Session 5: Environmental Synergies
10th Global Conference
Friday 8th July 2011 – Sunday 10th July 2011
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom
Multifarious networks in climate change research: scientists, policy makers and the public
Ana Delicado
Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal
In the past few decades, climate change has gained an outstanding prominence not just as an environmental problem but also as a social and political issue and a new field of research. One of the most salient aspects of climate change science has been its collaborative nature. This has been particularly noticeable in the functioning of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which draws on the work of thousands of scientists from numerous disciplines and from all over the world, together with government experts and representatives. Collaboration here has a practical justification but also a symbolic one, in the sense that it confers legitimacy in a still contentious area.
This paper argues that this collaborative nature extends also to the level of national scientific systems, far less studied than the case of the IPCC. Probably more so than in other research fields, climate change science has spawned the creation of multiple alliances, within the scientific community as well as with the social and political sphere. As to the former, this can be measured by the amount of international projects and of inter-institutional and interdisciplinary collaborations. Regarding the later, this can be observed in the involvement of stakeholders, policy makers and members of the public in various stages of the research process.
But how do these alliances work in practice? How are partners in the networks chosen? What roles do they play? What are the motivations behind extending the scientific process to other actors? What results are achieved?
This paper will strive to answer some of these queries. It is based on the analysis of climate change research in Portugal, supported by administrative data on research projects and interviews with scientists. It is part of an on-going research project in sociology of science.
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The Community Power Sector and Environmental Justice in Ontario, Canada
Cheryl Teeluck Singh
Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada
Natural resource wealth and energy resources play an important role in the Canadian economy. Regional tensions between large energy producer provinces (e.g. Alberta) and energy consumer provinces, such as Ontario, have been an integral part of the political landscape in Canada. Recently, Ontario has experienced problems that have spurred reconsideration of the sustainability of its reliance on distance energy sources. In an effort to establish Ontario as a leader in the green economy, the Green Energy Act (2009) attempts to stimulate green jobs and to fight climate change by encouraging the move toward alternative forms of sustainable energy. Employing an environmental justice lens, I analyze Ontario‘s Green Energy Act to, first, critique the neo-liberal and green capitalist ideologies embedded in the policy, and second, examine the political interests of actors in the emerging Ontario community power sector. I argue that an environmental justice approach to energy policy would advocate for more active participation of affected communities and the questioning of relations of power implicated in and reproduced through the greening of the power sector. Access to the power grid for more diverse players is potentially the site where attempts to democratize participation in keeping with the goals of environmental justice has the most potential. The presentation will consider the challenges that community power groups encounter in accessing the power grid, and will examine the case of a successful community power initiative.
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The emerging environmental protest in China and its impacts on the growth of Chinese civil society
Zhou Qian
The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
This paper takes, whether or not should establish polluting refineries, city waste incinerators and related projects which arousing environmental controversy in population-intense area as an issue, to examine the ability of Chinese citizens to champion environmental justice in an industrial risk society in China by way of E-mobilization and protest action. The author would further explore here about how environmental justice emerged among Chinese citizens, its significances and impacts on the growth of Chinese Civil Society. To address these questions, we will present viewpoints from key stakeholders above (whether or not) establishing polluting refineries and city waste incinerators, and select three city cases respectively (Xiamen city in Fujian Province, Wujiang city in Jiangsu Province, and Panyu city in Guangdong Province) to examine how civic protest emerged to achieve environmental justice. For the case studies, two conceptual frameworks for civil society would be used: local civil society (e.g. local residents, community members, leaders or representatives) living in the affected area and external civil society (e.g. non-governmental organizations, academics, environmental experts, legal institutions, and the media) who are not directly affected by the potential established waste incineration facilities, still provide support to local citizens. Through in-depth comparison of these cases, we can find that how the focus of citizens’ debate above polluting refineries and waste incinerators transformed from defense of local environmental justice to awareness of local communities taking responsibility for the local environment. In this study, the indigenous demands for environmental justice already go beyond distributional equity to emphasize sustainable development of indigenous communities.
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