Global Climate Change: A Social Identity Perspective on Informational and Structural Interventions

Abstract

Climate change is one of the major challenges facing the world today. As levels of carbon emissions continue to build in our planet's atmosphere, scientists predict a wide range of harmful effects on the natural environment . This includes an increase in extreme weather events (such as heatwaves, droughts, and wildfi res) and an increase in resource degradation (such as shortages of food and water, biodiversity loss, and worsened pollution; IPCC, 2014 ). As a result, climate change is likely to cause considerable damage to plants, animals, and ecosystems around the world, and this damage would persist well into the foreseeable future.Scientists predict a range of harmful effects on human societies as well, including an increase in interpersonal violence and intergroup confl ict. Hsiang, Burke, and Miguel ( 2013 ) conducted a meta-analysis of studies on the relationship between climate change and violence from around 8000 BCE to 2010. They found that for every one-standard deviation increase in temperature or rainfall, interpersonal violence (such as assault) increased by 4 % and intergroup confl ict (such as civil war) by 14 %. Changing climates appear to magnify the drivers underlying violence and confl ict, such as poverty and economic shocks (IPCC, 2014 ). The harmful effects also include mass dislocation and more environmental injustice. With extreme weather, degraded resources, and greater confl ict, people will increasingly become displaced from their homes and be forced to migrate to other places, especially in low-income and developing nations (IPCC, 2014 ). In effect, climate change can damage important social identities (Jetten, Haslam,

Research on climate change in social psychology publications: A systematic review

“…The psychological understanding of climate change and other environmental issues has been criticised by some for being dominated by individualistic perspectives (Ferguson et al, 2016;van Zomeren, 2014). That is, existing theories tend to focus on subjective and intrapsychic processes.…”

A Social Identity Analysis of Climate Change and Environmental Attitudes and Behaviors: Insights and Opportunities

“…They are not exhaustive but are instead meant to provide a starting point that can stimulate future research to empirically test and further refine social identity approaches relating to the environment. Although some of these strategies have been discussed previously (see e.g., Reynolds et al, 2015 ; Ferguson et al, in press ), we see a benefit in presenting the range of strategies that emerge as the logical outcome of our social identity analysis of environmental attitudes and behavior.…”

Facing a Common Human Fate: Relating Global Identity and Climate Change Mitigation

“…Individual behavior change aiming to reduce carbon emissions is crucial, but only effective if many people jointly pursue this goal—in particular those emitting the most (i.e., citizens in highly affluent countries). Therefore, scholars have argued that an individual perspective on understanding climate‐protective behavior should be complemented by a social identity perspective that takes into account the collective nature of the challenges that come with climate change (Amel et al, 2017; Ferguson et al, 2016; Fielding & Hornsey, 2016; Fritsche et al, 2018). Specifically, we argue that promoting a global identification with people all over the world could be a useful strategy to work together to mitigate climate change (see also Batalha & Reynolds, 2012; Reese, 2016).…”