The challenges and chances of interdisciplinary collaborations on climate/environmental change (original) (raw)
A Better understanding of Interdisciplinary research in Climate Change
7 1 Abstract This paper is divided into two main parts, the first of which reviews some of the literature on interdisciplinary research collaboration and categorises articles according to their contribution. Some studies suggest that interdisciplinary collaboration is only a temporary phenomenon before a new discipline emerges; others suggest it is a necessity in order to resolve global problems or that it is a new discipline in its own right or an important source of creativity and innovation within research. Finally, the articles developing methods for studying interdisciplinary research are reviewed and discussed. The second part of the paper reviews the development of the field of climate change and examines the increasing importance of collaboration both between scientific disciplines, between physical and social scientists and with other stakeholders. Finally, the potential contribution of taking an interdisciplinary approach to studying climate change research is discussed. The paper concludes that an interdisciplinary approach can indeed provide a new understanding of some of the challenges facing climate change research and that some of the methods developed to organise and manage interdisciplinary research and particularly the concept of transdisciplinarity may be particularly useful with this field.
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 2022
In this position paper, we use the example of The University of Texas at Austin’s Planet Texas 2050 (PT2050) to argue that the Grand Challenge (GC) framework for ambitious research initiatives must create meeting grounds for transdisciplinary integration of science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM), arts, and humanities, along with community perspectives. We trace the historical trajectory of GCs, and reframe GC initiatives within the literature of inter- and transdisciplinarity. We present PT2050 as a case study of the infrastructural supports and imaginative process for creating level meeting grounds for transdisciplinarity. We demonstrate the benefits of these meeting grounds through projects, products, and funding generated. We contend that engaging arts, humanities, and community in co-design from the beginning is critical because complex, urgent challenges such as the climate crisis are embedded in human societies and demand solutions based in understanding of social, cultural, and historical contexts as well as STEM applications.
Interdisciplinarity and Climate Change
International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, 2011
Interdisciplinarity and Climate Change is a major new book addressing one of the most challenging questions of our time. Its unique standpoint is based on the recognition that effective and coherent interdisciplinarity is necessary to deal with the issue of climate change, and the multitude of linked phenomena which both constitute and connect to it. In the opening chapter, Roy Bhaskar makes use of the extensive resources of critical realism to articulate a comprehensive framework for multidisciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and cross-disciplinary understanding, one which duly takes account of ontological as well as epistemological considerations. Many of the subsequent chapters seek to show how this general approach can be used to make intellectual sense of the complex phenomena in and around the issue of climate change, including our response to it.
Overcoming early career barriers to interdisciplinary climate change research
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 2018
Climate-change impacts are among the most serious and complex challenges facing society, affecting both natural and social systems. Addressing these requires a new paradigm of interdisciplinary collaboration which incorporates tools, techniques, and insights from across the social, natural, and engineering sciences. Yet, a wide range of intrinsic and extrinsic hurdles need to be overcome to conduct successful, integrated interdisciplinary research. The results of a bibliometric analysis and survey of early to mid-career scientists from 56 countries who were involved with the interdisciplinary DISsertations initiative for the advancement of Climate Change ReSearch (DISCCRS) emphasize the particular challenges faced by early career researchers. Survey respondents perceive conflict between the need for interdisciplinary climate-change research and its potential detriment to career advancement. However, participation in interventions for early career scientists, such as networking and training symposia, had both perceived and measurable impacts on the likelihood of engagement in climate-centric interdisciplinary research. Respondents also ranked alternative mechanisms for encouraging incorporation of interdisciplinary science at early career stages, prioritizing funding of interdisciplinary seed grants, fellowships, and junior faculty networks, interdisciplinary teamwork and communication training, and interdepartmental symposia. To this we add the suggestion that interdisciplinarity be incorporated into tenure and promotion evaluations through the use of exploratory science mapping tools. Despite the need to foster interdisciplinary research and the availability of multiple prospective solutions, there remain expansive structural challenges to its promotion and recognition which, unless collectively addressed, will continue to hinder its potential growth and application to climate-change science. This article is categorized under: Social Status of Climate Change Knowledge > Knowledge and Practice Integrated Assessment of Climate Change > Methods of Integrated Assessment of Climate Change K E Y W O R D S bibliometrics, early career, interdisciplinary 1 | INTRODUCTION Interdisciplinary research (IDR) is commonly driven by an orientation toward addressing problems, spurring innovation, and tackling societal challenges that require fundamental knowledge from multiple disciplines (National Research Council (NRC), 2014). Given this approach, individual contributions may still fall within a single discipline, but the research, as a whole, is
Collaboration between the Natural, Social and Human Sciences in Global Change Research
Please cite this article in press as: Holm, P., et al., Collaboration between the natural, social and human sciences in Global Change Research. Environ. Sci. Policy (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2012.11.010, 2012
In nearly all domains of global change research (GCR), the role of humans is a key factor as a driving force, a subject of impacts, or an agent in mitigating impacts and adapting to change. While advances have been made in the conceptualisation and practice of interdisciplinary global change research in fields such as climate change and sustainability, approaches have tended to frame interdisciplinarity as actor-led, rather than understanding that complex problems which cut across disciplines may require new epistemological frameworks and methodological practices that exceed any one discipline. GCR studies must involve from their outset the social, human, natural and technical sciences in creating the spaces of interdisciplinarity, its terms of reference and forms of articulation. We propose a framework for funding excellence in interdisciplinary studies, named the Radically Inter- and Trans-disciplinary Environments (RITE) framework. RITE includes the need for a realignment of funding strategies to ensure that national and international research bodies and programmes road-map their respective strengths and identified areas for radical interdisciplinary research; then ensure that these areas can and are appropriately funded and staffed by talented individuals who want to apply their creative scientific talents to broader issues than their own field in the long term, rather than on limited scope (5 year and less) research projects. While our references are mostly to Europe, recommendations may be applicable elsewhere.
Scholarly motivations to conduct interdisciplinary climate change research
Understanding and responding to today's complex environmental problems requires collaboration that bridges disciplinary boundaries. As the barriers to interdisciplinary research are formidable, promoting interdisciplinary environmental research requires understanding what motivates researchers to embark upon such challenging research. This article draws upon research on problem choice and interdisci-plinary research practice to investigate motivators and barriers to interdisciplinary climate change (IDCC) research. Results from a survey on the motivations of 526 Ph.D.-holding, early-to mid-career, self-identified IDCC scholars indicate how those scholars make decisions regarding their research choices including the role of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and the barriers arising from the nature of interdisciplinary research and institutional structures. Climate change was not the main motivation for most respondents to become scholars, yet the majority began to study the issue because they could not ignore the problem. Respondents' decisions to conduct IDCC research are driven by personal motivations, including personal interest, the importance of IDCC research to society, and enjoyment of interdisciplinary collaborations. Two thirds of respondents reported having encountered challenges in communication across disciplines, longer timelines while conducting interdisciplinary work, and a lack of peer support. Nonetheless, most respondents plan to conduct IDCC research in the future and will choose their next research project based on its societal benefits and the opportunity to work with specific collaborators. We conclude that focused attention to supporting intrinsic motivations, as well as removing institutional barriers, can facilitate future IDCC research.
Syllabus: Climate Change: Disciplinary Challenges to the Humanities & the Social Sciences A Special Workshop at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, 2015-16 Faculty sponsors: Emily Osborn, Benjamin Morgan and Fredrik Albritton Jonsson Visiting speakers: Joshua Howe, Jason Kelly, Tobias Menely, Christophe Bonneuil, and Jason Moore Graduate Assistant: Michael Dango The problem of climate change forces us to rethink many of the basic analytical categories in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Within the humanities, writers and artists are experimenting with new ways in which their practices can catalyze environmental awareness, and emerging research is beginning to integrate the history of culture with the history of the earth’s climate. This project will bring together faculty and graduate students from across the humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences in a reading group. We are especially interested in the place of the humanities in meeting the challenge of climate change. How might humanistic perspectives inform the science and politics of climate change? We will also consider how climate change is transforming our understanding of history, politics, literature, and ethics, inspiring new approaches within the humanities.
Environmental Science & Policy, 2024
The aim of this perspective article is to rethink how anthropology can be involved in interdisciplinary research on climate and environmental change, considering wide-spread obstacles for successful collaboration and recommending best practices. Anthropologists complement ”big data“ with “thick data“, which must not be overlooked if the global scientific goal is to have a sustainable and responsible local impact in communities facing environmental change. Anthropologists are used to working with uncertainty, qualified for shifting scales and perspectives, and, perhaps most importantly, pre-occupied with studying the human dimensions of environmental change. However, there are still many practical, ontological and epistemological challenges concerning interdisciplinary research with an environmental focus. After outlining the most recent developments and literature on interdisciplinary research, we share our experience with integrating diverse forms of environmental knowledge including local and indigenous knowledge. Using an inductive approach, we build on and illustrate our conclusions with ethnographic vignettes that stem from a variety of our interdisciplinary projects. Several key themes and suggestions emerge: a) establishment of a joint epistemological framework before the research phase; b) humility and respect for methodologies used by other disciplines, including time spent on studying these with colleagues of different disciplinary backgrounds; c) openness, creativity and flexibility to step out of one’s own disciplinary comfort zone; d) communication within the project team based on trust and without disciplinary hierarchies. Finally, we share some practical suggestions on how to set up interdisciplinary projects.
Is climate change research truly collaborative
2016
The paper focuses on the interaction, and specifically knowledge exchange that takes place between scientists and stakeholders in research for adaptation to climate change. The study took place in the context of a European program called Circle/Era-Net that aimed to boost the linkage between scientists and stakeholders in transnational European research regarding climate change adaptation. The research program, which had a special focus on Natural Sciences (biology, marine ecology, chemistry, and hydrogeology), was designed for early collaboration with decision makers and stakeholders in order to produce useful knowledge and to disseminate recommendations. A total of 33 scientists, stakeholders and funders involved in 7 projects financed by the Circle-Med program were interviewed. Collaboration and knowledge exchange were recognizable intentions but not a visible practice in research. In order to reach a genuinely integrated science and a true collaboration between scientists and st...
Future Directions—Engaged Scholarship and the Climate Crisis
Land
Climate change has the potential to disrupt ecosystem services and further exacerbate the effects of human activities on natural resources. This has significant implications for educational institutions and the populations they serve. As the current crop of landscape architecture students struggles to define its role within the climate crisis and its related social and political underpinnings, a core mission of colleges and universities moving forward should be to provide students with applied knowledge about how climate change affects the landscape. This goes beyond coursework in climate science or policy; for landscape architecture students to be leaders in the response to climate change, they need applied, practical skills. An ever-growing body of the literature focuses on landscape design strategies for climate change adaptation; however, few frameworks integrate these strategies with the hands-on experience students will need to face real-world challenges after graduation. Educ...
By generating intense public scrutiny of international climate science, the climate gate controversy has paradoxically underlined the authoritative status accorded to scientific knowledge in policy decision making on climate change. In contrast to the universalizing discourse of international climate science (as presented by the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC)), notable differences exist between countries with regard to the degree of public trust in its expertise. Focusing on the German case, this article explores how and why countries vary when it comes to interpreting and validating universally valid expertise. It argues that differences in the way climate change are addressed in national research and decision making cannot be explained solely by the quality of scientific knowledge available, because it is the same body of knowledge (produced by the IPCC) that provides the common point of reference. The reception of scientific evidence for climate change by publics and policy makers depends additionally on the ways in which scientific claims are validated and rendered authoritative for public use and on prior criteria of what counts as scientifically valid and policy-relevant knowledge. This article then discusses the implications entailed by these national differences in terms of interpreting expertise on matters of global relevance. It shows why the task of producing policy-relevant knowledge "under the public microscope" requires new forms of interdisciplinary scientific judgment and justification toward wider publics. It reviews recent initiatives setup to respond to ‘climategate’ and discusses the alternatives offered by a wide range of efforts to promote a differentiated, reflexive, and culturally sensitive ‘cosmopolitan’ approach.
A Data-Bias in Interdisciplinary Cooperation in the Sciences: Ecology in climate research
After 1980, and going full steam since 1990 or so, a number of sciences have reoriented themselves to data gathering on a scale immensely larger than in the post-World War II decades. We are witnessing a new 'avalanche of data', and fears of becoming 'drowned in data' have been repeatedly expressed during the past ten years (Conway, 2006). 1 The proximate cause of the data revolution is technology: the rapid development of medical imagery equipment, automated gene sequencing machines, and remote sensing equipment mounted on satellites orbiting the Earth are conspicuous examples. In response to the still evolving technologies of data collecting, new technologies of data handling, data storage, data retrieval etc., have come into existence. Databases have become instruments of scientific work, and their development and maintenance informs to an important extent ongoing research (Hine, 2006; Millerand & Bowker, 2009). The new riches bestowed on the sciences in the form of data collecting and data handling technologies (many of them made available through public funding) point to an interesting paradox: the financial room for autonomous science at the universities is decreasing at the same time. The data-dominated sciences can often be located within large national and international programs. The International Human Genome Project, the Human Brain Project and many other such programs operate under criteria which do not come out of peer-reviewed 'little science' but are formed instead within state-funded bureaucracies and/ or entrepreneurial cultures. Science operates under a 'new social contract' with society (Jasanoff, 2005; Shapin, 2008). The terms of the new contract are to either lead to the development of marketable products or to contribute to more generally conceived societal goals, the elucidation of climate change and the mechanisms of global
Climate Change and the Humanities
Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2017
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Sustainability, 2019
The main sources of information about climate change cited in this article are characterized by a close to unanimous agreement about their contents not only within the international scientific community but also within the community of the nations whose political representatives have to approve them together with scientists. These sources are accessible both by scientists who have a background in natural and applied science, and by policy makers-professionals whose expertise is in fields other than natural and applied sciences. These sources are a good starting point for everyone wishing to be reliably informed about the reported subjects. The main issues related to the changing climate system are summarized with comments that underline the known feedback, their consequences, and the growing discussions about them inside the international scientific community. Also discussed are scientists' efforts to properly and effectively inform policy makers and to help to design feasible mitigation strategies that make sense, could be accepted by the public, and could achieve results. The main sources of anthropogenic greenhouse gases emission are briefly described and the importance of the transition to an economy based on renewable energies and recycling is underlined. Two cases are included to show how the humanities, social sciences, and the arts could proactively work with natural and applied sciences, local communities, and society at large to imagine, plan, and build effective solutions. This article aims to be a primer on communication among different disciplines that have different competencies and roles and which could be an effective way to enlist citizen participation and commitment to build a sustainable future.
Climate change and transdisciplinary science: problematizing the integration imperative
2015
In this article we critically examine the 'integration imperative' in transdisciplinary environmental science and build on social constructivist and political theories to suggest alternative approaches of knowledge co-production in transdisciplinary settings. Our argument builds upon a body of literature in social studies of science to cull insights about knowledge co-production, social learning, and the ecology of team science, particularly as it relates to climate change adaptation. Couched in this transdisciplinary literature, we demonstrate, is the assumption that integration necessarily can and should be a regulative ideal. We critique this assumption by examining the 'messy' politics of achieving consensus among radically different, and sometimes irreconcilable, ways of knowing. We argue that the integration imperative conceals the friction, antagonism, and power inherent in knowledge co-production, which in turn can exclude innovative and experimental ways of understanding and adapting to climate change. By way of conclusion, the final section explores three alternative models of knowledge co-production--triangulation, the multiple evidence-based approach, and scenario building--and illustrates their application in the context of transdisciplinary research in climate change adaptation in the arctic, focusing on alternative means of cross-boundary engagement with indigenous ways of knowing.
The International Research Institute for Climate & Society: why, what and how
Earth Perspectives, 2014
A climate-informed and climate-ready world is possible. Large investments are being made toward adaptation and resilience to climate change, but many of those investments are separated from the more immediate climate-related vulnerabilities and opportunities that society faces. Information is increasingly available that could be used to guide action; however, information alone is not sufficient. Research at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) since 1996 has led to the identification of the several guiding principles to scope and address climate-related challenges to decision-and policy-makers at local-to-regional scale. These include climate-related information, such as assessment of the main vulnerabilities to climate variability and change in countries or regions, and the provision of climate information, products and tools to support decisions, including financial tools that are appropriate to the climate-related risk and that can mediate residual risk. The guiding principles also include identifying the technologies and practices that optimize results in coming years, demonstration of the usefulness of climate information to support climate-related decisions, training and capacity building, and partnerships for research and implementation. This essay introduces the evolution of the IRI and its work that is then elaborated through a series of articles that constitute a special issue of Earth Perspectives: Transdisciplinarity Enabled. The collection of articles provides insight into the science and process that lead to better climate-informed choices. Part of the collection of articles in the special issue covers specific stories of local-to-regional engagement with partners to address climate-related problems. Other articles represent how we do what we do, in particular highlighting the research, the climate forecast effort, and the IRI Data Library. Finally, there are two papers offered from partners that have long-time engagement with the IRI.
2018
For many decades, contrasting opinions regarding the value of collaboration between the arts and sciences have been voiced. Some commentators have argued that the fundamental differences between art and science makes interdisciplinary practice untenable, while others suggest that many potential benefits are achievable through dialogue and mutual work in areas of shared interest. Against this backdrop, this thesis examines the contention that climate change, as well as being the subject of scientific research, can also be examined through art, and that by working collaboratively across art and science, new understanding may be reached. The thesis documents a series of interdisciplinary projects that were established with scientists working in areas of climate change, geomorphology and palaeoanthropology, and critically examines the resultant strategies, practices and artistic outputs. The creative approaches that were employed included working with science teams in field contexts, (re-) interpreting acquired science imagery, and organising exhibitions and symposia. Each approach involved different modes of collaboration, and each raised key discussion points, including the use of science images and material within fine art and the structuring of the collaborative relationship. Findings from earlier interdisciplinary projects provided the conceptual, theoretical and practical framework for a concluding art and science collaboration with an international team of researchers, the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project (HSPDP), who are investigating the relationship between human evolution and climate change. In developing and exhibiting art that emerged from the HSPDP project within the gallery context, the curatorial aspects of hybridised displays of art and science images, objects and contextual documentation are examined. New approaches within the artscience and climate change discourse are identified, including the insights that can be gained by bringing divergent practices together to enable audiences to encounter larger narratives of humanities relationship with a changing climate.