Logiciel Envision RISKS Mosar
Alke Stilwell
Critically, social systems define who is seen as deserving of local, state, and federal interventions to address climate impacts. For example, they determine which neighborhoods receive hazard mitigation investment or post-disaster recovery aid. Through complex interactions, conscious and unconscious tendencies and biases, and visible and invisible social rules, social systems distribute climate risks and benefits; they also create the opportunities for climate adaptations and climate mitigation to be envisioned and acted upon.
There is growing evidence that understanding social systems is an integral part of climate science and climate solutions-making, including identifying links among adaptation, mitigation, and climate justice. The importance of social science and humanities research on climate change has been made clear by contributions across many fields, including but not limited to anthropology, communication, ethnic studies, geography, history, linguistics, philosophy, political science, psychology, public policy and administration, religious studies, and sociology.
This chapter highlights and summarizes contributions to climate change science from across the social sciences. It explains that social systems give rise to greenhouse gas emissions and distribute the risks and benefits of industrialization and climate change (KM 20.1). The chapter also explains how knowledge, culture, ethics, communication, and decision-making shape engagement with and responses to climate change (KM 20.2), as well as how climate adaptation and mitigation processes, such as human migration and transitions away from fossil fuels, may be just or unjust (KM 20.3). Central to this chapter is an explanation of how social systems inequitably distribute harm to BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color), low-income, and rural communities; women and gender minorities; and other racialized or overburdened peoples. Key to this explanation are the concepts of environmental justice and environmental injustice. Environmental justice has three primary dimensions: recognitional, distributional, and procedural (Figure 20.1). This chapter uses these three dimensions to explore whether the actions taken to create, mitigate, or adapt to climate change are expected to produce just or unjust outcomes.
Social systems are changing the climate (very high confidence). Societal characteristics and processes shape greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels (very high confidence). Social systems also inequitably distribute the benefits of energy consumption and the impacts of GHG emissions and climate change (high confidence). Governance is a critical process that distributes these impacts (very high confidence) and provides access to adaptation (medium confidence).
Relationships between emissions and other social features are evident across time and space and at different scales. National-level carbon emissions are strongly associated with economic growth.34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41 Using regression analysis, researchers have also identified structural factors that shape the relationship between economic growth and carbon emissions. For example, the relationship between emissions and economic growth is stronger for nations with greater levels of income and wealth inequality or whose economies are more reliant on natural resource exports.42,43,44,45,46,47 All else being equal, nations with larger and more capital-intensive militaries have higher emissions,48,49,50,51 most notably the United States.52,53,54 Conversely, nations with a stronger environmental civil society or more gender equality experience a decrease in the relationship between economic growth and emissions.55,56,57
Subnational analyses show that increases in emissions over time are moderately lower in US states with a greater concentration of environmental nongovernmental organizations63 and in US states with legislators exhibiting strong environmental records.64 This research points to the role of governance and related institutional arrangements in mitigating emissions.
While all people are exposed to human-caused climate change stemming from GHG emissions, social systems shape the degree of exposure and distribute climate impacts across people and places over time (KMs 4.2, 5.2, 11.2, 15.2, 23.1, 31.2). Exposure and impact are differentiated in the social science and climate change literature. As an example, flood exposure is understood as the probability of water inundation and risk to infrastructure, whereas flood impacts could be the displacement and housing insecurity that result from preexisting conditions interacting with the inundation or high water.65 Individuals and communities that have lived at the margins of, or have been purposely excluded from the benefits of, industrialization have a greater probability of exposure to pollution and negative environmental impacts.66 For example, in the United States, Black and BIPOC individuals and communities, members of low-income households, immigrants with limited English proficiency, unhoused individuals,67,68,69 rural communities,70,71,72,73 and agricultural workers are disproportionately impacted by environmental hazards66,74 and climate change (Figures 4.15, 4.16, 18.2; KMs 4.2, 11.2, 14.3, 15.2). The convergence of exclusion, exposure, and impacts places unequal burdens on these individuals and communities, sometimes referred to as overburdened communities.
The burdens of climate change and social inequity become acute during disaster events71,75,76,77,78,79 and can be exacerbated by governance decisions.80 Hurricanes Maria and Harvey, for example, had disproportionate impacts on minority households, renters, multifamily households, and low-income families due in part to governance decisions related to aid distribution and documentation requirements (Box 4.2; KMs 23.1, 23.5; Figure 26.3). In this case, application and appeals processes for disaster assistance required documentation that some residents did not have or required the navigation of complex aid structures that some people could not successfully find their way through.81 This left those same families and communities struggling to meet basic needs in the immediate aftermath82,83 and unable to access funding for rebuilding. These obstacles to recovery can have long-term generational effects related to the loss of savings, housing insecurity, and displacement. For example, people who migrated to California from the southern Midwest during the Great Depression fared worse than native Californians for at least a generation.84 The absence of data and data collection, such as demographic and hazard data, compounds the challenges of equitable governance during disasters. Data limitations in territories, for example, have direct impacts on the availability of resources and the visibility of at-risk populations.85,86,87
Even when all citizens are treated the same under the law, differential outcomes may result if the law ignores structural inequalities.92,93 For example, when aid is delayed or not readily available following a disaster, low-income individuals and families may lack access to food and shelter even when those costs will be reimbursed. Under these same conditions, middle- or high-income individuals and families often have greater access to credit and other financial resources that allow them to spend money now and then wait for reimbursement.94
One example of adaptive governance in the face of climate risk occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a broad coalition of civil society and local, state, and federal government actors came together to address flood risk and to create structures and organizations that continue to drive risk reduction for all hazards. Tulsa was the most frequently flooded city in the United States from the 1960s through the 1980s.99 Almost 40 years ago, a coalition of concerned citizens and flood victims brought pressure to bear on city hall to address the problem. This coalition was eventually joined by government and elected officials and supported by federal partners, which led to a comprehensive floodplain management approach that has served as a model for other cities.100 The city was able to enact stricter land-use regulations and draw on federal incentives through the Community Rating System to garner public and political support.101
A promising area of research that takes different forms of knowledge seriously is called coproduced or cocreated research (Figure 20.3).138,139,140 While coproduction is an increasingly widely used term with varied definitions (Figure 20.3), coproduced climate change research projects often integrate community-based insights and solutions to climate change with scientific insights and solutions. Coproduced research often foregrounds nonscientists, such as Indigenous Knowledge holders or multigenerational farming communities, as experts within their own knowledge contexts (KMs 18.3, 31.5). This kind of research can give rise to community-based resilience efforts. Research in the Arctic, for example, has been particularly successful at experimenting with coproduction, especially in integrating Indigenous and Western scientific knowledge bases.141,142 However, integration can fail if power dynamics, goals, trust, and compensation within research teams and epistemologies are not equitable.143
One important consequence of different epistemological assumptions is that different people and groups perceive climate change risks and possible solutions in widely different, often compatible, but sometimes conflicting, ways.144,145 For example, the politicization of climate change in the US helps to explain differences in public perceptions of severity and concern as a function of demographic factors such as gender and political ideology.146,147 In this case, women and liberal-identifying individuals report relatively higher levels of concern and support for mitigative action and policy. In contrast, climate change is a relatively less polarizing issue among racial and ethnic minorities as well as socioeconomically disadvantaged groups compared to White populations and higher-income groups.148 In part, beliefs and concerns about climate change have been shaped by well-documented, intentional efforts by industry groups supportive of the continued use and promotion of fossil fuels to misrepresent the uncertainty and knowledge about climate change and downplay the risks to society.149,150,151,152
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