Mindmade Politics - The Role of Cognition in Global Climate Change Governance

This dissertation explores the role of cognition—the elements, structures and processes of individual and collective thought—in finding effective, cooperative solutions to climate change. It makes three contributions—theoretical, empirical, and methodological—to international relations scholarship. First, it explores cognition as a significant variable in international political life, developing an analytical framework that not only links a cognitive framework of analysis to major IR theories but bridges current theoretical divides between rationalism and constructivism. Second, by identifying and visualizing current belief systems of participants in global climate negotiations, the thesis offers insights regarding cognitive obstacles to multilateral cooperation. The most important obstacle is a clash of substantively and emotionally different belief systems. Depending on the specific constellation of a person’s beliefs about collective identity, perceptions of climate-change threat, and associated emotions, some belief systems contain normative beliefs about justice (i.e., a dominant logic of appropriateness), while others do not. The latter belief systems reflect the national-interest logic of consequences. Focusing in particular on the “wicked” characteristics of climate change, the analysis further reveals a neglect of scientific knowledge (in particular knowledge of the possibility of climate tipping points), a serious under-valuation of the distant future, and perceptions of a number of constraints on agency, some of which cannot be resolved within the negotiations. The study also identifies six distinct belief systems among climate negotiators, which I label The International Community, A Minilateral Club, The Market, Individuals, The Developed World, and The Irresponsible West. The key element distinguishing these belief systems is actor type, which affects problem definitions, proposed solutions, political strategies, and more generally an actor’s role in global climate governance. Third, this dissertation expands the methodological toolbox available to IR scholars by demonstrating the value and synergistic power of cognitive-affective mapping and Q Method. These are powerful tools to reveal individual and collective belief systems respectively.1 yea

The effects of serious gaming on risk perceptions of climate tipping points

A growing body of research indicates that effective science-policy interactions demand novel approaches, especially in policy domains with long time horizons like climate change. Serious games offer promising opportunities in this regard, but empirical research on game effects and games’ effectiveness in supporting science-policy engagement remains limited. We investigated the effects of a role-playing simulation game on risk perceptions associated with climate tipping points among a knowledgeable and engaged audience of non-governmental observers of the international climate negotiations and scientists. We analysed its effects on concern, perceived seriousness, perceived likelihood and psychological distance of tipping points, using pre- and post-game surveys, debriefing questions and game observations. Our findings suggest that the game reduced the psychological distance of tipping points, rendering them more ‘real’, proximate and tangible for participants. More generally, our findings indicate that role-playing simulation games, depending on their design and future orientation, can provide effective science-policy engagement tools that allow players to engage in future thinking and corresponding meaning making.publishedVersio

'Raising the temperature' : the arts on a warming planet

Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu MdM-2015-0552The search for decisive actions to remain below 1.5 °C of global temperature rise will require profound cultural transformations. Yet our knowledge of how to promote and bring about such deep transformative changes in the minds and behaviours of individuals and societies is still limited. As climate change unravels and the planet becomes increasingly connected, societies will need to articulate a shared purpose that is both engaging and respectful of cultural diversity. Thus, there is a growing need to 'raise the temperature' of integration between multiple ways of knowing climate change. We have reviewed a range of literatures and synthesized them in order to draw out the perceived role of the arts in fostering climate transformations. Our analysis of climate-related art projects and initiatives shows increased engagement in recent years, particularly with the narrative, visual and performing arts. The arts are moving beyond raising awareness and entering the terrain of interdisciplinarity and knowledge co-creation. We conclude that climate-arts can contribute positively in fostering the imagination and emotional predisposition for the development and implementation of the transformations necessary to address the 1.5 °C challenge

Three necessary conditions for establishing effective sustainable development goals in the Anthropocene

The purpose of the United Nations-guided process to establish Sustainable Development Goals is to galvanize governments and civil society to rise to the interlinked environmental, societal, and economic challenges we face in the Anthropocene. We argue that the process of setting Sustainable Development Goals should take three key aspects into consideration. First, it should embrace an integrated social-ecological system perspective and acknowledge the key dynamics that such systems entail, including the role of ecosystems in sustaining human wellbeing, multiple cross-scale interactions, and uncertain thresholds. Second, the process needs to address trade-offs between the ambition of goals and the feasibility in reaching them, recognizing biophysical, social, and political constraints. Third, the goal-setting exercise and the management of goal implementation need to be guided by existing knowledge about the principles, dynamics, and constraints of social change processes at all scales, from the individual to the global. Combining these three aspects will increase the chances of establishing and achieving effective Sustainable Development Goals

Not just playing: The politics of designing games for impact on anticipatory climate governance

Simulation games are increasingly popular tools for opening up future imaginaries, especially in the arena of sustainability policy-making and decision support. However, there is a lack of understanding regarding the potential power of games in anticipatory governance. We argue that the utility of simulation games in support of anticipatory climate governance can be greatly increased when game processes are consciously designed to impact present day planning and action. At the same time, game designers with the intention to support or intervene in governance and policy-making inevitably enter political arenas and bear responsibility for understanding and managing their influence at the science-policy interface. We present two case studies: a game simulating a sustainable food policy council with food system actors in Kyoto, Japan, and a game focused on the exploration and imagination of the global impacts of climate tipping points aimed at participants of the global climate negotiation community. Each case study represents a specific logic for translating game play into real-world impacts at different governance scales with distinct political implications. Based on these two case studies, we develop principles for the design and evaluation of simulation games that seek to impact anticipatory climate governance, based on five lenses: (1) purpose and positionality; (2) conceptions of the future and imaginaries; (3) beneficiaries, key stakeholders and participants; (4) the politics of game features and design; and (5) evaluation

Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future

Climate change places major transformational demands on modern societies. Transformations require the capacity to collectively envision and meaningfully debate realistic and desirable futures. Without such a collective imagination capacity and active deliberation processes, societies lack both the motivation for change and guidance for decision-making in a certain direction of change. Recent arguments that science fiction can play a role in societal transformation processes is not yet supported by theory or empirical evidence. Advancing the argument that fiction can support sustainability transformations, this paper makes four contributions. First, building on the imaginary concept, I introduce and define the idea of socio-climatic imaginaries. Second, I develop a theory of imagination as linked cognitive-social processes that enable the creation of collectively shared visions of future states of the world. This theory addresses the dynamics that bridge imagination processes in the individual mind and collective imagining that informs social and political decision-making. Third, emphasizing the political nature of creating and contesting imaginaries in a society, I introduce the role of power and agency in this theory of collective imagination. I argue that both ideational and structural power concepts are relevant for understanding the potential societal influence of climate fiction. Finally, the paper illuminates these different forms of transformational power and agency with two brief case studies: two climate fiction novels. I contrast a dystopian and utopian science fiction novel – Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife (2015) and Kim Stanley Robinson's Green Earth (2015). The two books are very similar in their power/agency profile, but the comparison provides initial insights into the different roles of optimistic and pessimistic future visions

Responsibilities in transition: Emerging powers in the climate change negotiations.

The BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, and China) play an increasingly prominent role in global climate negotiations. Climate governance spotlights burden-sharing arrangements, asking countries to take on potentially costly actions to resolve a global problem, even as the benefits are generally indivisible public goods. This article examines the BASIC countries' own Joint Statements and their individual and collective submissions to multilateral climate negotiations to identify the rationalist and principled arguments they have made about the climate burden-sharing requirements that developed countries, developing countries, and they themselves should face in global climate governance. It argues that their expectations for their own role are particularly unclear, with greater national action than international commitments to do so