Suchergebnisse

El projecte internacional CLICO (Climate Change, Hydro Conflicts and Human security), liderat per l'ICTA, ha reunit a Nicòsia (Xipre), investigadors de 14 institucions per donar a conèixer i debatre els resultats dels estudis realitzats al llarg de tres anys en diverses àrees del Mediterrani, Orient Mitjà i del Sahel per investigar les dimensions socials del canvi climàtic i en particular els conflictes relacionats amb l'aigua. Els investigadors indiquen que el canvi climàtic juga per ara un paper secundari en l'origen i l'agreujament d'aquests conflictes i fa una crida a evitar discursos polítics que els vinculin directament sens considerar el paper d'altres factors polítics i socioeconòmics. ; El proyecto internacional CLICO (Climate Change, Hydro Conflicts and Human security), liderado por el ICTA, ha reunido en Nicosia (Chipre) a investigadores de 14 instituciones los días 10 y 11 de diciembre para presentar y debatir los resultados de los estudios realizados a lo largo de tres años en varias áreas del Mediterráneo, Oriente Medio y Sahel para investigar las dimensiones sociales del cambio climático, y en particular los conflictos relacionados con el agua. Los investigadores indican que el cambio climático juega de momento un papel secundario en el origen o agravamineto de estos conflictos y hace un llamamiento a evitar discursos políticos que los vinculen directamente, sin considerar el papel de otros factores políticos y socio-económicos. ; The international project CLICO (Climate Change, Hydro Conflicts and Human security), led by ICTA, united researchers from 14 institutions in Nicosia on 10 and 11 December to present and debate the results of studies on water, conflict and security conducted in the past three years in a variety of locations in the Mediterranean, Middle East and the Sahel. The CLICO project explored the social dimensions of climate change and in particular, conflicts related to water, and the threats this may pose for national and human security. The results found that climate change plays a secondary role -at least for the time being- in the origin or aggravation of social conflicts linked to water and that political discourses must avoid directly linking them without first taking into account other political and socio-economic factors.

The focus in mainstream Northern versions of Green New Deals (GNDs) or Just Transitions is on ameliorating the implications of low-carbon transition upon communities within Northern economies - not upon the communities, most often in the global South, that will be adversely affected
by the solutions that are being proposed, for example those based on mining for transition minerals, constructing damns for hydro-electricity or projects for the large-scale harnessing of solar power. Yet adverse impacts on the environment are expected to occur across the whole chain of provision
of the resources required by GNDs: the transportation of materials, assemblage of green production infrastructure, siting of facilities to produce energy, and dealing with waste at the end-of-life of green infrastructure. The areas involved in this chain are becoming Green Sacrifice Zones.
Assumptions about race and social difference provide the underpinning for a tendency to downplay or render invisible consequences for local communities. Furthermore, the extraction of resources often involves contemporary colonial practices, including land encroachment and highly exploitative
labour relations. Resource-seeking multinational companies present themselves as offering the benefits of modernity to people living in green sacrifice zones - in the form of 'employment opportunities' and 'economic development'. Some of the more peripheral or 'disadvantaged' areas within
Europe are also at risk from transition resource extractivism. To go beyond this mindset, there is a need to start listening to what frontline and vulnerable communities themselves say when they speak about just transition and GNDs: this will involve challenging leadership assumptions about
which people and what frameworks should guide a just decarbonisation.

El análisis de políticas ambientales mediante el uso de homo economicus ha sido criticado por no tomar en cuenta la multiplicidad de valores ambientales y bases éticas en las cuales se basa la motivación humana. Esta limitación es importante, dado que puede resultar en excluir algunas preferencias ambientales y así generar políticas ambientales inefectivas y de poca legitimidad. Esta tesis considera las implicaciones de la racionalidad comunicativa para formar y analizar políticas ambientales, dado que esa pretende ser no solo un modelo alternativo a homo economicus sino también un modelo capaz de integrar múltiples lenguajes de valoración en la governanza ambiental. La tesis primero examina temas conceptuales y teóricos relacionados al uso de racionalidad comunicativa como modelo analítico y luego considera de forma empírica, implicaciones de usar este modelo para analizar la governanza ambiental por medio de dos estudios de caso. El primero, emplea la metodología Q para analizar discursos de 'ruralidad' que son la base de percepciones sobre el papel de empresas sociales operando en áreas rurales de Escocia. El segundo, analiza la formación política de disputas sobe el valor paisajístico que fomentan conflictos ambientales sobre parques eólicos en Cataluña rural. La tesis concluye que la racionalidad comunicativa es un concepto útil para analizar y mejorar la governanza ambiental, aunque con sus limitaciones. En términos normativos, el concepto permite conectar con el paradigma de democracia deliberativa que ofrece un marco potente para entender y evaluar aspectos relacionados a la legitimidad de governanza ambiental, particularmente en términos de justicia social y ambiental. Analíticamente, la acción comunicativa permite conceptualizar conflictos ambientales como retos de governanza y no meramente como fallos de politica ambiental, lo cual ayuda entender políticas ambientales que promueven tomas de decisiones participativa en la emergente sociedad de redes. Una limitación básica es que conceptualizando las ...

In this article, we argue that othering is central to the government of climate change. Critically engaging with Foucault's ideas on biopolitics and racism, we elaborate a conceptual perspective for analysing how such a "technology of government" operates. We review diverse literatures from geography, political ecology, critical adaptation studies and the environmental humanities dealing with discursive constructions of the other in three exemplary areas of intervention—mitigation (particularly "green" mineral extraction for renewable energy production); constructions of "vulnerability" in adaptation policies; and the governing of "climate migrants". We contend that these interventions largely work through the extension of capitalist relations, underpinned by racist and colonial ways of seeing populations and territories as "in need of improvement". And that, by legitimising and depoliticizing such interventions, and by suspending responsibility for their unwanted or even deadly impacts, othering helps to preserve existing relations of racial, patriarchal and class domination in the face of climate-induced social upheavals. Othering, we conclude, is not only a feature of fossil fuelled development, but a way of functioning of capitalist governmentality more broadly—which has important implications for thinking about emancipatory and climate-just transformations.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552 ; Why do people who care about the environment adopt behaviours that are not consistent with their beliefs? Previous studies approach this as a case of cognitive dissonance, researchers looking into the strategies through which people reduce gaps between their attitudes and their behaviours. Here we start from the premise that there is no dissonance, and that people have consistent reasons of why they are doing what they are doing. The research task is then to shed light on these reasons. Using Q-methodology, a mixed quantitative- qualitative approach, we interviewed 42 environmentally-minded researchers asking them why they eat meat. Our interviewees were aware of and cared about the environmental and ethical impacts of meat eating, but reasoned that they eat meat because either technological, or political changes are more important than what they personally do, because of doubts about the impact of personal action in a complex world, or simply because they lack the determination to stop eating meat. Our analysis suggests that policies and messages that try to educate or guilt meat-eaters are unlikely to work with those well aware of the impacts of their actions.

We discuss the recent emergence of 'deliberative ecological economics', a field that highlights the potential of deliberation for improving environmental governance. We locate the emergence of this literature in the long concern in ecological economics over the policy implications of limited views of human action and its encounter with deliberative democracy scholarship and the model of communicative rationality as an alternative to utilitarianism. Considering criticisms over methods used and the focus of research in deliberative decision-making, we put forward a research agenda for deliberative ecological economics. Given the promising potential of deliberative processes for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of environmental decision-making, work in this area could help advance both theory and practice in environmental governance.

We discuss the recent emergence of "deliberative ecological economics", a field that highlights the potential of deliberation for improving environmental governance. We locate the emergence of this literature in the long concern in ecological economics over the policy mplications of limited views of human action and its encounter with deliberative democracy scholarship and the model of communicative rationality as an alternative to utilitarianism. Considering criticisms over methods used and the focus of research in deliberative decision-making, we put orward a research agenda for deliberative ecological economics. Given the promising potential of deliberative processes for improving the effectiveness and legitimacy of environmental decision-making, work in this area could help advance both theory and practice in environmental governance.

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M ; Building on the framework of emotional political ecology, we seek to expand ways of studying the relationships between emotion, power, and environmental conflict. Our review of work in feminist studies, human geography, social psychology, social movement theory, and social and cultural anthropology suggests the need for a theoretical framework that captures the psychological, more-than-human, collective, geographical, and personal-political dimensions that intersect subjectivities in environmental conflicts. We stress the need to explicitly consider 'the political' at stake when researching emotions in environmental conflicts, and develop a conceptual framework for facilitating nuanced conceptualisations and analyses of subjects and power in environmental conflicts.