UNDP's mitigation strategy in Africa

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Exploring Cultural Dimensions to Climate Change
Thomas Heyd1 Nick Brooks2 1Philosophy,
University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada V8W
3P4 Email heydt_at_uvic.ca. 2Tyndall Centre, UEA,
Norwich NR4 7TJ. Email nick.brooks_at_uea.ac.uk.
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Climate change and culture

• Human beings have experienced large changes in
  climate throughout history
• Up to 6º C cooler 1.5º C warmer than today,
  with large regional changes
• Climate human society have evolved together
• Last systematic reorganisation of global climate
  5000 years ago
• Profound impacts on human societies across the
  globe (Brooks, 2006)
• Currently at beginning of another phase of
  global-scale change in climate

• Responses to climate change influenced by
  perceptions of the environment (McIntosh et al.,
  2000)

• How might attitudes towards the environment
  (nature) influence the extent or efficacy of
  adaptation today?

Pillar of lake sediment in the central Sahara
evidence of profound changes in climate and
environment 5000 yrs ago
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Human society as a part of nature

• For millennia, human society has been seen as
  embedded in nature

• Mosely (2001) describes the historical Andean
  world view

Nature is believed to be highly animate,
charging the landscape with interactive
forces.This all encompassing cosmology provides
deep identification with the environment. Andean
people literally read their physical surroundings
as a resonant text of sacred places and spaces
Caral, the earliest dated urban centre in the
Americas template for Andean culture?

• Cruikshank (2000, 2001) describes how Alaskan
  Tlingit Yukon First Nations perceive a living
  landscape, whose components are active
  counterparts to human beings. Local knowledge
  embedded in oral traditions emphasises

• the social nature of all relations between
  humans and nonhumans, that is, animals and
  landscape features, including glaciers.
  (Cruikshank, 2001, p. 382)

• the importance of taking personal and collective
  responsibility for changes in that world.
  (Cruikshank, 2001, p. 391)

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Nature landscapes as sentient
Glaciers perceived as entities that pay attention
respond to human behaviour, e.g. speaking
carelessly, spilling blood, making noise, and
cooking with grease in their vicinity.
(Cruikshank 2001)
Oral traditions emphasise the agency present in
the natural environment
Idea of sentient landscapes social relations
between the human non-human provides a cultural
mechanism for engagement with the physical
environment
Such an approach is common in non-Western
non-urban societies, characterising animism
naturalistic polytheism, echoed in e.g. Islamic
societies (Djinn/Djenoun), deep green
environmentalism, interpretations of Gaia theory
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Humanity nature in Western discourses
Mans evolution is based on the fact that he has
lost his original home, nature - and that he can
never return to it. Erich Fromm (1955)

• Separation from nature as a defining human
  characteristic
• Biblical Fall as a sundering from nature
• Hobbes - institutions of government protect us
  from a state of nature
• Freud - civilisation suppresses original,
  autonomous disposition towards violence and
  aggression (1941)
• Difference between nature human culture often
  identified with the distinction between
  civilisation order on the one hand savagery,
  chaos wildness on other (Horigan, 1988)

mitigation represents activities to protect
nature from society while adaptation constitutes
ways of protecting society from nature. (Stehr
von Storch, 2005)
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Nature, culture development - the African Sahel

• Development boom in 1950s
• Start of independence era, technological optimism
• Unusually wet conditions, persisting into 1960s
• Expansion of agriculture into drier areas in north

• Rainfall decline in 1970s
• Catastrophic failure of agriculture
• 100s of thousands of people, millions of animals
  lost
• Drought persisted until late 1990s, development
  undermined

• What went wrong?
• Expansion of agriculture into historical marginal
  areas
• Supplanting of traditional coping mechanisms with
  one size fits all model
• Historically normal climatic variations not
  considered in development

Pursuit of progress development along imported
Western models of economic expansion
commercialisation did not consider
human-environment relations
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Nature vs humanity in climate change discourse

• Cornerstones of contrarian arguments
• Humans are separate from above nature (human
  exceptionalism)
• Nature humanity are fundamentally in conflict -
  support for one associated with contempt for the
  other

the ideal scare campaign for those who hate
capitalism and love big government
anti-American, anti-capitalist, and anti-human
Christopher C. Horner, CEI
"You can't be progressive if you accept the
ecological limits to growth. Clare
Fox, Director, Institute of Ideas
Underlying environmentalist assumptions is a
misanthropic view of humanityIn the third world
the consequences of 'sustainable development',
holding back economic growth, are even
starker. Daniel Ben Ami
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Concluding thoughts

• Dominant doctrine of humans nature as
  separate
• Tends to discourage examination of
  interdependence of human societies and the wider
  physical environment
• Has played a major role in the pursuit of
  maladaptive development policies
• Acts as a cultural barrier to both mitigation and
  adaptation

• Other views of nature exist, which
• Acknowledge agency inherent in the wider physical
  environment
• Allow people to recognise role of variability
  change in human affairs
• Encourage social responsibility towards the
  environment

• The successful meaningful pursuit of adaptation
  mitigation require
• A cultural shift in which ideas of nature as
  responsive possessing agency are combined with
  a modern scientific understanding of the Earth
  system
• The rejection of long-held beliefs about the
  separation of humanity nature
• Less psychological insulation from nature

Difficult to achieve in a world of day-to-day
isolation from nature
9
(No Transcript)
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Adaptation as protection from nature
mitigation represents activities to protect
nature from society while adaptation constitutes
ways of protecting society from nature. (Stehr
von Storch, 2005)

• Nature-society dichotomy
• Implies nature society are in opposition
• Protecting society from nature suggests
  insulation of society from nature
• Echoes centuries of western thought about nature
  and society

• Separation of society from nature
• Biblical Fall as a sundering from nature -
  stewardship vs dominance
• Hobbes - institutions of government protect us
  from state of nature
• Freud - civilisation suppresses original,
  autonomous disposition towards violence and
  aggression (1941)
• Fromms evolutionary awakening falling out
  of nature (1955)

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Adaptation as protection from nature
mitigation represents activities to protect
nature from society while adaptation constitutes
ways of protecting society from nature. (Stehr
von Storch, 2005)

• Nature-society dichotomy
• Implies nature society are in opposition
• Protecting society from nature suggests
  insulation of society from nature
• Echoes centuries of western thought about nature
  and society

• Separation of society from nature
• Biblical Fall as a sundering from nature -
  stewardship vs dominance
• Hobbes - institutions of government protect us
  from state of nature
• Freud - civilisation suppresses original,
  autonomous disposition towards violence and
  aggression (1941)
• Fromms evolutionary awakening falling out
  of nature (1955)

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Adaptation as protection from nature
mitigation represents activities to protect
nature from society while adaptation constitutes
ways of protecting society from nature. (Stehr
von Storch, 2005)

• Nature-society dichotomy
• Implies nature society are in opposition
• Protecting society from nature suggests
  insulation of society from nature
• Echoes centuries of western thought about nature
  and society

• Separation of society from nature
• Biblical Fall as a sundering from nature -
  stewardship vs dominance
• Hobbes - institutions of government protect us
  from state of nature
• Freud - civilisation suppresses original,
  autonomous disposition towards violence and
  aggression (1941)
• Fromms evolutionary awakening falling out
  of nature (1955)

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Other views of nature
Separation from nature often seen as defining
human characteristic, often associated with
doctrine of human exceptionalism

• In religion
• Biblical Fall as a sundering from nature

• In philosophy
• Hobbes - government state protect us from
  state of nature

• In psychoanalysis
• Freud (1941) - civilisation as suppressing our
  original, autonomous disposition towards
  violence and aggression
• Fromm (1955) - falling out of nature /
  awakening driven by biological and cultural
  evolution. subsequent cultural evolution is
  based on the fact that humanity has lost its
  original home, nature - and can never return to
  it.

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Negotiating as the world warms

• GROWING CONCERNS
• Widespread recognition of reality potential
  impacts of climate change
• Growing climate change industry - lobby groups,
  international frameworks,, negotiations, private
  enterprise, etc

• BUT
• Globally, little progress in reducing greenhouse
  gas emissions
• Adaptation sustainable development remain more
  concepts than realities

• OBVIOUS OBSTACLES TO ACTION
• Economic, social, technical political inertia
• Vested interests, other (shorter-term)
  priorities, contested impacts
• Perceptions of mitigation ( adaptation) as
  economically risky

• HIDDEN OBSTACLES TO ACTION
• What role does culture play?
• Attitudes to nature play crucial role in
  framing our responses to climate change other
  environmental phenomena

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• Andean society
• Nature is believed to be highly animate,
  charging the landscape with interactive forces.
  This befits a dynamic Cordillera of smoldering
  volcanoes, frequent earthquakes, and recurrent el
  Nino crises. Deep reverence of Pacha Mana (mother
  earth) is pervasive, and she receives offerings
  and prayers on all agricultural occasions by all
  who till the soil. Sharing procreative powers,
  women feel particularly close to Pacha Mama. They
  also share a close relationship with the moon -
  the female counterpart of the male sun. Prominent
  mountain peaks, called apu, are influential
  spiritual forces and primary sources of water,
  the life blood of mother earth.
• This all encompassing cosmology provides deep
  identification with the environment. Andean
  people literally read their physical surroundings
  as a resonant text of sacred places and spaces
  that commemorate a trip across time and changing
  landscapes from super beings to human beings to
  present beings.
• Mosely, M. E. 2001. The Incas and their
  Ancestors The Archaeology of Peru. Revised
  edition. Thames and Hudson, London, p. 51.

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Separation from nature in Western thought -
historical

• In religious thought
• Expulsion from Eden - the Fall

• Opposition between nature civilisation
• Hobbes - state of nature in which life nasty,
  brutish short
• Freud - civilisation suppresses original,
  autonomous disposition towards violence and
  aggression
• Fromm - civilisation progress as result of
  awakening from primitive natural state / a
  falling out of nature

• Social evolutionism
• Stages of development - savagery, barbarism
  civilisation
• Equated with hunting-gathering, herding, urban
  living respectively
• Discredited in academic circles, persists in
  popular discourse

Source Brooks, 2006
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Development as progress - development and disaster

• 20th century African Sahel
• Expansion of agriculture in 1950s - independence,
  technocratic optimism, economic expansion
• Marginalisation of primitive unproductive
  pastoralists

Sources Reitz Sandweiss, 2001 Andrus et al.,
2004 Wells Noller, 1999
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Civilisation as adaptation to climate change

• Widespread climate changes 5,500-5,000 yrs ago
• Collapse and retreat of monsoon systems in
  Africa, Asia, N. America
• Shift from humid savannah to desert in Sahara, W
  and Central Asia, China
• Abrupt climatic transition 5,200 years ago
• Slight global cooling of lt0.4 C higher

• Impact on human societies
• Severe resource scarcity many areas become
  uninhabitable
• People squeezed into remaining productive areas
• Populations increase locally in major river
  valleys
• Increase in violent conflict and social
  inequality
• Emergence of cities, states, authoritarian
  societies
• First civilisations emerge in areas facing
  environmental crises

• Civilisation as adaptation
• Emerges by accident as result of ad hoc
  responses to climate change
• New societies emerge after period of crisis and
  disruption
• Adaptation ensures survival but associated with
  many costs
• 4,200 years ago, a further arid crisis
  devastates Egypt and Mesopotamia
• Civilisation is not a sustainable adaptation in
  face of future crises

Source Brooks, 2006
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Negotiating as the world warms

• Widespread scientific agreement
• Widespread concern among scientists,
  politicians, policymakers, public
• Knowledge of necessary measures to avoid worst
  manifestations
• Availability of numerous potential solutions
  to climate change
• Sense of urgency - climate change ostensibly
  taken seriously by governments
• Successive rounds of negotiations to address
  climate change
• Emergence of climate change industry

• BUT
• Globally, little progress in reducing greenhouse
  gas emissions
• Economic, political, ideological opposition to
  action
• Is there a deeper, cultural malaise?

• Concerned here with the importance of
  perceptions of nature