Time for Change? Climate Science Reconsidered: Report of the UCL Policy Commission on Communicating Climate Science, 2014

The UCL Policy Commission on the Communication of Climate Science, chaired by Professor Chris Rapley comprises a cross-disciplinary project group of researchers from psychology, neuroscience, science and technology studies, earth sciences and energy research. The Commission examined the challenges faced in communicating climate science effectively to policy-makers and the public, and the role of climate scientists in communication. / The Commission explored the role of climate scientists in contributing to public and policy discourse and decision-making on climate change, including how highly complex scientific research which deals with high levels of uncertainty and unpredictability can be effectively engaged with public and policy dialogue. The Commission also examined the insights that scientific research and professional practice provide into how people process and assimilate information and how such knowledge offers pathways for climate scientists to achieve more effective engagement. Finally, the Commission sought to identify the approaches that climate scientists can adopt to effectively communicate their messages and to make clear recommendations to climate scientists and to policy-makers about the most effective ways of communicating climate science. / The Commission's activity included a one day experimental event, 'Seeing Yourself See', with a number of climate scientists to discover how they saw their role and their perspectives on the communication of climate science

EU foreign policy and norm contestation in an eroding western and Intra-EU liberal order

The idea of the European Union being increasingly contested, whether globally or at home, is a frequently reiterated notion. It is believed that such challenges to the European integration stem from a number of diverse but interlinked global and intra-EU crises that, combined, amount to the current ‘perfect storm’ affecting the EU and its foreign, security and defense policy. We will explore here how the EU is being put to the test in terms of the norms and fundamental values which guide its foreign policy. It is an important issue within the broader debates of the European crises, as such norm contestation may have a deeper structural and longer-term effect on the EU’s external action and its ‘resilience’ as an international actor. We employ insights from the norm contestation literature to scrutinize a number of the most important current challenges articulated against EU foreign policy norms in recent years, whether at the global, ‘glocal’ or intra-EU level.Elisabeth Johansson-Nogués wishes to acknowledge VISIONS (Visions and practices of geopolitics in the European Union and its neighborhood) funded by the National R+D Plan of the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (CSO2017-82622-P). Martijn C. Vlaskamp thanks the Beatriu de Pinós postdoctoral program of the Government of Catalonia's Secretariat for Universities and Research (Ministry of Economy and Knowledge) for funding (Grant number: 2017-BP-152). Esther Barbé is grateful to the Catalan Agency for Management of University and Research Grants (AGAUR) for funds making this research possible (2017 SGR 693)