Changing relations in global environmental change

Participation of civil society in decisions to mitigate environmental degradation in post-conflict societies: evidence from Somalia

“…This suggests that (1) the participants acquire information about the condition of their local environment from sources other than the government, or (2) that they were personally exposed to different forms of environmental degradation (Figure 3 and Supplementary material Figure S1). Previous studies in developing countries (R€ athzel and Uzzell 2009) and in Somalia (Oduori, Alim, and Gomes 2006) have reported similar results. However, since our study targeted organized citizens we infer that the environmental awareness of civil society alone cannot be sufficient to evaluate general public awareness, but more inclusive grassroots awareness could be more meaningful, as this will involve members of society outside the core group that we sampled.…”

Framing and communicating climate change: The effects of distance and outcome frame manipulations

“…One potential reason for this inaction is the suggestion that climate change is a psychologically distant issue, in that people generally perceive it is most likely to impact geographically and temporally distant people and places (Leiserowitz, 2005;Rathzel and Uzzell, 2009). A frequently voiced hypothesis arising from this is that situating climate change in terms of an individual's present locality will render the issue more salient and more likely to promote emotional and cognitive engagement with the issue (Lorenzoni et al, 2007).…”

The Psychological Distance of Climate Change

“…In fact, whilst cross‐national studies do indicate that respondents from developing countries tend to be more concerned about local environmental issues than those from industrialized nations, ( 37,38 ) beyond this a general spatial bias appears to exist where people in both developed and developing countries tend to perceive environmental degradation to be more serious at a global level than at a local level. ( 38−40 ) This again points to the importance of bridging this disassociation between local and global impacts of climate change in order to promote personal action. Interestingly, Spence et al .…”