Spectacular Environmentalisms: Media, Knowledge and the Framing of Ecological Politics
by M.K. Goodman, J. Littler, D. Brockington, and M. Boykoff
Environmental Communication, 10, 6, 677-688 (2016).
Excerpt: As we move firmly into the so-called Anthropocene – an era defined by human-induced global environmental change, neoliberal, consumer capitalism and the unprecedented flow of media, knowledge and communication – how is it that we know about the environment? More specifically: how is it we know about human–environment relationships – those tension-filled, ever-present, often-obscured, but inescapable relationships that are most likely overlain by some form of a market? How do we know about the ecological destruction embedded in these current human–environment relationships? How do we know what to do about the increasingly solid specters of climate change and irretrievable biodiversity losses as well as the ordinarily polluted cities and fields many live in and count on for survival? Read more ... |
Navigating Scales of Knowledge and Decision-Making in the Intermountain West: Implications for Science Policy
by E. Gordon, L. Dilling, E. McNie, and A. Ray
Climate in Context: Science and Society Partnering for Adaptation, Ed. A. Parris and G. Garfin, 235-254, Wiley and Sons (2016). |
 Assessment of Cookstove Stacking in Northern Ghana Using Surveys and Stove Use Monitors
by R. Piedrahita, K.L. Dickinson, E. Kanyomse, E. Coffey, R. Alirigia, Y. Hagar, I. Rivera, A. Oduro, V. Dukic, C. Wiedinmyer, and M. Hannigan
Energy for Sustainable Development, 34, 67-76 (2016).
Abstract: Biomass burning for home energy use is a major health and environmental concern. While transitioning to cleaner cooking technologies has the potential to generate significant health and environmental benefits, prior efforts to introduce improved cookstoves have encountered many hurdles. Here, we focus on the increased stove use hurdle; households tend to use improved stoves alongside their traditional stoves rather than replacing them entirely, a phenomenon called cookstove “stacking.” This work provides a systematic, multi-method assessment of households’ cooking behaviors and cookstove stacking in the context of a 200-home randomized cookstove intervention study in Northern Ghana. Two stoves were selected for the intervention, a locally made rocket stove (Gyapa) and the Philips HD4012 LS gasifier stove. There were four intervention groups: a control group, a group given two Gyapa stoves, a group given two Philips stoves, and a group given one of each. Two stoves were distributed to each home in an attempt to induce more substitution away from traditional stoves. Adoption and usage patterns were quantified using temperature loggers at a subset of homes, as well as quarterly surveying in all households. We find that using multiple stoves each day is common practice within each intervention group, and that the two groups given at least one Gyapa had the largest reductions in traditional stove use relative to the control group, though use of traditional stoves remained high in all groups. Read more ...
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Assessing Needs and Decision Contexts: RISA Approaches to Engagement Research
by C. Simpson, L. Dilling, K. Dow, K. Lackstrom, M.C. Lemos, and R. Riley
Climate in Context: Science and Society Partnering for Adaptation, Ed. A. Parris and G. Garfin, 3-26, Wiley and Sons (2016). |
 Climate Justice Beyond International Burden Sharing
by S. Vanderheiden
Midwest Studies In Philosophy,XL, (2016).
Excerpt: Climate justice scholars have in recent years devoted considerable attention to the development and application of justice principles and frameworks to the architecture of global climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. The resulting scholarly literature is now rife with burden-sharing or resource sharing mitigation prescriptions that call for far more aggressive actions than are ever considered as viable policy options, along with proposals for singular or hybrid principles for assigning adaptation liability that follow sound normative analyses but have gained little traction among policymakers (Gardiner 2013; Harris 2016; Moellendorf 2014; Vanderheiden 2007). With their gaze fixed primarily upon macro-level substantive policy outcomes, scholars have paid less attention to the way that justice might be applied at other levels of analysis and operationalized through the institutions of international climate policy development and implementation. Read more ... |
 Justice and Democracy in Climate Change Governance
by S. Vanderheiden
Taiwan Human Rights Journal, 6, 3-26 (2016).
Abstract: Among the challenges posed by human-caused climate change are issues of justice and democracy, in how the environmental problem is expected to affect human social and economic systems and in the response taken by states and the international community to mitigate the problem. While unmitigated climate change unjustly harms the most vulnerable and widens existing unjust inequalities, programs to mitigate climate change can also be just or unjust, and so must take pains to avoid the latter. Likewise with democracy, as the failure to adequately respond to climate change may intensify scarcity and in so doing undermine new or established democracies, and cooperative efforts to control climate change are likely to be more responsive to the interests of the many if they are informed by democratic ideals and principles. Both sets of issues can constructively be theorized in terms of human rights, which seek to guarantee human interests in a safe and sustainable environment as well as those to self-determination and popular participation in major decisions that shape social and economic life, and which help to link the demands of justice and democracy in common cause. Here, I shall examine several such issues of justice and democracy, in the contexts of both domestic and international climate change governance, grounding these imperatives where appropriate in a human rights framework. Read more ... |
