coulter l 20150708_1730_upmc_jussieu_-_room_103

Griffith University - Liese Coulter – [email protected]

Personal adaptation:

discussions, decisions and

planning

All images © Liese Coulter: Creative Commons with attribution, non-commercial

Challenge:

Imagine a climate system that gains energy

every decade from now onward…

The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report shows that

near-term climate change will influence our

environment over the next twenty years.

Liese Coulter I Associate Lecturer I Griffith University E: [email protected]

The social construction of 2035:

Communicating the imagined

future to adapt to climate change

WHO: Climate change professionals

in research, policy and practice

WHAT: How do you talk to family and

friends about adapting to climate

change over the next 20 years?

WHEN: June 2014- June 2015

WHERE: Australia and Canada

WHY: Personal conversations and

plans shape the imagined future and

shared choices.


Personal adaptation issues

Common issues identified include:

•My personal problems seem trivial

compared with future generations,

other nations, the less fortunate…

•I am only one person. How can I

adapt to climate change?

•Dealing with climate change is not

something we talk about.


Scaring people or

bringing up unpleasant

topics in a social

situation is not a

diplomatic approach. It is

easier to talk about

environmental ethos in

mitigation but disturbing

to talk about personal

vulnerability in

adaptation.

Personal adaptation issues


Personal adaptation concerns

Common concerns include the need to:

• shift concern for mitigation of climate

change to include adaptation to

climate impacts;

• think beyond unpleasant possibilities

and envision future life affected by

climate change, and

• foster skills for greater cooperation in

education and planning.


Decision makers in

prosperous nations do

not see themselves as

very vulnerable to

climate change.

Adaptation is framed as

happening to someone

else, at a distant time

and place.

Personal adaptation concerns


Personal adaptation challenges

Common challenges include:

• uneven capacity for change on a

personal level;

• not practiced in thinking about the

future, and

• difficult to remain positive and hopeful


Discourse and future

thinking will continue to

evolve as climate change

is differently experienced

and discussed globally.

Personal adaptation challenges


Dangerous Futures Unfamiliar Futures

Imagined Futures Unfolding Futures


“…And if anything scares me about

Tasmania is the lack of good regulation on

food security, and when these outbreaks

happen, then the likelihood of someone

dying is high, because we just don’t have the

systems in place.” (Australian 3063-practice)

“…we hear a lot… that the problems are not

going to be here; they’re going to be in the

tropics, where you have really small islands;

or in Europe, they’re going to have a lot of

flooding, and then Florida is going to be -

Florida won’t exist anymore. That’s what we

hear about.”

(Canadian 3382-research)

Dangerous Futures climate change + narrative communication


Unfamiliar Futures climate change + future thinking

…my vision for the future is one where we’re

more collaborative, not less. I think resilience

for communities and for families will involve

not being isolationist, but creating networks

that are cooperative that can negotiate

appropriate and maybe firm

boundaries...(Australian 3243-policy)

…global warming is not what many of us

thought what it was going to be 15 or 20

years ago. …we were going to have palm

trees, and our winters were going to be

nothing compared to what they are now.

What we’re going to see is …more extreme

seasonal weather. (Canadian 3380-practice)


“Because the impacts of climate change

ongoing right now, and into this time period

that you are dealing with, has the potential to

be sufficient to really cause some disruption

in places like China, Southeast Asia, where a

lot of our food’s coming from.” (Australian 3056-research)

“…sure, I want to get into (my) 90s. I do, I’m

in good health. But yeah, I imagine myself

there. And getting back to the climate thing…

I wonder what things will be like. I worry

about the skiing. “ (Canadian 3367-research)

Imagined Futures future thinking + narrative communication


“So even without climate change global

fisheries look pretty bloody awful. …But if

we do it right, we’ll still be pretty natural,

actually… So, could be a messy interval.” (Australian 3344-research)

“I have never been in a conversation in a

professional context where anybody

actually sat down and said “We need to to

think mainly, primarily, about climate

change." Not a one. Never heard it.“ (Canadian 3384-policy)

Unfolding Futures change over time


I am only one person.

How can I adapt to climate change?


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