In the study undertaken by Sheppard et al (2011), it is argued that most of climate change studies have placed a great emphasis on global and national levels and have ignored community level involvement. It is considered to be a serious problem to be addressed because the majority of the consequence of climate change is primarily felt at local level, such as flooding, drought and freshwater deficit (Riedy et al, 2013) It is applied to the global North-South theory where the South is the most severely affected by climate change than the North. It is due to the lack of knowledge and resources to develop the capacity to adapt.
At community level, this is more significant because community-level governance is often influenced by the national policy, which does not always consider the heterogeneity of the community characteristics including local economy, cultures, values and ethics (Roncoli et al, 2011). Essentially, good governance considers the local concerns and shared values and integrate them into their local economy. I have briefly discussed the friction between the national and community level governance in my old blog post here.
The needs for developing community oriented capacity have long been discussed by many researchers. Grimm et al (2008) highlight the fact that more than 75% of the global CO2 emissions are from cities and urban areas. This means that a sum of local emissions is the largest contributor to climate change. Others insist that 'community level is the scale that matters most to decision makers and the community', and that 'the local community is where "the rubber meets the road" in implementing GHG emission reductions or adaptation measures through policies and projects' (Moser and Dilling, 2007). Indeed, they are those who both contribute to and are affected by the effects of climate change.
The implication of the above is that climate change mitigation & adaptation strategy should be developed and practiced at local level so that individual stakeholders change their attitude. Examples of community action include energy saving, community 3R programme, community power development, or community movement against certain industries such as deforestation for land, fossil fuel and mining activity. However, their attitude is not simply changed by 'paper' or 'news', about the recent IPCC report, for instance. It is often the case that people tend to lose interest in climate change after showing an immediate response to a particular event (AccuWeather, 2014).
Interestingly, one study suggests that neither negative nor positive media reports on climate change have only a short-term effect on public opinion (Anderegg et al, 2014). They measured the frequency of people scouring the internet for climate change related information. The graph below shows the transition of the public interest, with a blue line representing global warming and a red one climate change.
Figure.1 shows a time-scale change in relative interest in climate change issues based upon the statistical data. Red represents global warming and blue climate change (Reference: Anderegg et al (2014))
Obviously, the data above is only based upon the statistical data of internet search, yet, it highly suggests that people are inclined to constantly gain and lose interest in climate change. This can be a serious constraint when it comes to developing community-based adaptive measure. This reflects the finding I have discussed in the earlier post that the community engagement is primarily 'voluntary' and therefore can easily deteriorate after a certain length of time unless their motivation is maintained.
Furthermore, the study conducted by Leviston et al (2011) reveal the fact that a large proportion of the community in Australia does not even believe in climate change, which prevents them from making efforts to agree with climate change adaptation. Others may believe that climate change is happening but does not fully accept the need to respond urgently (Riedy et al, 2013).
Based upon the argument above, what I think is required to engage community is essentially to change their perspectives because that is how community engagement can become 'sustainable'. In the study by Sheppard et al (2011), they suggest a series of requirements to improve 'a process for building both awareness and capacity for developing climate change solutions at the community level'. Here, we have a set of general criteria that has been distilled from seminal literature review on this topic (Moser and Dilling, 2007), as follows:
- an engaging, accessible process;
- understandable information;
- salient information for local stakeholders and decision-makers (i.e. linked to things that people can identify with and which they care about);
- appropriate affective responses that are personally relevant and motivating;
- salient information for local public and decision-makers (i.e. linked to things that people can identify with and which they care about) (Sheppard et al, 2011)
Essentially, the above criteria emphasizes the importance of providing sufficient & accessible knowledge and resources and appropriate communication. These are then integrated into the following three requirements:
- Bring the climate change information down to the local level and engage local stakeholders in the process
- Use holistic scenarios which combine multiple aspects of climate change, for instance: a broad range of scenario drivers; impacts and responses; and both adaptation and mitigation strategies
- Use visual tools to maximize interest and engagement, achieve rapid learning, and foster public interaction with the emerging action plans and solutions (Sheppard et al, 2011)
As you can see, these are all theoretical explanations about how community develops the capacity. To give a more insight into the theory, I would now like to introduce 'the Local Climate Change Visioning Project (LCCVP)', which was conducted in British Columbia. The project has two primary objectives. The first goal is to develop 'a coherent framework and prototype process to localize, spatialize, and visualize climate change effects and policy responses at a neighbourhood or community level, i.e. in the community’s ‘backyards’, looking out as far as 2100 (Sheppard et al, 2011). The second is to examine how this framework can be utilized to develop 'a holistic and plausible set of alternative futures, in order to build awareness and capacity within the community by making explicit links between local action and global change' (Sheppard et al, 2011).
There are two components of the framework, namely, a scenario ‘‘cube’’ (Figure.2) and a new type of "participatory visioning process" which integrates 2-4D visualisation tools (Figure.3-5) to represent the scenarios to the local community (Shaw et al, 2009; Sheppard et al, 2011). The scenario cube is basically a 3D cube that integrates a spectrum of four distinct emission, impacts, response scenarios or tiers, over a range of three distinct time periods, across a spectrum of distinct landscape types or case study communities (Sheppard et al, 2011). This helps understand the effects of climate change in different spectrum, and clarify what combination of mitigation and adaptation measure is the most appropriate for what purposes. This is particularly useful for local community decision-makers in developing their policies.
Figure.2 shows a conceptual framework of the cube scenario (Reference: Sheppard et al, (2011)).
By contrast, participatory visioning process is a system which helps integrate 'existing local climate change studies and engages climate scientists, local experts, and community stakeholders in a local working group; their role is to help fill key data gaps, develop final scenarios, and advise on visualisation preparation' (Sheppard et al, (2011) Figure.3 below is a flow chart that shows how the system is processed. Basically, the system produces a visual representation of the consequence of climate change. The 3D and 4D examples are shown in Figure.4 and 5 below.
It conveys a strong message to individual viewers, and I think it helps them not only understand the consequence of scenarios described in the cube model but also conceptualize climate change as something that matters their personal life. This is an essential element of both attracting and sustaining community engagement in climate change mitigation & adaptation because their incentives are fundamentally coming from their own. This relates to my earlier blog post titled 'Conceptualizing Global Climate Change As 'Our Struggle' here.
Figure.3 is a flow chart that explains the process of participatory visioning process (Reference: Sheppard et al, 2011)
Figure.4 shows a three dimensional visualization of statistically downscaled data for snow pack in Greater Vancouver’s Northshore mountains, showing April 1st median snowline in
2000 (current conditions on right) and 2100 (Reference: David Flanders (CALP) and Environment Canada in Sheppard et al, (2011)
Figure. 5 shows a four dimensional visualisations of Scenarios 1–4 in South Delta, BC (from top left to right, to bottom left to right). (a) Scenario 1 illustrates more frequent flooding and abandonment of houses in 2100; (b) Scenario 2 shows a berm as an adaptation strategy in 2100; (c) Scenario 3 includes incremental retrofits of raised housing and solar panels in 2100; (d) Scenario 4 depicts more rapid retrofitting and low-carbon redevelopment with energy- and food-producing clusters, resilient to projected impacts, in 2050. (Reference: David Flanders, CALP/DCS/UBC in Sheppard et al, (2011)
Some critics argue that uncertainty is often involved in running scenarios because the regional climate and consequences does not always result from their own action but are also largely influenced by the global scenarios. Thus, it is difficult for community to assess the choices in responding to climate change (Sheppard et al, 2011). Nonetheless, uncertainty is something that always exists in science, like shown in various climate change scenarios stated by IPCC (2015). This implies that the accuracy of scenario should not deter all the possible choices community is given. Instead, Gardner et al (2009) insist that community should be honest with uncertainty but try to simply it by indicating 'what is common to the different scenarios and projections, and by drawing comparisons to uncertainties in other areas'. They argue that it can be useful to present action in response to climate change as a risk management issue, rather than implying that climate change is “proven” (Gardener et al, 2009). In this way, the scenarios described above can be an useful tool for building awareness and capacity for behaviour change from their own, policy development, and decision-making in the community.
To conclude, community engagement is essential in climate change mitigation and adaption because they are the most affected as well as the contributing actors. However, simply raising awareness is not enough to sustain their engagement. It is concluded that more community-based approach with a conceptual framework exemplified in the LCCVP is needed. Although uncertainty in climate change scenarios makes it impossible to draw a full picture of local scenarios, it still helps develop and maintain community engagement by communicating the knowledge and limitation effectively. The important thing is to foster the individual sense of concerns over climate change so that the incentives to act against the issue are derived from their own. This concept is also discussed in the case of renewable energy development I blogged about earlier. Yes, 'think globally, act locally' is what we all need in addressing the global climate change. I hope you now see the evolution of my blog in discussing the roles of community over time. Any comment or questions are welcome as always!
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