Recognitions and responsibilities: On the origins and consequences of the uneven attention to climate change around the world

Though climate change is a global process, current discussions emphasize its local impacts. A review of mediarepresentations, public opinion polls, international organization documents, and scientific reports shows that globalattention to climate change is distributed unevenly, with the impacts of climate change seen as an urgent concernin some places and less pressing in others. This uneven attention, or specificity, is linked to issues of selectivity (theinclusion of some cases and exclusion of others), historicity (the long temporal depth of the pathways to inclusionor exclusion), and consequentiality (the effects of this specificity on claims of responsibility for climate change).These issues are explored through a historical examination of four cases—two (the Arctic, low-lying islands) stronglyengaged with climate change frameworks, and two (mountains, deserts) closely associated with other frameworksof sustainable development rather than climate change. For all four regions, the 1960s and 1970s were a key periodof initial involvement with environmental issues; the organizations and frameworks that developed at that timeshaped the engagement with climate change issues. In turn, the association of climate change with a few remoteareas influences climate change institutions and discourses at a global scale.

Til publikasjon: https://doi.org/10.1086/676298, https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3480051 | Publiseringsår: 2014 | Tidsskrift: Current Anthropology