Världens forskare har levererat tusentals rapporter om klimatet samtidigt som tyckare sprider sina åsikter på nätet efter att ha läst en blogg. Här förklarar klimatforskaren Mikael Karlsson hur vi ska tänka när vi inhämtar vår kunskap om klimatet. Inspelat på Humanistiska teatern i Uppsala den 10 mars 2022. Arrangör: Institutionen för geovetenskaper vid Uppsala universitet.
Daniel Lindvall, researcher at Climate Change Leadership, is today publishing the Discussion paper Democracy and the Challenges of Climate Change, for International IDEA. You can read the full paper here.
On 26 October Daniel Lindvall is presenting the Discussion paper Democracy and the Challenges of Climate Change, for International IDEA. Register for the webinar here.
The paper discussed correlation between climate change and democratic development. Certain climate consequences, as for example scarcity of food or rising food prices, are known to lead to social unrest and political instability and may lead to democratic breakdown, particularly in fragile democracies with weak state institutions. Other climate related emergency situations may have positive effects for democracy, bringing people together and providing opportunities for regime change, but they could also be used as an excuse for autocratic or hybrid regimes to curtail democratic freedoms.
The paper also present research on the weaknesses and strengths of democracy in dealing with the climate crisis. It argues that democratic states are generally performing better on environment protection policies and climate action than autocratic states. However, factors such as the level of corruption and the size of the fossil fuel industry are affecting the climate performance negatively.
Generally speaking, the outcome of the climate crisis will depend on whether democracies can drastically reduce their carbon footprints in the coming years. Climate change poses a challenging test for democracies’ ability to cooperate and confront highly complex global challenges. In conclusion, democracies need to formulate adequate and ambitious policy responses to climate change for democracy to remain a legitimate and credible political system for young people and future generations.
The report will be discussed at a webinar on 26 October, at which Dr Kevin Casas-Zamora, Secretary-General, International IDEA, Jan Wahlberg, the Finnish Climate Change Ambassador, Dr Julia Leininger, German Development Institute, & Member of International IDEA’s Board of Advisers, and Ms Elizabeth Wathuti, Founder of Green Generation Initiative and sustainability analyst at Sustainable Square, Kenya, will participate. Register for the webinar here
Stefania Barca, den nya Zennström-professorn i Climate Change Leadersship
Foto Mikael Wallerstedt
In her book Forces of Reproduction: Notes for a Counter-Hegemonic Anthropocene (2020), Stefania Barca, drawing on a materialist ecofeminist analysis of the world, proposes a counter-narrative to the hegemonic one around the Anthropocene. She questions the exclusionary and normative character of the dominant narrative and, thus, she challenges the very foundations of capitalist/industrial modernity. In doing so, by bringing forward a narrative justice, she makes visible and accounted for those who have been removed, silenced, denied existence. These other-than-master subjects and beings are what she calls “the forces of reproduction” – those who do the work of sustaining life in its material and immaterial needs. These life-enhancing forces are, for Stefania, “a queer political subject” and a “political subject in the making”.
Throughout this year Stefania has been involved in a number of events discussing the themes of her book. You can watch the different recordings below. Thank you to all involved for the opportunity to be part of these events!
In April Stefania was invited into a dialogue with Nancy Fraser, Hedda Andersson visiting Professor at LUCSUS, Lund University. The dialogue featured a book presentation by Stefania, followed by a discussion by Nancy Fraser. The event was moderated by Vasna Ramasar(Associate Senior Lecturer at Lund University) and organised by The Pufendorf IAS Advanced Study Group on Social Reproduction and Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies (LUCSUS).
In her June keynote talk for the University of Coimbra, she discussed her analysis of reproductive forces, showing how we need to dismantle the master’s house, by undoing the [hegemonic] Anthropocene.
In February, Stefania also gave a seminar about her book for the Environmental Justice research group at ICTA, the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB).
Last week Stefania Barca, Zennström Professor in Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University gave a talk at Uppsala Klimatveckan 2021, which set the stage for the next 15 months of her professorship. The topic was on the Anthropocene and drawing out the masters narrative of such a concept. From this starting point, the arguments to decolonise climate change leadership compel us to reflect upon the assumptions and narratives that frame our ways of understanding and engaging with the world. You can watch the full talk below.
This talk invited members of the public to work through this challenge with us: how can we consider the ways in which we approach the decolonising challenge? What are the core assumptions we carry with us in our methods of engagement? How to we recognise these and counter (or work through) them?
We will shortly release a statement that responds more fully to the questions we were given by Uppsalabo, along with further resources we find helpful. Please check back here shortly.
If you are interested in getting involved with this process, please do reach out to us. We are eager to learn from your ideas!
To read more about Stefania Barca’s approach to Climate Change Leadership we encourage you to read her statement on Just Transition.
Watch Zennström Professor in Climate Change Leadership 2019 – 2020, Dr. Keri Facer deliver her inaugural lecture on the futures of universities in a changing climate.
This is a link to the video Keri made for her Nov 14th Keynote to the Transforming Higher Education for the Future (IAU) Conference in Puebla, Mexico. Based on her longer inaugural lecture (see below) she talks about how the interdependence of the SDGs requires universities to come up with new cross-institutional responses, and makes some proposals for what these might be.
Governments may have less immediate power than they used to but, in matters large and small, someone somewhere often has to make a decision that will affect many lives. The Ministers making those decisions are human too, and what we know about how science and futures thinking operate in government can tell us a lot about their place in wider public debates. Making decisions today, based on evidence from the past, in order to change the future: what could possibly go wrong?
Clair Craig joins us in Kollaboratoriet in early June. Head over to youtube to follow the full lecture.
Follow our youtube channel for more clips from this lecture, and for other talks and events with the Climate Change Leadership initiative at Uppsala University.
Dr Claire Craig CBEis Chief Science Policy Officer at the Royal Society. Previously Claire led the Government Office for Science, and has worked for three UK Government Chief Scientific Advisors. She was awarded a CBE for her work on Foresight, the UK’s science-based strategic futures programme, and was a member of Faculty at the World Economic Forum. Her career includes periods at McKinsey & Co and the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit. She has been pre-Elected Provost of the Queen’s College, Oxford, taking up post in summer 2019. Her first book “How does government listen to scientists?” was published by Palgrave in August 2018, and she began life as a geophysicist.
The renewal of the university’s mission in the era of climate change. A lecture from Zennström Chair of Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University, Keri Facer. October 1st, 18.15 – 19.30 in the University Main Building, Room X
Come along for an evening of mingling and reflection with researchers, students, climate advocates, and members of the public to explore the role of the university in face of climate change. Join the mingle from 17.45 outside the lecture hall.
Keri Facer is Professor of Educational and Social Futures from the University of Bristol, UK. She holds the Zennström Chair of Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University from 2019 – 2020.
See the interview with Professor Keri Facer, the Zennström Chair of Climate Change Leadership, for Futuuri magazine at the Constructing Social Futures Conference 2019