6. 2+1 meta-debates
Mitigation
Adaption
Loss & Damage
Can climate change be
linked to specific weather
events?
Should L&D have a special
negotiation mechanism?
What is the nature of L&D
(compensation VS
insurance)?
8. A first set of disagreements concerns our
images of the future:
- how bad will be climate change;
- how fast will it unfold;
- where and who will it strike first.
Climate adaptation
is delayed
http://climaps.eu/#/map/mapping-cli-fi-scenarios-
book-covers-with-landscapes-issues-and-
personal-narratives
9. A second set of disagreements concerns
the priorities of adaptation:
- which regions will be more vulnerable -
which sectors will be more affected;
- which arrangements will make our
societies more flexible or resistant.
Climate adaptation
is dispersed
http://climaps.eu/#/map/mapping-cli-fi-scenarios-
book-covers-with-landscapes-issues-and-
personal-narratives
12. 6 debates arenas
Expert debate Public debate
UNFCCC negotiations
Crucial arenas for political decisions, these
negotiations constitutes the core of the
climate debate
The Press
Interface between diplomatic and scientific
discussions and public opinion
Scientific literature
Informs negotiations particularly through
IPCC assessments
Online platforms
The most formalized and real-time part of
online discussions, but also the closest
Projects & plans
Where the discussions are actualized and
meet with the other collective issues
The Web
The most chaotic and heterogeneous
datasets, but also the most spontaneous
expressions
13. UNFCCC negotiations
ENB reports www.iisd.ca/vol12/
UNFCCC negotiation documents
unfccc.int/documentation/documents/items/3595.php
Scientific literature
Scopus
ISI Web of Science
Google Scholar
APIs http://libguides.mit.edu/apis
Projects & plans
UNDP adaptation learning mechanism
www.undp-alm.org
Ci-Grasp
http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~wrobel/ci_2
UNFCCC Private Sector Initiative
unfccc.int/adaptation/workstreams/nairobi_work_programme/items/6547.php
ClimateWise
www.climatewise.org.uk
NAPAs
unfccc.int/adaptation/workstreams/national_adaptation_programmes_of_a
ction/items/4583.php
The Press
Factiva
Europress
RSS
Press Agencies
Online platforms
Twitter http://climatetalkslive.org/
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/groups/AdaptAbility-Climate-
Adaptation-Network-934207/about
Wikipedia http://contropedia.net/
Pinterest ex. https://www.pinterest.com/mikaidt/
…
The Web
6 debates arenas
22. Venturini, T. et al. 2014
Climaps by EMAPS in 2 Pages (A Summary For Policymakers and Busy People in General).
SSRNDecember 2, 2014.
Venturini, T., Ricci, D., Mauri, M., Kimbell, L., & Meunier, A. (2015).
Designing Controversies and their Publics.
Design Issues, 31(3).
Venturini, T., Baya-laffite, N., Cointet, J., Gray, I., Zabban, V., & Pryck, K. De. (2014).
Three Maps and Three Misunderstandings : A Digital Mapping of Climate Diplomacy.
Big Data and Society, 1(1).
Venturini, T. (2010)
Diving in Magma: how to explore controversies with actor-network theory.
Public Understanding of Science, 19(3), pp. 258-273
Venturini, T. (2012)
Building on Faults: how to represent controversies with digital methods.
Public Understanding of Science, 21(7), pp. 796-812
Notas do Editor
This is not a theoretical question. In fact, it may have been one of the main reasons of the wreck of the 2009 Climate Conference in Copenhagen. Failing to acknowledge the complexity of climate negotiations, most media (as well as many actors of the negotiations, whether delegations or lobbies) asked the impossible from Copenhagen: to establish a simple protocol akin to the one issued in Kyoto but extended to all the countries in the World. Such an outcome was both unachievable and undesirable. Unachievable, because of the intricacy of the international climate regime does not allow simple solutions to complex problems. Undesirable, because even the smaller and less ambitious Kyoto protocol has turned out to be almost impossible to enforce (and therefore scarcely productive). Still, this outcome was presented to the negotiations and the public opinion as the mission of the conference. As a result, not only Copenhagen failed, but its failure produced a tangible disengagement of the public from the issue of climate change – the pessimists thinking that if Copenhagen failed, then there is not hope to stop global warming; the optimists thinking that if Copenhagen failed and the world did not ended, then the problem is not so serious. But this is only half of the story: while we keep fighting (and failing) to reduce climate change, we also have to begin dealing with its emerging impacts. And the more we fail in mitigating climate change, the more we need to engage to adapt to climate changes.
Complex problems do not have simple causes and do not admit simple solutions. That is why the threshold approach failed in Copenhagen (and, incidentally, why we cannot hope that some clever geoengineering solution will fix the problem). Gaia is so a sensitive and interconnected that all local solution reverberate unpredictably elsewhere.
The shift from ‘climate’ to ‘climates’ will likely be at the core of the next major international climate conference, the 21st Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC in Paris December 2015. This platform is the contribution that the EMAPS project wishes to give to the COP21 and more generally to the public debate about global warming.
Adaptation is dispersed, because it concerns the localization of the effects of global warming. Unlike the discussion on the mitigation of climate change, the debate on adaptation does not concern global tendencies but local effects. Unlike the causes of climate change (the greenhouse gases that mix and spread in the atmosphere), its effects are highly localized. Adaptation is not concerned about the transformation of the global climate system, but about such transformation will trickle down to local microclimates. And even if we are still largely incapable to down scale our models, we know that global warming will strike differently in various parts of the world, unsettling different natural and social sectors and often in opposite directions. Though it derives from an international tragedy of the commons (mitigation can only be multilateral), adaptation can only be tackled at a national or even local level.
Adaptation is delayed, because it is turned to the future. Unlike the quarrels on the existence of global warming and its link with human activities, the debate on adaptation does not concern how we have messed the climate (in the past) or what we can do to fix it (in the present). It concerns what we will do when the effects of climate change will eventually hit us. And, though we know that such effects will be massive, we don’t know exactly what they will look like. Not only because climate is an amazingly complex (in fact quasi-chaotic) system, but because its change is due to the interference of social systems whose evolutions are even more unpredictable. As scenarios replace predictions, different actors choose the futures that they like the best or fear the most. Controversies, therefore, concern not only how should we prepare for the future, but also what future should we prepare for.
Adaptation is dispersed, because it concerns the localization of the effects of global warming. Unlike the discussion on the mitigation of climate change, the debate on adaptation does not concern global tendencies but local effects. Unlike the causes of climate change (the greenhouse gases that mix and spread in the atmosphere), its effects are highly localized. Adaptation is not concerned about the transformation of the global climate system, but about such transformation will trickle down to local microclimates. And even if we are still largely incapable to down scale our models, we know that global warming will strike differently in various parts of the world, unsettling different natural and social sectors and often in opposite directions. Though it derives from an international tragedy of the commons (mitigation can only be multilateral), adaptation can only be tackled at a national or even local level.
Adaptation is vague, because it concerns the transformation of pre-existing sectors. By definition adaptation concerns the re-organization of non-climatic systems. It is the adaption of agricultural practices, of infrastructures, of rural and urban settlements, of industrial installations. Adaptation discussions, therefore are always mixed with the pre-existing socio-technical debates. Unlike the quarrels on the existence and the mitigation of climate change, adaptation does not create a new arena, but displace existing socio-technical debates. When a rich country help a poorer one to set up a new water distribution system, is this climate adaptation, or development aid, or humanitarian intervention?
Adaptation is opportunistic, because it mobilizes an increasing amount of human and financial resources. If IPCC projections are right, the efforts to deal with climate will consume a greater proportion of our social and economic resources in the near to long term future. Social and institutional actors know this all too well and use climate adaptation as leverage to advance other interests and other interests as leverage to advance climate adaptation. They hide adaptation under other policies and other policies under adaptation. They strive to increase their present resources as much possible while reducing their future margins of action as little as possible.
Adaptation is dispersed, because it concerns the localization of the effects of global warming. Unlike the discussion on the mitigation of climate change, the debate on adaptation does not concern global tendencies but local effects. Unlike the causes of climate change (the greenhouse gases that mix and spread in the atmosphere), its effects are highly localized. Adaptation is not concerned about the transformation of the global climate system, but about such transformation will trickle down to local microclimates. And even if we are still largely incapable to down scale our models, we know that global warming will strike differently in various parts of the world, unsettling different natural and social sectors and often in opposite directions. Though it derives from an international tragedy of the commons (mitigation can only be multilateral), adaptation can only be tackled at a national or even local level.
Derived from the description of the technoscientific quarrels developed by the Science and Technology Studies, controversy mapping was introduced by Bruno Latour as a teaching method to train students and future citizens to navigate socio-technical debates through the creative use of digital media. The research aim of controversy mapping is to open up the black-boxes of science and technology and expose the complexity of their construction. Not to debunk them, but to show the amazing amount of work required to build them and to associate more and more actors to such work. The political aim of controversy mapping is to provide innovative methods for approaching scientific and technical disputes. Instead of worrying about the fact that the public is exposed to disagreement, controversy mapping asks what advantages can be drawn by rendering controversies more “readable”. Instead of worrying about how science might be contaminated by political interference and lamenting the fragmentation of society, controversy mapping asks under what conditions can public intervention enhance scientific discussion and what tools can be harnessed to help citizens navigate controversies.
16
Borges novel remind use that, far from being limited to controversy mapping, the problem we are facing is a classical trade-off of cartography: the trade-off between richness and legibility.
So, how do we overcome this trade-off? There is a bad news and a good one. The bad news is that it there is absolutely no way to solve this trade-off in one map (at least I have never found a good one). The good news is that there is no good reason for limiting oneself to just one map.
The main aim of this course is to teach you how to avoid jumping from the frying pan of positivism to the fire of relativism.
Or, as the say in Thailand, escape a tiger, meet a crocodile.