Contents
1 Introduction
1.1 Purpose and scope of the study
1.2 Social representation of climate change
1.3 The natural science perspective: Climate change and local consequences for Hyderabad
1.4 Climate Change from an Indian Perspective
2 Review of previous studies on perception of climate change
2.1 The BBC Climate Survey
2.2 The HSBC Climate Confidence Index
2.3 The Nielsen Survey
2.4 Africa Talks Climate - The public understanding of climate change in ten countries
2.5 WWF. Developing an engagement strategy for Earth Hour -India
3 Methodology
4 Results
4.1 Energy saving
4.2 The perception of “weather changes” in Hyderabad
4.3 Affectedness by strong weather events
4.4 Types of social representation of climate change
4.4.1 Type A: No change, no connection
4.4.2 Type B: Weather changes and pollution, disconnected
4.4.3 Type C: Pollution changes weather
4.4.4 Type D: Religious causation (‘Kali Yuga’)
4.4.5 Type E: Emissions, Climate Change, and Weather Changes
4.4.6 Type F: Climate change due to ozone depletion
4.4.7 Type G: Multiple causation with ozone
4.4.8 Type H: Multiple causation without ozone
4.5 Solutions
4.6 Environmental Pollution/Ozone Depletion
5 Conclusions
References
Fritz Reusswig* †, Lutz Meyer-Ohlendorf†
September 2010
Abstract
In this report we underline the importance of studying the social representation of climate change for climate policy, especially in a democracy such as India. Social representations are, from a social science point of view, no epiphenomena of ‘real’ issues, but the very fabric of individual reality and, building on that, collective decision making. If climate change is not socially represented, it is not there in a society. We briefly characterise the Indian climate discourse, which we perceive as being more complex (heterogeneous) than the European or American one. After a brief look at other studies of climate change perceptions, we turn to our own small sample of qualitative interviews (n=16) in Hyderabad, covering a broad range of issues. We then focus on the way our respondents do represent climate change in the context of weather changes, of its causes, and of possible solutions. We present a typology of cognitive maps of climate change, and relate them to the lifestyle and the social context of the respondents that adhere to it. We also try to identify some starting points for a meaningful climate change discourse in Hyderabad, aiming at the improvement of both local adaptation and local mitigation. The report ends with some general conclusions.
Key words: social representation, perception of climate change, climate change discourse, mitigation, lifestyle, Hyderabad, India
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* Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 331 288 2576. Email: fritz@pik-potsdam.de
† Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), Research Domain Transdisciplinary Concepts and Methods, P.O. Box 60 12 03, 14412 Potsdam
Climate change is one of the most striking problems in the world today, not only politically, but also economically. It has gained international political importance, however only in the last two decades. Before, it has long been mainly a scientific problem. This is not only because of its complexity, but also due to its sometimes highly contested character (O’Neill and Hulme 2009; Walker and King 2008). As a consequence, the topic only slowly made its way into the public sphere. On top of that, partly due to its highly scientific character (presupposing large computers and complicated computer models), partly due to their historical responsibility in terms of causing it, climate change as an issue of scientific and public concern has for long been confined to the industrialised world. Due to their growing responsibility and an emerging globalised community of a concerned public (Beck 2010a, b), developing countries and their publics more and more engage in the debate about global warming, its consequences, and the ways to deal with it (BBC World 2010).
However, in the Western context, climate change often remains an abstract concept, an issue that is “remote both in space and time; it is perceived as affecting other communities and future generations” (Lorenzoni and Pidgeon 2006). Contrastingly, in India and in many other developing countries, weather extremes already now have a significant and clearly visible detrimental effect on peoples’ lives. Climate change will most probably exacerbate existing weather hazards, and it will add new, and in some cases unknown risks (IPCC 2007). As for India, significant changes are projected in temperature, precipitation and extreme rainfall, droughts, river and inland flooding, storms/storm, surges/coastal flooding, sea-level rise and environmental health risks (Revi 2008).
Climate change has become a political issue in India, both at the level of international and of national politics. As a consequence, it has also attracted more and more the attention of the mass media, especially the print media. Our analysis of two Indian daily newspapers (The Hindu, The Times of India) has revealed that both the quantity and the quality of mass media coverage of climate change is absolutely at par with comparable newspapers in Europe (cf. Reusswig et al. 2009). But does this response really lead to a better knowledge and understanding among the general public-especially in such a big, socially and culturally heterogeneous country like India? Unfortunately, relatively little is known about how climate change is currently perceived and understood by lay people.
Particularly in developing countries, in the context of rapid transformation processes, citizens’ understanding of the implications for their lives will be essential in order to be able to respond effectively. Equipped with the knowledge about the changing climate, people will be able to debate the issues with their families, communities and governments, and discuss the risks and possible courses of action (BBC World 2010). This holds for the two major societal responses to (anthropogenic) climate change: mitigation against the causes of GHG emissions on the one hand, and adapting to the effects of unavoidable climate change on the other. An adequate understanding of the phenomenon seems to be a necessary prerequisite for both mitigative and adaptive action, regardless whether on an individual or more political level.1 The purpose of this study therefore is to develop a comprehensive understanding of lay people’s perception of climate change in the city of Hyderabad, the capital of the state of Andhra Pradesh in Southern India:
Even within developed countries, there are significant social differences in the perception of climate change, and it is essential to understand these differences, because “how ‘danger’ is interpreted will ultimately affect which actions are taken” (Lorenzoni and Pidgeon 2006). These discrepancies become even more marked when we widen the scope of inquiry and take developing countries into account, given the sharper social contrasts that influence the social representation of climate change.
If climate policy in an encompassing sense of the word is to be effective, it needs the active support and participation of everyday actors across the globe. If people lack to understand that global warming is happening, that it will aggravate in the future, and that they individually as well as collectively can do something about it, climate policy as a purely governmental issue will most probably fail. This is the ultimate reason why the study of social representations of climate change is not only a meaningful, but even a necessary endeavour. For the same reason, we need to understand the differences between individual representations, as this will help to address the problems more effectively, viz. to identify group-specific mitigation options and improve the knowledge of the people and therewith enhance their adaptive capacity.
For the natural sciences who historically detected it, climate change is a complex, but given reality ‘out there’, consisting of elements such as solar radiation, atmospheric chemistry, and bio-geochemical cycles (Rahmstorf and Schellnhuber 2007; Walker and King 2008). Nevertheless, the long and still not terminated history of the scientific discovery of anthropogenic climate change (Fleming 1998; Weart 2003) shows that it was not easy to reconstruct the mechanism behind it. And the comparison between the rather slow pace of discovery in the first period (roughly from the late 19th century to about the 1970s) with the second, more systematic period since then, where most of our actual knowledge about the climate system has been gained, reveals that science was successful only once the recognition of climate change as a social problem had been established, and had led, among other things, to a substantial increase in resources dedicated to look at the issue (Corfee-Morlot/Maslin/Burgess 2007). The formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 illustrates this qualitative shift.
Despite its scientific core tasks, IPCC is a ‘boundary organisation’ between science and policy. Its success in terms of putting scientific findings at the fore of political decision making (Skodvin 2000) once more illustrates the importance of science for the public perception of (social) problems.
Climate change is a highly scientifically mediated issue. Other than, say, air or water pollution, average everyday actors can hardly detect changes in the central parameters of the Earth’s climate (Yearley 1994). One of the reasons for this is the ‘ontological’ distinction between weather and climate: While ‘weather’ refers to the concrete state of selected parameters of the lower atmosphere, such as air temperature, humidity or sunshine, ‘climate’ is a theoretically more ambitious construct, referring to statistically significant patterns of weather over time, linked to basic mechanisms of the physical Earth system (such as the solar constant or the global carbon or water cycles). This is not to say that lay persons are unable to notice changing climate patterns. People with high stakes in the economic use of climate sensitive natural resources, such as farmers or fishermen, have developed their own methods of monitoring weather patterns in order to cope with adverse effects, especially in developing countries (cf. Broad and Orlove 2007; Orlove 2005; Patt 2001; Semenza et al. 2008). Nevertheless, global climate changes can only be detected by systematic instrumental records, statistical methods, the analysis of historical data sets, and computer models (Edwards 2001, Rahmstorf and Schellnhuber 2007), which are beyond the scope of non-scientific observers. This is why the history of the climate discourse (see below for a definition) is for long almost exclusively—and even today to a substantial degree—a history of climate science (or its predecessors) (Fleming 1998; Weart 2003). Measured global warming until today adds up to no more than an increase of 0.8°C of Global Mean Temperature (GMT) since the 19th century (IPCC 2007). GMT is a statistical construct that integrates across all geographical regions, seasonal differences as well as day/night-differences—the very fabric of everyday experience. Usually, perceived and relevant daily temperature changes by far exceed this figure. The scientifically mediated character of climate change especially holds when it comes to the attribution problem: who or what is responsible? Climate (other than weather) refers to long-term patterns and processes of the atmosphere as embedded into other bio-geochemical cycles, influenced by the oceans, the biosphere, human activities, and natural factors, such as volcanic eruptions. Causal analysis and attribution in such complex and non-linear systems is extremely difficult—one of the reasons for various uncertainties in climate science statements, and a major driver behind the increasingly interdisciplinary character of climate science.
One of the foci of the social sciences with respect to climate change is the social representation of climate. There are two terms that need explanation here: ‘representation’ and ‘social’. Let us start with the first one.
It has been mentioned that for both scientific and everyday observers, objects tend to be ‘simply there’, i.e. something given, a positive fact of our experience, part of the world ‘out there’.2 Closer reflection and inspection will however reveal rather rapidly that this is by no means the case and things are much more complicated. Be it ‘weather’ or ‘climate’: any ‘given’ object is given to an observer (to ‘us’). If we stick to the reality of ‘givenness’ we have to talk about subjective elements: our sensations of temperature or rain, the subjective perspectives and the situations in which concrete experiences have been made, the conceptual and/or language elements by which we formulate what we have experienced, the standards of communication by which we exchange with others in order to check whether or not our experiences are shared ones and thus ‘substantial’ or ‘reliable’, and so forth. Far from being simply a secondary phenomenon, the ‘representation’ of an object (weather or climate) seems to be not only the first thing we can get hold of, it seems also to be the only thing we can seriously grasp. Every claim that, for example, ‘out there’ we can find something else (e.g. a different temperature than the one ‘we’ have perceived) has to deal with the fact that we cannot really transcend the realm of our subjective representation. It is not possible to take climate ‘itself and compare it with our representations. We will always end up by comparing representation A with representation B—together with the claim that representation A is a better, more adequate representation of reality than representation B. Science is about the inter-subjective justification of such claims, not about immediate transcending of representations. This is why science stresses the methods by which a certain statement has been achieved, and cannot directly ‘let the object speak for itself’.3
While this immediately raises the very interesting question if and how such a claim can be justified, it is worth noting that the representation of climate is a very basic notion, and that both science and everyday life rely on it. It is neither easy nor strategically wise (for reasons to be explained later) to dismiss the representation of climate as something irrelevant or inferior.
This brings us to the next element of our term: ‘social’. It might seem as if this term would add a characteristic to the term representation, which the latter does not have otherwise. And this is supported by our first intuition, which clearly distinguishes between individual representations and those we might share with others, the latter would then be termed social representations. However, things are more complicated here as well. For methodological individualists, there are no social representations. More precisely: the term ‘social representation’ is nothing but a façon de parler, lumping together a number of individual representations of something, the latter being the only valid case of representations whatsoever.