research for global sustainability’ 2011; European Science Foundation-COST ‘RESCUE’

Human sciences – clarification of the term

There is no consensus on the definition of the humanities and social sciences. We suggest to use human sciences as shorthand to cover the broad spectrum of disciplines typically described as social and economic sciences, humanities, and the academic disciplines of arts (the latter encompassing the analytical but not the performative aspects of the arts), including those, such as archaeology and linguistics, which encompass studies undertaken with the methods of the natural sciences to further

Early examples of integration of human and natural earth science

The idea that human action has a planetary impact may be ascribed to the historian George Perkins Marsh. In Man and Nature (1864), revised as The Earth as Modified by Human Action (1874), Marsh argued that unmanaged exploitation and cultivation of natural resources has altered and ultimately destroyed land through history. His writing was a source of inspiration for both practical and ideological conservation initiatives and movements through the twentieth century (Lowenthal, 1958).

After the

Benign and wicked problems

Human sciences made a number of important findings in the second half of the twentieth century which have a lasting impact on the usefulness of all the sciences for coping with future problems. Philosopher Karl Popper famously warned against the Poverty of Historicism (Popper, 1957). His argument was directed against “an approach to the social sciences which assumes that historical prediction is their principal aim…” and indeed “that it is the task of the social sciences to lay bare the law of

The composition of WG III authors

In 1988 UNEP (United Nations Environment Program) and WMO (World Meteorological Organization) set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the authoritative assembly of expertise on planetary change. It is therefore important to study to what degree the calls for collaboration across disciplines is heeded by the IPCC. The selection of authors for the IPCC report is a highly political process, directed by the IPCC Bureau elected by the 195 country members. The Bureau currently

Discussion

Climate change is an increasing focus across all sciences. A study of marine science in the Nordic countries revealed that climate change-related marine research has doubled every five years since the release of the first IPCC report in 1991 (Pedersen, 2016). There is no similar study of climate change-related historical research but general reviews indicated a rapid increase of publications by the turn of the century (McNeill, 2003, Winiwarter et al., 2004) and the trend is likely to have

Conclusion

International recommendations point to the value of integration of social science and humanities insights, and major advances have been made in the last half century in terms of our academic understanding. However, policy advice continues to draw from a crucially skewed, restricted knowledge pool. The IPCC Working Group III reports include substantial socioeconomic perspectives for future climate mitigation. However, the analysis shows that the disciplinary preference has been for economic

References (38)

P. Holm
Collaboration between the natural, social and human sciences in global change studies
Environ. Sci. Pol.
(2013)
B. Anderson
Imagined Communities
(1991)
AR5 Review Comments
John D. Aram
Concepts of interdisciplinarity: configurations of knowledge and action
Hum. Relat.
(2004)
K. von Beyme
On Political Culture, Cultural Policy, Art and Politics, 19 SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice
(2014)
A. Bjurström et al.
Physical and economic bias in climate change research: a scientometric study of IPCC third assessment report
Clim. Chang.
(2011)
P.J. Crutzen et al.
The anthropocene
G. Dressel et al.
Interdisziplinäres und transdisziplinäres Forschen organisieren
S. Fiske et al.
Changing the Atmosphere: Anthropology and Climate Change
(2015)

P. Holm

Integrative Platforms for the Humanities. Think Ahead [RJ Yearbook 2015/2016]

(2015)

P. Holm et al.

Humanities World Report 2015

(2014)

IPCC

D. Lowenthal

George Perkins Marsh: Versatile Vermonter

(1958)

F. Ludlow

Audit of Research Activity in Irish Environmental History

(2010)

Cited by (20)

How qualitative approaches matter in climate and ocean change research: Uncovering contradictions about climate concern
2021, Global Environmental Change
Citation Excerpt :
He points out that in Working Group (WG) II (on impacts and adaptation), less than one-third of the 64 coordinating lead authors were social scientists, half of whom were economists. These findings are echoed by Holm and Winiwarter (2017) who show that of the 199 secondary lead authors of AR5 WG III (on mitigation), economists account for one third of the total, while other social scientists make up 16 percent, including one psychologist, one historian and three political scientists. The remainder are mainly drawn from engineering or natural science backgrounds.
There is growing acknowledgement of the need for both quantitative and qualitative methods to unravel complex human-environment interactions and inform a more advanced move towards global sustainability. Nonetheless, qualitative methods still play an understated role in climate and ocean change research. One important reason for this are continuing tendencies in the natural sciences to value ‘hard’ and value-free quantitative approaches over ‘soft’ and value-laden qualitative approaches. This paper argues that to overcome such methodological reservations, it is necessary to inform not only about the key characteristics of qualitative research but also – and this has received little attention – about the concrete empirical insights that can be gained from qualitative as opposed to quantitative data, despite sharing the same research focus.
The environmental literature still lacks relevant examples from fieldwork that explain in detail how exactly decisive information is elicited from specific qualitative datasets, thereby illustrating how qualitative approaches matter. This paper seeks to help fill this gap by demonstrating to sceptical quantitative researchers the necessity and added value of integrating qualitative data in global environmental change research and highlighting impeding factors. This is done by presenting empirical findings about climate and ocean change adaptation in Norwegian coastal fisheries and elucidating how different qualitative interview techniques reveal that fishers who initially state that they do not worry about climate change actually do worry, and vice versa. Self-categorisation theory from social psychology is used to better explain such contradictory statements. Detecting salient but masked climate concern and understanding the reasons behind it are crucial for avoiding misleading conclusions and effectively tailoring adaptation strategies to the requirements of specific audiences.
Universities, industries and sustainable development: Outcomes of the 2017 G7 Environment Ministerial Meeting
2019, Sustainable Production and Consumption
Citation Excerpt :
Multi-disciplinarity, inter-disciplinarity and trans-disciplinarity are essential for sustainability and sustainable development (Otto and Wohlpart, 2009; Leal Filho, 2015), as they bring together a wide variety of perspectives and solutions (Azeiteiro et al., 2015; Milutinovic and Nikolic, 2014; Mintz and Tal, 2014). Stakeholder collaboration is also required and there is still a need for a public–private integration and systemic approach to SD (Travis and Holm, 2017; Holm and Winiwarter, 2017). Among other players, universities, or more generally institutions of higher education (HEIs), have the responsibility to provide leadership for SD, to promote a systemic approach in relation to the multiple challenges society is facing and to influence decision makers.
During the G7 Environment Ministerial Meeting under the Italian Presidency which took place in Bologna, Italy, 11–12 June 2017, representatives from Universities and Research Institutes and from the major industries of the G7 countries joined two Ministerial side events to identify current and future priorities for implementing Sustainable Development (SD) in the G7 countries. This article is built on materials produced in both side events with the aim of deepening the role of universities for SD. The major findings of the G7 Environment Ministerial Meeting are presented, with a focus on sustainable teaching and learning, university research for SD and effective cooperation between universities and industries. The recommendations have more general implications for the role of universities in addressing public policies. Universities have the core responsibility to promote a systemic approach in relation to the multiple societal challenges and to influence policy makers, but the leadership for SD implies the ability to build partnerships with other universities and networks of shared value with all relevant stakeholders of SD.
Re-storying marine conservation: Integrating art and science to explore and articulate ideas, visions and expressions of marine space
2018, Ocean and Coastal Management
Citation Excerpt :
Increasingly, voices from the arts, humanities and social sciences are underlining the importance of an integrated approach to addressing contemporary societal challenges such as climate change, resource scarcity, food and energy security, and environmental degradation (including biodiversity loss, ocean acidification and marine pollution) (e.g., Holm et al., 2015; Holm and Winiwarter, 2017; Ohlmeyer, 2016).
Art-science collaborations are proliferating as the benefits of bringing artists and scientists together are increasingly recognised and supported. This paper documents an example of an artist and scientist with overlapping (as opposed to the more usual mutually exclusive) practices, in terms of artistic and scientific approaches to the research material. It illustrates how a collaboration between a marine social scientist (the author) and a visual artist helped to inspire a different approach to a marine protected area dispute between the Scottish Government and the small Scottish island community of Barra, Outer Hebrides, Scotland. The art-science collaboration resulted in Sea Stories, an interactive, online, cultural map of the sea around the island of Barra. The participatory mapping process to create the Sea Stories map involved visions and expressions of marine space being constructed through constant interaction between the research team and research participants. It revealed different ways of knowing the marine environment, hitherto not visible or acknowledged within the marine policy environment where the protection of biological diversity was the focus. The acknowledgement of a rich and diverse cultural heritage bound up with the marine biological diversity opened up possibilities for the design of a community-led and government-supported co-management process that recognises the social relations which form part of the island’s socio-ecological system.
Famines in medieval and early modern Europe—Connecting climate and society
2024, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change
New perspectives on historical climatology
2023, Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change
The history of climate and society: a review of the influence of climate change on the human past
2022, Environmental Research Letters

View all citing articles on Scopus

View full text

Climate change studies and the human sciences

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

The need for the historical sciences in climate change research

Human sciences – clarification of the term

Early examples of integration of human and natural earth science

Benign and wicked problems

The composition of WG III authors

Discussion

Conclusion

Environ. Sci. Pol.

Imagined Communities

Concepts of interdisciplinarity: configurations of knowledge and action

Hum. Relat.

On Political Culture, Cultural Policy, Art and Politics, 19 SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice

Physical and economic bias in climate change research: a scientometric study of IPCC third assessment report

Clim. Chang.

The anthropocene

Interdisziplinäres und transdisziplinäres Forschen organisieren

Changing the Atmosphere: Anthropology and Climate Change

Integrative Platforms for the Humanities. Think Ahead [RJ Yearbook 2015/2016]

Humanities World Report 2015

George Perkins Marsh: Versatile Vermonter

Audit of Research Activity in Irish Environmental History