Issue 17.2 Abstracts

Contents Page

Climate Change, Individual Responsibilities and Cultural Frameworks

By Thomas Heyd

Until recently the role of culture in mediating responses to global change has been little discussed. Since the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Summit (COP15) to agree to binding agreements on emission targets, however, the cultural dimensions, arguably, should increasingly become a focus of interest. On the assumption that, in the light of accelerating climate change, individuals have both ethical and prudential responsibilities, the limited advances in mitigation and adaptation of international institutions and national governments may pose significant obstacles for action. It is suggested that, for individuals to adequately address their responsibilities under these circumstances, requires taking note of the cultural frameworks of our societies. Two areas, in which cultural dimensions may play a particularly important role, are highlighted, namely the conceptual framing of environmental forces and the development of citizens-led governance.

Keywords:Cultural frameworks, climate change, conceptual framing, governance, responsibilities.

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Climate Change and Moral Outrage

By James Garvey

State governments have done little or nothing about climate change, and individuals have done little or nothing about their own carbon footprints. Perhaps both parties would do something if the moral demand for action were clear. This paper presents two arguments for the necessity of meaningful state action on climate change. The arguments depend on certain clear facts about emissions as well as two uncontroversial moral principles — one owed to Peter Singer and the other connecting capacities with the demand for action. Arguments are presented for individual action based on a similar set of facts and the consistent application of principles which apply in state cases. The arguments put consistency, not consequences, at the heart of the call for individual action. This is a strategy which might help individuals recognize their obligations to the environment.

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Global Warming, Equity and Future Generations

By Robin Attfield

The phenomenon of global warming, the anthropogenic theory of its genesis, and some implications of that theory, are introduced as a case-study of a global environmental problem involving issues of equity between peoples, generations and species. We should favour the proportioning of emission quotas to population, if the charges of anthropocentrism, international injustice and discrimination against future generations can be avoided. It is argued that these charges can be countered satisfactorily, if emissions totals are set low enough for the needs of other species and generations, and if limits are set to the trading of quotas to ensure that all countries retain enough of their quotas to satisfy basic needs. The anthropogenic theory might instead be held to favour tying emissions quotas to aggregate historical emissions of the last two centuries. But intergenerational equity requires a sustainable international regime, based on universal principles rather than history.

Keywords: carbon emissions, equity, future generations, species, quotas

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Ethics of Climate Change: Adopting an Empirical Approach to Moral Concern

By Bruce Morito

This paper is about a certain kind of insensitivity (to people and, by extension to ecosystems) that ethical deliberation and theorizing produce when faced with the complexity that climate change scenarios present. In the first part of the paper, I examine the insensitivity to this complexity of traditional moral frameworks when prescribing courses of action. In the second, I attempt to sketch an approach to ethical deliberation that better handles and sensitizes us to the complex concerns that arise in such situations, referring to an interdisciplinary research project, Institutional Adaptations to Climate Change, as a way to illustrate how this ethic would work. Given the nature of the paper, the position I take is more programmatic than substantive.

Keywords: climate change, ethics, empirical approach, complexity

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Amerigenic Climate Change: An Indictment of Normalcy

By Martin Schönfeld

Climate forcing can be gauged by national contributions. Human GHG (CO2) emissions can be compared by country and year, but, ranking annual national emissions by per-capita shares tell us more. That measure, together with cumulative emissions over time as well as policy actions, reveals the USA as the dominant contributor to warming. Anthropogenic climate change is thus largely Amerigenic. I argue that this circumstance arises from the unusually high reliance on fossil fuels as well as from a specific geography of thought that informs conventional culture and affects policy in the US. Salient features of this geography are monotheism (Protestantism), individualism, capitalism, and skepticism. Each of these prevailing social traits is innocuous by itself, but they coalesce to a critical mass — a square of flawed cognition — in the context of climate change. Climate change is ultimately a cultural problem, and US normalcy is to be blamed for worsening climate forcing and for delaying rational policy.

Keywords: Climate change, Perpetration, Harms, Normalcy, USA

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A Hot Topic? Climate Change Mitigation Policies, Politics, and the Media in Australia

By Desley Louise Speck

This paper explores some issues that have been important in the climate change mitigation debate in Australia. Media coverage reflects the prominence and nature of the debate and has risen almost exponentially since 2003. Clearly it has become a political issue. Media coverage is the lens through which the public view the debate, and whilst public opinion is not the only factor affecting policy formulation, in Australia it can be critical as voting is mandatory. A pilot study was used to explore perceptions of the nature of policy, the climate change debate, and its portrayal in the media, through the interview of key opinion leaders. Results indicate that opinion leaders believe that mitigation policy in Australia has been slow to progress due to media promotion of the uncertainty associated with climate change science, the weakness of leadership, and the political cost of unpalatable policy, even though effective policies at both national and internationallevels are needed.

Keywords: Climate change, Australia, media coverage, perception, mitigation policy

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Global Change and Coastal Threats: The Indonesian Case. An Attempt in Multi-Level Social-Ecological Research

By Bernhard Glaeser & Marion Glaser

This contribution links global and local issues, using case studies from Indonesia as a focus for a discussion of national policy and governance approaches, and to illustrate how these relate to livelihoods and to coastal and marine resource management. Climate change is a major aspect of global, including environmental, change. Both are linked to the economic, social and cultural dimension. Observations in Indonesia show that globalization and climate change produce repercussions on local coastal developments and livelihoods. Although the Indonesian government has set the stage for linking ocean developments and coastal threats to climate change, it remains to be seen whether or not their efforts will be adequate to address the real needs of the populations most affected. It also seems that the contemporary “climate divide” represents a new version of the old conflict between the developed and the developing world on environmental issues, globally as well as locally. Multi-level, interdisciplinary social- ecological research is advocated in order to explore feedbacks between global change and local livelihood dynamics.

Keywords: Climate change, sustainable development, equity, ocean policy, coastal livelihood

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Cultural Responses to a Late Holocene Climatic Oscillation in the Mariana Islands, Micronesia: Lessons from the Past

By Rosalind L. Hunter-Anderson

Archaeological data from south-central Guam are presented to show that technological and social adaptations enabled the ancestral Chamorros of the Mariana Islands, Micronesia, to remain mobile farmer-fishers despite a major climatic oscillation, from the Medieval Warm Period (MWP, c. 800-1350 C.E.) to the Little Ice Age (LIA, c. 1350-1900 C.E.). For several centuries people responded appropriately to increased aridity and harvest shortfalls during the LIA but tolerance limits for stresses to their cultural system were exceeded during violent clashes with Spanish colonizers in the late 17th century.

Keywords: Mariana Islands, climate change, cultural adaptations, prehistoric archaeology

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Beyond Local Justice: Gender Relations in Local-Level Dispute Settlement in Ethiopia's Zeghie Peninsula

By Tihut Asfaw & Terre Satterfield

Access to tenure security in dispute settlement contexts has become a serious concern in Ethiopia’s rural areas, where eighty-five percent of the population resides, including Zeghie Peninsula. Intense struggles for land and property resulting from growing landlessness and female-only heads of households have rendered women’s property rights a particularly contested terrain. Existing statutory laws and policies assigning rights to property and inheritance have done little to protect women from the theft of their crops, land, or tenure. This has left women with few options except those offered by civic courts and a local system known as the Shimgelina (a customary dispute settlement mechanism); yet both have been largely unfavorable to women. This paper examines these local legal and rule-based systems, and the enduring practices that reinforce inequality through imposed ‘community harmony’ where cultural and gendered expectations are invoked, and largely realized.

Keywords: dispute settlement, customary law, legal anthropology, Ethiopia, livelihood security

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Wild Mushrooms and Lichens used as Human Food for Survival in War Conditions: Podrinje-Zepa Region (Bosnia and Herzegovina, W. Balkan)

By Sulejman Redzic, Senka Barudanovic, & Sasa Pilipovic

During 2002-2005, research has been conducted within eastern Bosnia, on the use of mushrooms and lichens and their effect on people’s survival in war shelters and on isolated guerilla fighters in the area during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-95). 51 adults have been contacted for this research, including former soldiers who were holedup in the enclave during the siege between April 1992 and June 1995, when free territory was overtaken. At that time, residents of the area escaped and a number of defense soldiers formed guerilla groups. Using the method of “ethnobotanical” interview, 25 species of mushrooms and 7 species of lichens were used by interviewees during the siege. The most used mushrooms were: Agaricus campestris, Boletus edulis, and Cantharellus cibarius. The most used lichens were Evernia prunastri (oak lichen) and Usnea sp. (Old Man’s Beard), used for porridge and for lichen flour.

Keywords: food shortage, biodiversity, human behavior, human ecology, survival

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