Myanna Lahsen

After decades of inadequate responses to scientists' warnings about global environmental threats, leading analysts of the science-policy interface are seeking an important shift of research focus. This switch is from continued modeling and diagnoses of biogeochemical conditions in favor of enhanced efforts to understand the many socio-political obstacles to achieving just transformations towards sustainability, and how to overcome them. We discuss why this shift continues to prove elusive. We argue that rarely analyzed mutually reinforcing power structures, interests, needs, and norms within the institutions of global environmental change science obstruct rethinking and reform. The blockage created by these countervailing forces are shielded from scrutiny and change through retreats behind shields of neutrality and objectivity, stoked and legitimated by fears of losing scientific authority. These responses are maladaptive, however, since transparency and reflexivity are essential for rethinking and reform, even in contexts marked by anti-environmentalism. We therefore urge greater openness, self-critique, and power-sharing across research communities, to create spaces and support for conversations, diverse knowledges, and decisions conducive to sustainability transformations.

Solar radiation management (SRM) technologies would reflect a small amount of incoming solar radiation back into space before the radiation can warm the planet. Although SRM may emerge as a useful component of a global response to climate change, there is also good reason for caution. In June 2017, the Academic Working Group on Climate Engineering Governance released a policy report, "Governing Solar Radiation Management", which developed a set of objectives to govern SRM in the near-term future: (1) keep mitigation and adaptation first; (2) thoroughly and transparently evaluate risks, burdens, and benefits; (3) enable responsible knowledge creation; and (4) ensure robust governance before any consideration of deployment. To advance the governance objectives identified above, the working group developed twelve recommendations, grouped into three clusters: (1) create politically legitimate deliberative bodies; (2) leverage existing institutions; and (3) make research transparent and accountable. This communication discusses the rationale behind each cluster and elaborates on a subset of the recommendations from each cluster.

In a context of international scrutiny, important efforts are being made to preserve Brazil’s tropical forests.  Meanwhile, the destruction of its Cerrado biome advances with increasing leaps but little controversy. Yet the damaging changes threaten life-supporting natural resources and ecosystem services that are vital for the majority of Brazilians, as well as for the continued viability of agriculture. This ancient region of considerable geological and cultural significance encapsulates all of the major environmental challenges to sustainability, and begs new responses from science and society. Fresh policies are needed to promote and integrate the importance of this biome for the nation. These include implementing systematic monitoring systems and improving the management of established ones, minimizing new clearing. Degraded areas must be restored to comply with existing Brazilian environmental laws and international commitments related to climate change, biodiversity conservation, and sustainable development. Addressing the threats to this critically important yet neglected biome requires attention to structural governance problems, including improved education and involvement of stakeholders in key decision making about the region, as well as historically informed reexamination of the country’s economic development path.

... S53.08 Media coverage of climate change in the US and Brazil: understanding convergences and divergences in light of socio-political contexts and identifying policy implications MyannaLahsen Regional Office of the IGBP, National Institute for Space Research (INPE), Brazil ...

This month AN focuses on climate change research and policy, particularly how anthropologists contribute and might further contribute to them as they become increasingly visible in public discourse. Myanna Lahsen, the guest editor of this In Focus series, discusses what an ...

Ulrich Beck and other theorists of reflexive modernization are allies in the general pro-ject to reduce technocracy and elitism by rendering decision making more democratic and robust. However, this study of US climate politics reveals complexities and obsta-cles to the sort ...

In Brazil, Human Rights to Adequate Food was institutionalized in January 2010, incorporating adequate feed within the Citizens Social Rights as part of Brazilian Federal Constitution. Access to adequate food that guarantees and promotes such rights has been limited due to socioeconomic issues and environmental local and global changes. Expansion of cities in size and number, as well as population growth concentrated in urban areas might directly affect land availability for agriculture, reducing viable spaces near cities to produce fresh food in order to respond to the rise on demand for food by urban consumers. Vegetables are vital for a healthy human diet, and long market chains represent a damaging step between production and consumption, resulting in great losses due to high perishability, raising prices and difficulting access to food. Thus, the identification of near consumers areas suitable for vegetables´ production, can subsidize public policies and be part of adaptation m...

Contemporary societies are being transformed by growing preoccupation with global environmental risks.\\\[1\\\],\\\[2\\\] The scientific basis for worries about human-induced climate change has consolidated, but many dimensions and implications remain uncertain and imprecise. In this area of what has been called post-normal science, facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high, and decisions urgent.\\\[3\\\] Plurality is its essence, and meaning-making fills gaps left by uncertainties. Actors - scientists, decision-makers, industry representatives, and members of environmental groups and the general public - variously clash and converge in their attempts to shape how societies understand the threat and what should be done about it. Among those favoring preventive action, some downplay or deny the uncertainties. Others - often with important leadership and financing by vested interests - exaggerate the uncertainties, or define them and the sociopolitical and economic implicati...

Based on findings from ethnographic analysis of U.S. climate scientists, this article identifies largely unrecognized sociocultural dimensions underpinning differences in scientists’ perceptions of anthropogenic climate change. It argues that culturally laden tensions among scientists have influenced some to engage with the antienvironmental movement and, as such, influence U.S. climate science politics. The tensions are rooted in broad-based and ongoing changes within U.S. science and society since the 1960s and propelled by specific scientific subgroups’ negative experiences of the rise of environmentalism and of climate modeling, in particular. Attending to these and other experience-based cultural dynamics can help refine cultural theory and enhance understanding of the deeper battles of meaning that propel climate science politics.

This month AN focuses on climate change research and policy, particularly how anthropologists contribute and might further contribute to them as they become increasingly visible in public discourse. Myanna Lahsen, the guest editor of this In Focus series, discusses what an ...

This domain of Wiley's Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIREs) Climate Change is concerned with the social status of climate change knowledge. It reviews literature on the politics, institutions, and cultures that shape how the threat of human-induced climate change is ...

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the distribution of certainty around General Circulation Models (GCMs) – computer models used to project possible global climatic changes due to human emissions of greenhouse gases. It examines the trope of distance underpinning Donald ...

Ulrich Beck and other theorists of reflexive modernization are allies in the general pro-ject to reduce technocracy and elitism by rendering decision making more democratic and robust. However, this study of US climate politics reveals complexities and obsta-cles to the sort ...

The socio-economic impacts of environmental stresses associated with global environmental change depend to a large extent on how societies organize themselves. Research on climate-related societal impacts, vulnerability and adaptation is currently underdeveloped, prompting international global environmental change research institutions to hold a series of meetings in 2009–2010. One of these aimed at identifying needs in middle-income and low-income countries (MLICs),

Through Myanna Lahsen, the report has enjoyed financial support of the following sources: Two Postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University working with the Global Environmental Assessment Project and the Carnegie Mellon University directed as well as Grant No. 0242042 from ...

Transnational Locals: Brazilian Experiences of the Climate Regime Myanna Lahsen The Politics of Universalizing Discourses Popular environmental discourses often evoke impressions of planetary beauty, fragility, and interdependence. They merge with other universaliz-ing discourses ...

This paper discusses ways to reconcile the United Nations Millennium Development Goals with environmental sustainability at the national and international levels. The authors argue that development and better use of sustainability relevant knowledge is key, and that this requires capacity building globally, and especially in the less developed regions of the world. Also essential is stronger integration of high-quality knowledge creation and technology--and policy--development, including, importantly, the creation of centers of excellence in developing regions which effectively use and produce applications-directed high quality research and bring it to bear on decision making and practices related to environmental change and sustainable management of natural resources. The authors argue that Southern centers of excellence are a necessary first step for bottom-up societal transformation towards sustainability, and that such centers must help design innovative ways to assess and place value on ecosystem services.

ABSTRACT Based on findings from ethnographic analysis of U.S. climate scientists, this article identifies largely unrecognized sociocultural dimensions underpinning differences in scientists’ perceptions of anthropogenic climate change. It argues that culturally laden tensions among scientists have influenced some to engage with the antienvironmental movement and, as such, influence U.S. climate science politics. The tensions are rooted in broad-based and ongoing changes within U.S. science and society since the 1960s and propelled by specific scientific subgroups’ negative experiences of the rise of environmentalism and of climate modeling, in particular. Attending to these and other experience-based cultural dynamics can help refine cultural theory and enhance understanding of the deeper battles of meaning that propel climate science politics.

Future Earth is an evolving international research program and platform for engagement aiming to support transitions towards sustainability. This paper discusses processes that led to Future Earth, highlighting its intellectual emergence. I describe how Future Earth has increased space for contributions from the social sciences and humanities despite powerful, long-standing preferences for bio-geophysical research in global environmental research communities. I argue that such preferences nevertheless are deeply embedded in scientific institutions that continue to shape environmental science agendas. As such they constitute a formidable obstacle that needs to be recognized and countered to bolster efforts at effective societal transformation in face of the sustainability challenges. The analysis draws on two decades of observant participant in environmental science communities in the United States, Europe, Brazil, and elsewhere, including participation in the Visioning Process that led to Future Earth. 2

This book chapter probes answers to the following questions: To what extent do suspicions related to science exist and shape global environmental politics? To what extent are their systemic causes known, including the role played by global inequalities in scientific capacity and power? To what extent do participation and scientific capacity reduce suspicions, to the extent that any such exist? On the basis of data and observations derived from review of scholarly literature and from years of empirical research among Brazilian environmental scientists and decision makers responsible for Brazil’s foreign policy related to human-induced climate change, it discusses indications of distrust related to scientific knowledge underpinning international environmental negotiations, as evidenced especially on the part of less developed country leaders. The paper argues that the role of such inter-subjective factors in global environmental politics needs to be better understood, and relate this knowledge gap to broader tendencies in the field of international relations and beyond. The conclusion offers some thoughts about how to fill the gap.

As has been widely documented, the lavishly funded media campaigns by political and financial elites and corporations with vested interests against climate policy are a central instigator of the climate backlash and a threat to democratic processes. However, it would behoove the environmental coalition, including sympathizing academics, to reflect on how they help create conditions that enable and magnify the impact of the backlash campaigns and incidents such as Climategate. This editorial argues that the dominance of idealized understandings of science increases public vulnerability to backlash campaigns. Academic analysts reinforce these understandings through tendencies towards idealized representations of climate science and associated politics and avoidance of critical analyses of the science and scientists promoting concern about climate change.