Knowledge problems in climate change and security research

Abstract

The demand for policy-relevant information on climate change has never been higher, but there remains a gap between the type of information climate projections provide and an understanding of the consequences for human well-being. This review explores the knowledge available to support assessments of climate change and security for a wide range of policy stakeholders. Both the climate science and social science communities undertake valuable research toward understanding climate change and the interaction of environment and security, but address different aspects of the problem. Differences in the types of knowledge produced include analytical methods, language, and scale issues. This makes research conclusions difficult to reconcile and provides a barrier to knowledge sharing. It is largely left to policy and security analysts to bring these two very different types of information together in accessible, policy-relevant assessments. Often this is done by considering the potential implications of existing climate change projections, with little or no input from social scientists on the complexities of the relationship between environment and security. An alternative approach to climate change and security assessments is to consider the problem from a systems perspective. This approach has the potential to offer new insight across disciplines and improve the utility of research outcomes to inform action on climate change and security.

Food security outcomes under a changing climate: impacts of mitigation and adaptation on vulnerability to food insecurity

“…The index was developed through collaboration between climate science and food security expertise, and so expert judgement was available to be applied to the interpretation, in order to minimise misuse of either types of information. Interdisciplinary research between natural and social science disciplines faces a number of challenges (Lewis and Lenton 2015); this index is an example where these disciplinary boundaries have been bridged, to provide integrated evidence on the human outcomes of climate change.…”

Perspectives on contextual vulnerability in discourses of climate conflict

“…This idea invokes the notion of contextual totalities, and embodies the complexity of the climate conflict challenge in the frame of historicity, specificity and variability. Similarly, the idea points to what may constitute parts of an integrative framework's requirements for modelling pathways between climate change, land use, and conflict (see Link et al, 2015).…”

“…Casting climate conflict as a vulnerability-based question, therefore, supports making vulnerability and adaptability the central analytical issues (Adger, 2010). It orients the research towards fundamentally rebalancing the missing synergy between the climate science and social science communities (see Lewis and Lenton, 2015) and suggests taking into account the deterministic storyline regarding causes of peace and cooperation under climate change (Gemenne et al, 2014). Indeed, the considerable range of knowledge this can generate has been voiced (Slow, 2013;King and Mutter, 2014), especially in the hope for more convergence and consensual results .…”

“…Given the projected changes in climate for several regions it is possible that most of what we know about vulnerability "conditional factors" and processes in climate conflict research will be insufficient to support our explanatory power of future climate-conflict links (Lewis, 2013;Lewis and Lenton, 2015). This is where outcome vulnerability might be useful.…”

Understanding climate as a driver of food insecurity in Ethiopia

“…The aim is to address some of the interdisciplinary barriers associated with analysis across natural and physical sciences (Lewis and Lenton 2015), to test some basic assumptions about the food security-climate relationship in Ethiopia, and to provide robust evidence on that relationship to support action to tackle food insecurity at a national level.…”