Cleaning out bookmarks related to this project: Part 1

In early 2017 I moved roles and did not get time to give attention to this site, but I continued for a few months to bookmark resources relevant to the topic of this site. Today I decided that it is time to clean all the bookmarks, post the relevant ones, and then I will not feel so bad about having done nothing with the bookmarks! So here goes a list of bookmarks I kept between 2016 and early 2017 on anthropology and climate change, and related topics – Part 1 of 2.

Climate change

Morrison TH, et al (2017) Mitigation and adaptation in polycentric systems: Sources of power in the pursuit of collective goals. WIREs Clim Change 2017, 8:e479. doi: 10.1002/wcc.479. Abstract: Polycentric governance involves multiple actors at multiple scales beyond the state. The potential of polycentric governance for promoting both climate mitigation and adaptation is well established. Yet, dominant conceptualizations of polycentric governance pay scant attention to how power dynamics affect the structure and the outcomes of climate action. We review emerging evidence on power within polycentric and distributed governance across the climate, forestry, marine, coastal, urban, and water sectors, and relate them to established positions on power within research on federalism, decentralization, international relations, and networked governance. We develop a typology of design, pragmatic, and framing power that focuses on how and in whose interests power is mobilized to achieve outcomes. We propose that the conceptual model helps to explain power dynamics across different sectors and across both climate change mitigation and adaptation. Significant research challenges arising from the analysis include the measurement and monitoring of the outcomes of power asymmetries over time. 

Karen O’Brien and Robin Leichenko (2019) Toward an integrative discourse on climate change – Karen O’Brien, Robin Leichenko, 2019

Billi M, Blanco G, Urquiza A (2019) What is the ‘social’ in climate change research? A case study on scientific representations from Chile. Minerva 57: 293-315. Abstract: Over the last few decades climate change has been gaining importance in international scientific and political debates. However, the social sciences, especially in Latin America, have only lately become interested in the subject and their approach is still vague. Scientific understanding of global environmental change and the process of designing public policies to face them are characterized by their complexity as well as by epistemic and normative uncertainties. This makes it necessary to problematize the way in which research efforts understand ‘the social’ of climate change. How do ‘the climate’ and ‘the social’ interpenetrate as scientific objects? What does the resulting field look like? Is the combination capable of promoting reflexivity and collaboration on the issue, or does it merely become dispersed with diffuse boundaries? Our paper seeks to answer these and other related questions using Chile as a case study and examining peer-reviewed scientific research on the topic. By combining in-depth qualitative content analysis of each paper with a statistical meta-analysis, we were able to: characterize the key content and forms of such literature; identify divisions and patterns within it; and, discuss some factors and trends that may help explain these. We conclude that the literature displays two competing trends: while it is inclined to become fragmented beyond the scope of the ‘mitigation’ black box, it also tends to cluster along the lines of methodological distinctions traditionally contested within the social sciences. This, in turn, highlights the persistence of disciplinary divisions within an allegedly interdisciplinary field.

Swatuk LA (2016) Adapting to climate change: Why the West must learn from Africa and what Africa has to teach itself.

Whitington J (2016) What does climate change demand of anthropology? POLaR 39(1).

Borquez R, Aldune P, Adler C (2017) Resilience to climate change: From theory to practice through co-production of knowledge in Chile. Sustainability Science 12: 163-176. Abstract: In theory, building resilience is touted as one way to deal with climate change impacts; however, in practice, there is a need to examine how contexts influence the capacity of building resilience. A participatory process was carried out through workshops in regions affected by drought in Chile in 2014. The aim was to explore how resilience theory can be better applied and articulated into practice vis-á-vis participatory approaches that enrich the research process through the incorporation of co-produced. The results show that there are more differences in responses by type of actor than between regions, where issues of national interest, such as ‘education-information’ and ‘preparedness’, are highlighted over others. However, historically relevant local topics emerged as differentiators: decentralisation, and political will. This reinforces why special attention must be given to the different understandings in knowledge co-production processes. This study provides evidence and lessons on the importance of incorporating processes of the co-production of knowledge as a means to better articulate and transfer abstract concepts, such as resilience theory, into practice.

Nyadzi E, Ajayi OO, Ajayo OC (2021) Indigenous knowledge and climate change adaptation in Africa: A systematic review. CAB Reviews Perspectives in Agriculture, Veterinary Science, Nutrition and Natural Resources 16: 29.

Ford JD et al (2016) Including indigenous knowledge and experience in IPCC assessment reports. Nature Climate Change 6: 349-353.

Water

Krause F, Strang V (2016) Rethinking relationships through water. Society & Natural Resources 29(6): 633-638. Abstract: With this collection, we hope to contribute to a more explicitly relational study of water in society. Water is not just the object of social relationships, or merely a natural resource on which claims are made, to which meanings are attached, and over which political conflicts erupt. We suggest that if we study how social and hydrological relationships are interconnected and mutually constitutive, a much deeper understanding of the role of water in human social lives can be gained, and significantly better management and policy can be designed. This collection is thus an argument for considering the hydrological and the social together: for thinking relationships through water. Previous research on water has suggested a need to reconsider the relationships between society and natural resources (Strang 2009; Linton 2010). Simultaneously an element, a flow, a means of transport, a life-sustaining substance, and a life-threatening force, the subject, object, and often the very means of social and cultural activity (Hahn, Cless, and Soentgen 2012; Krause and Strang 2013), water inspires novel ways of thinking about key aspects of social relations, including exchange, circulation, power, community, and knowledge. At the same time, watery relationships challenge assumptions about nature and resources, questioning their conceptual and material boundedness and stability and furthering our understandings of the human and nonhuman aspects of their production. Today, water has a prominent place in academic research, due in part to a widening awareness of multiple global water crises, in which water is increasingly scarce, destructive or polluted. As water is perceived as endangered or dangerous, researchers are rediscovering the profound implications of water for human societies and cultures. Just as biophysical life is unthinkable without water, so too is social and cultural life.

Norman ES, Cook C (2016) Negotiating water governance: Why the politics of scale matter. Those who control water, hold power. Complicating matters, water is a flow resource; constantly changing states between liquid, solid, and gas, being incorporated into living and non-living things and crossing boundaries of all kinds. As a result, water governance has much to do with the question of boundaries and scale: who is in and who is out of decision-making structures? Which of the many boundaries that water crosses should be used for decision-making related to its governance? Recently, efforts to understand the relationship between water and political boundaries have come to the fore of water governance debates: how and why does water governance fragment across sectors and governmental departments? How can we govern shared waters more effectively? How do politics and power play out in water governance? This book brings together and connects the work of scholars to engage with such questions. The introduction of scalar debates into water governance discussions is a significant advancement of both governance studies and scalar theory: decision-making with respect to water is often, implicitly, a decision about scale and its related politics. When water managers or scholars explore municipal water service delivery systems, argue that integrated approaches to salmon stewardship are critical to their survival, query the damming of a river to provide power to another region and investigate access to potable water – they are deliberating the politics of scale. Accessible, engaging, and informative, the volume offers an overview and advancement of both scalar and governance studies while examining practical solutions to the challenges of water governance.

Yates JS, Harris LM, Wilson NJ (2017) Multiple ontologies of water: Politics, conflict and implications for governance. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 33(5). Abstract: We ask what it would mean to take seriously the possibility of multiple water ontologies, and what the implications of this would be for water governance in theory and practice. We contribute to a growing body of literature that is reformulating understanding of human–water relations and refocusing on the fundamental question of what water ‘is’. Interrogating the political–ontological ‘problem space’ of water governance, we explore a series of ontological disjunctures that persist. Rather than seeking to characterize any individual ontology, we focus on the limitations of silencing diverse ontologies, and on the potential of embracing ontological plurality in water governance. Exploring these ideas in relation to examples from the Canadian province of British Columbia, we develop the notion of ontological conjunctures, which is based on networked dialogue among multiple water ontologies and which points to forms of water governance that begin to embrace such a dialogue. We highlight water as siwlkw and the processual concept of En’owkin as examples of this approach, emphasizing the significance of cross-pollinating scholarship across debates on water and multiple ontologies.

Kangalawe RYM (2016) Climate change impacts on water resource management and community livelihoods in the southern highlands of Tanzania. Climate and Development 9(3): 191-201. Abstract: This paper is based on studies conducted in the southern highlands of Tanzania to assess the impacts of climate change and variability on natural and socio-economic environments. Data collection included household and key informant interviews, focus group discussions, historical timelines, resource mapping, and transect walks. Quantitative data were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Science. Qualitative data were triangulated with community members during participatory discussions. Results indicated concerns on progressive decrease of water flows and increasing seasonality of rivers and streams and drying up of some wetlands. Natural springs were reported to have decreased in water discharge or dried up completely. Climate change is locally perceived as the main driver of such changes, particularly associated with declining amounts of rainfall, shortened rainy seasons, delayed onset of rains, increased drought, and increasing temperatures. During the last few decades, unreliable rainfall in upland areas has resulted in increased expansion of agriculture into wetlands, with consequent increase in wetland use, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and drying and/or shrinking of affected wetland ecosystems. Climate change is also locally perceived to have reduced the overall amount of water coming into the wetlands, causing them to dry much earlier in the dry season, and wetland crop cultivation cannot be extended much into the dry season as was in the past. This has limited agricultural productivity in these areas. These findings point to the need for appropriate water resource management strategies to ensure environmental sustainability and community livelihoods especially within the context of changing climate.

Hastrup K, Hastrup F (eds) (2015) Waterworlds: Anthropology in fluid environments. Berghahn.

Anthropocene

Ellis E, Maslin M, Boivin N, Bauer A (2016) Involve social scientists in defining the Anthropocene. Nature 540: 192-193.

Bronislaw Szerszynski (2016) Gods of the Anthropocene: Human and inhuman agencies in the Earth’s new epoch.

Moore A (2015) Anthropocene Anthropology: A framework for contemporary global change research. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 1-19.

Emmett R, Lekan T (2016) Whose Anthropocene? Revisiting Dipesh Chakrabarty’s ‘Four theses’. Rachel Carson Centre Perspectives 2.

Evidence

Parkhurst JO, Abeysinghe S (2014) What constitutes ‘good’ evidence for public health and social policy making? From hierarchies to appropriateness. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 3(10): 40-52. Abstract: Within public health, and increasingly other areas of social policy, there are widespread calls to increase or improve the use of evidence for policy making. Often these calls rest on an assumption that increased evidence utilisation will be a more efficient or effective means of achieving social goals. Yet a clear elucidation of what can be considered ‘good evidence’ for policy is rarely articulated. Many of the current discussions of best practice in the health policy sector derive from the evidence-based medicine (EBM) movement, embracing the ‘hierarchy of evidence’ that places experimental trials as preeminent in terms of methodological quality. However, a number of problems arise if these hierarchies are used to rank or prioritise policy relevance. Challenges in applying evidence hierarchies to policy questions arise from the fact that the EBM hierarchies rank evidence of intervention effect on a specified and limited number of outcomes. Previous authors have noted that evidence forms at the top of such hierarchies typically serve the needs and realities of clinical medicine, but not necessarily public policy. We build on past insights by applying three disciplinary perspectives from political science, the philosophy of science and the sociology of knowledge to illustrate the limitations of a single evidence hierarchy to guide health policy choices, while simultaneously providing new conceptualisations suited to achieve health sector goals. In doing so, we provide an alternative approach that re-frames ‘good’ evidence for health policy as a question of appropriateness. Rather than adhering to a single hierarchy of evidence to judge what constitutes ‘good’ evidence for policy, it is more useful to examine evidence through the lens of appropriateness. The form of evidence, the determination of relevant categories and variables, and the weight given to any piece of evidence, must suit the policy needs at hand. A more robust and critical examination of relevant and appropriate evidence can ensure that the best possible evidence of various forms is used to achieve health policy goals.

Evidence for nature and people: Data portal

Decoloniality

Rochberg F (2017) Before nature: Cuneiform knowledge and the history of science. In the modern West, we take for granted that what we call the “natural world” confronts us all and always has—but Before Nature explores that almost unimaginable time when there was no such conception of “nature”—no word, reference, or sense for it. Before the concept of nature formed over the long history of European philosophy and science, our ancestors in ancient Assyria and Babylonia developed an inquiry into the world in a way that is kindred to our modern science. With Before Nature, Francesca Rochberg explores that Assyro-Babylonian knowledge tradition and shows how it relates to the entire history of science. From a modern, Western perspective, a world not conceived somehow within the framework of physical nature is difficult—if not impossible—to imagine. Yet, as Rochberg lays out, ancient investigations of regularity and irregularity, norms and anomalies clearly established an axis of knowledge between the knower and an intelligible, ordered world. Rochberg is the first scholar to make a case for how exactly we can understand cuneiform knowledge, observation, prediction, and explanation in relation to science—without recourse to later ideas of nature. Systematically examining the whole of Mesopotamian science with a distinctive historical and methodological approach, Before Nature will open up surprising new pathways for studying the history of science.

Sofoulis Z (2016) From integration to interaction: A knowledge ecology framework.

What is the usefulness and relevance of “the Anthropocene” for a social anthropological study on changing climate?

[Drafted in 2015; posted in 2021, on cleaning out drafts sitting on the site]

A blog posting by Zev Trachtenberg on Do we need “the Anthropocene?” got me thinking about the usefulness and relevance about the concept ‘the Anthropocene’ for a social anthropological study on changing climate. In preparing the proposal for our current research project, I regularly came (and still do) across articles and blog postings making use of this term. In September 2013, for example, a new peer-reviewed journal named Anthropocene came out  publishing articles on “the nature, scale, and extent of the interactions that people have with Earth”. Should we for this project not only take note, but engage seriously with writings on this concept of ‘the Anthropocene’?

Other anthropologists are taking note also. John Hartigan (on his blog Aesop’s Anthropology) indicates that at the 2013 annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) not a single abstract, paper or panel contained the phrase ‘Anthropocene’, but at the 2014 meeting there were 64 – clearly a buzzword. In Trachtenberg’s posting that got me thinking, he starts off by acknowledging the status of the concept ‘the Anthropocene’ as a geological term that indicates a period in the geological time-scale. The phrase was coined in 2000 by Crutzen and Stoermer. A new name for this very recent period is necessary, according to proponents of concepts, due to the strong impact that humans have on the earth today. But Trachtenberg also acknowledges the wide informal use of the term “to refer to the massive transformation of Earth systems by human beings”. The concepts conveys a sense of crisis and of urgency, and therefore orients us to policy and action to prevent the sixth mass extinction. This puts humans as a force on the level of cataclysmic natural forces such as volcanoes and earthquakes.

Have a look at the wonderful blog called Inhabiting the Anthropocene: How we live changes everything, run by an interdisciplinary group of faculty from the University of Oklahoma “dedicated to exploring how human beings can and should live in the human era – the Anthropocene”.

In 2012 Dipesh Chakrabarty wrote in the academic article ‘Postcolonial studies and the challenge of climate change‘ about “how the figure of the human has been thought in anticolonial and postcolonial writing—as that of the rights-bearing citizen and as the ‘subject under erasure’ of deconstructive thinking, respectively.” The article shows “how the science of climate change foregrounds the idea of human beings’ collective geological agency in determining the climate of the planet, a move that makes the other two figures not redundant but inadequate to the task of imagining the human in the age of the Anthropocene.” The article “ends by arguing the necessity of our having to think of the human on multiple and incommensurable scales simultaneously, keeping all the three figures of the human in disjunctive association with one another.”

Anthropology in the Anthropocene: Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Interdisciplinary Research – Springer.

Bruno Latour on Anthropology at the time of the Anthropocene. Abstract: “What an amazing gift! Sure it might be poisonous. But how silly it would be not to try to peek through the wrapping to take a glimpse of what is in store. Consider the situation: here is a battered scholarly discipline, always uncertain of its scientific status, constantly plagued by successive and violent “turns” (the “ontological turn” being only the more recent), a field which always finds itself dragged into the middle of harsh political conflicts, a discipline that runs the constant risk of being absorbed by neighboring specialties and voted out of existence by deans and administrators impatient of its methods and ideologies, a discipline that accepts being crushed under the weight of all the violence and domination suffered by the many populations it has decided to champion—a lost cause among all the lost causes; okay, you see the picture, and it is to this same discipline, which a few years ago, an amazing present was offered: pushed from behind by the vast extent of ecological mutations and dragged ahead by philosophers, historians, artists and activists, a sizeable group of natural scientists are describing the quandary of our time in terms that exactly match the standards, vices and virtues of that very discipline. Yes, what a gift! It is really embarrassing, especially if it is not deserved!” “The concept of the Anthropocene pushes anthropology to the center, requests from us to be worthy of anthro’s original mission” – Latour said. Also,”the dual sides of cultural and physical anthro are being re-negotiated through the concept of the Anthropocene.”

Paul Stoller on the Anthropocene: Anthropology and the political moment: “For me, the politics of the Anthropocene is an anthropological challenge. In the Anthropocene it has been human activity that has directed us onto a destructive environmental path. By the same token, human activity can also direct us toward more positive social ends. Enter anthropology and anthropologists. Most of my anthropological colleagues have been passive rather than active players on the sociopolitical stage. In our discipline the institution has long celebrated arcane theoretical contributions for which practitioners receive research grants and endowed chairs. These times require a shift in emphasis. Given the political, social and ecological crisis we face, anthropologists are uniquely positioned to demonstrate in clear and concise language and image, how market fundamentalism, which generates climate change, social inequality, racism and the defamation of difference, has brought us to the social precipice. By moving from passive to active voice anthropologists, among other cultural critics, can provide the insightful information needed to construct a groundswell of change – a course correction on a path to social apocalypse. … This cultural critique must be constant and consistent. As frustrating as such an exercise might be, we will need to re-state and continuously refine our presentations so that our inconvenient insights will gradually convince people to change. In this way we might salvage some degree of compassionate social life on the planet. At the same time, we should develop further an anthropology of well-being to demonstrate how to siphon off measures of mirth in increasingly trying times. The Anthropocene presents to anthropologists and other social scientists a profoundly humanitarian obligation. As the Songhay people of Niger like the say: even though the path toward truth is long, it is one that is always worth taking.”

Amelia Moore on Anthropocene Anthropology: “The Anthropocene is the label given by some Earth scientists to the current epoch of unprecedented anthropogenic planetary change. The Anthropocene is also a label designed to call attention to this change and evolving notions of agency and responsibility in contemporary life.  As a small island state, biodiversity hotspot, and global destination for both tourists and research scientists, The Bahamas is increasingly defined by the emergent problem space of the Anthropocene. Starting with The Bahamas as a location increasingly shaped by planetary change and global change science and utilising scholarship from sociocultural anthropology and related fields, this article describes recent engagements with and within the Anthropocene in order to chart a path towards a global change research framework for anthropologists. I argue that there are under examined divisions in the existing body of work on anthropogenic planetary change, with some scholars working in a mode I call “in the Anthropocene” and some working in a mode that is “of the Anthropocene.” By comparing events in The Bahamas today to these modes and their characteristics, I arrive at an alternative orientation that I call simply Anthropocene anthropology. Rather than advocating for the creation of a new subfield of research, this mode of engagement represents a broad framework for the examination of global change ecobiopolitics.”

Seminar series on the Anthropocene by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Centre at the University of California – Santa Barbara.

The politics of Nature in the Anthropocene | Resource politics

New book: Love in the Anthropocene from Dale Jamieson and Bonnie Nadzam – the anthropo.scene

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Term Anthropocene | Tim Morton – Academia.edu.

Putting Nature to Work: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, and the Challenge of World-Ecology | Jason W. Moore – Academia.edu.

Four Problems, Four Directions for Environmental Humanities: Toward Critical Posthumanities for the Anthropocene (authors’ preprint) | Astrida Neimanis – Academia.edu.

In future postings I will look at criticisms of the concepts, and consider alternative concepts.

_________________

The invention of nature: New book by Andrea Wulf on Alexander von Humboldt

Nature as a web of life!

Pressed from Jeremy Schmidt’s THE ANTHROPO.SCENE

Source: The invention of nature: new book from Andrea Wulf on Alexander von Humboldt

This looks like a fabulous new biography, and it’s already getting rave reviews. Here is a description, and hopefully a video…vimeo is always fussy about this stuff.

“The Invention of Nature” reveals the extraordinary life of the visionary German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) and how he created the way we understand nature today. Though almost forgotten today, his name lingers everywhere from the Humboldt Current to the Humboldt penguin. Humboldt was an intrepid explorer and the most famous scientist of his age. His restless life was packed with adventure and discovery, whether climbing the highest volcanoes in the world, paddling down the Orinoco or racing through anthrax–infested Siberia. Perceiving nature as an interconnected global force, Humboldt discovered similarities between climate zones across the world and predicted human-induced climate change. He turned scientific observation into poetic narrative, and his writings inspired naturalists and poets such as Darwin, Wordsworth and Goethe but also politicians such as Jefferson. Wulf also argues that it was Humboldt’s influence that led John Muir to his ideas of preservation and that shaped Thoreau’s ‘Walden’. Wulf traces Humboldt’s influences through the great minds he inspired in revolution, evolution, ecology, conservation, art and literature.  In The Invention of Nature Wulf brings this lost hero to science and the forgotten father of environmentalism back to life.

Humboldt was, after all, as one contemporary said, ‘the greatest man since the Deluge’.

https://vimeo.com/93417125

Heat wave in Pakistan in June 2015: A comment

Early morning on 26 June PowerFM interviewed me for a few minutes in their news segment about the heat wave that south Pakistan was experiencing. For five days in a row temperatures reached low- to mid-40 degrees Celsius, leading to the deaths of over 2 000 people, and causing the prime minister of Pakistan to declare a state of emergency.

This has not been the first recent heat wave leading to such high deaths, and will highly likely not be the last:

• In 2003 a heat wave hit Europe that killed over 50 000 people;
• The 2010 Russian heat wave lead to the deaths of around 56 000 people; and
• In May this year nearly 2 500 people died in India when temperatures reached above 45 degrees Celsius.

(Source: Dave Granlund)

Whilst heat waves are already occurring more frequently in Europe, Asia and Australia, climate change is expected to lead to more hot days and warmer nights, and higher temperatures over nearly all land areas. The latest assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2014:19) found that it is “likely that human influence has more than doubled the probability of occurrence of heat waves in some locations”. Another study (Christidis et al 2015) found that human-caused climate change makes it ten times more likely than a decade ago for heat waves such as the 2003 one to occur in Europe again. Not only will heat waves occur more frequently in Europe, Asia and Australia due to climate change, but it is also expected to last longer and be more severe (Herring et al 214; Steffen et al 2014).

Like the radio interviewer (Lawrence Tlhabane), you might wonder how heat waves are related to climate change? Think of the striker of one of the top soccer teams. (For my niece I would have to make it Messi or Neymar). This player already scores many goals due to his talent and training; should he take performance-enhancing drugs, he is very likely to be even more on target and become immortalised as the best striker ever!

(Source: FC Barcelona)

Global warming is the earth on performance-enhancing drugs; as the average temperature goes up, we’re more likely to experience frequent hotter days, and some areas are more likely to experience more heat waves. Thus, whilst it is not possible to say that a specific extreme weather event, such as the heat wave in Pakistan, is attributable to climate change, the scientific consensus is that extreme weather events (such as heat waves, floods and droughts) are more likely to occur with more intensity, due to climate change. Thus, it is likely for heat waves to occur more often, be higher in temperature and last longer.

What are some of the impacts of heat waves occurring more frequent and being more intense?

• The most immediate impact of a heat wave is morbidity (illness) and premature mortality (death), as we have seen in Pakistan. We must remember our bodies’ normal temperature is 37-38C. Once it heats up to 39-40C, our muscles slow down and fatigue sets in. At 40-41C heat exhaustion and heatstroke is likely, and above 41C our bodies start to shut down, with risk of multiple organ failure (see BBC 2013). “In America on average over the last 30 years, excessive heat accounts for more reported deaths annually than hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and lightning combined.” (Adams). Various studies (quoted in Vescovi et al 2005) found the “strongest correlation factors between impacts of high temperature events on mortality and morbidity, and social factors include age (Besancenot 2002; Diaz et al 2002), poverty (INSERM 2003), social isolation (Besancenot 2002), and education level (Ballester et al. 1997). And a report released the end of June by The Lancet (Watts et al 2015) diagnoses climate change as ‘a medical emergency’, due to its health impacts.
• Increased morbidity and mortality put pressure on existing health infrastructure. In Pakistan, for example, 14 000 people were seeking help at hospitals, and the mortuaries ran short of space (The New York Times 25 June 2015; News24 25 June 2015). In such a crisis it is likely that emergency staff will be overwhelmed and overworked by the scale of the crisis, also because such staff will themselves experience heat stress.
• Current vulnerable social groups are more at risk than others to heat waves; for example, older people and children, those living alone, those with pre-existing diseases (especially cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses), those who are immobile, those suffering from mental illness, and the homeless and urban poor (due to the urban heat island effect). Such vulnerable people have limited adaptive capacity to deal with heat waves, and other extreme weather events.
• Some argue that there is an association between heat waves / hot weather and social disturbances, unrest and crime – this remains debatable, and should rather be seen as speculative rather than definitive (see Anderson 1989; Anderson et al 1997; Cohn 1990, 1993; Field 1992; Rotton and Cohn 2000a, 2000b). In Karachi in Pakistan we saw sporadic protests blaming deaths on the government and the main power utility, after electricity blackouts (The Independent 25 June 2015; Time 24 June 2015).
• But heat waves are likely to affect electricity supply. Not only is power outages more likely due to heat causing transmission lines to sag, but the increased demand for electricity to keep people cool through air conditioners further increase the likelihood of blackouts.
• Another key service affected by heat waves is water services and infrastructure. Increased demand for water, combined with likely electricity outages, can lead to a crisis in water availability. Furthermore, the rise in water temperatures will reduce water quality, not only affecting human consumption and health, and increased cost to clean water, but fish populations and other organisms in the water ecosystem will also be affected.
• Within the agricultural sector livestock may be affected, with, for example, milk production of cows being reduced; and wheat, maize and other plant growth being affected if a heat wave occurs at key developmental stages. Reduced harvests with have a knock-on effect on food security. With veldfires more likely in heat waves (refs), crops and grazing can be affected.
• A warmer world, on average, means a more humid world (Huber & Gulledge 2011). In higher humidity our sweat don’t evaporate, and we feel hot and sweaty, thus increasing our discomfort. [Remember, in a heat wave there is little respite – the normal trend of cooler nights does not happen, combined with consecutive hot days.] Combined with labour power morbidity, reduced production is likely. In Pakistan, for example, an emergency was declared, with schools and government offices closed.
• And, heat waves can lead to increased economic costs in transportation. In Pakistan, for example, road infrastructure was damaged. Railway tracks might bend, and mechanical failure in cars is likely due to stress on car cooling systems.

(Source: The Huffington Post – from Hindustan Times)

In increased likelihood of occurrences of extreme weather events – such as heat waves, floods and drought – means that we have to look at mitigation. Two recent court judgements – one in the US and the other in the Netherlands – highlight this. In the US in King County a court asked the Washington state Department of Ecology to reconsider a petition by eight youth for state-wide reductions in carbon-dioxide emissions (Western Environmental Law Center 2015). And the end of June a Dutch court ordered the Dutch government to cut greenhouse emission by 2010 with 25% compared to 1990 levels, in order to protect its people from global warming (Nature 24 June 2015). But mitigation is not enough; we need adaptation as well. And adaptation requires that we reconsider the values that underpin our living in the age of the Anthropocene. In a recent research article Gina Ziervogel and colleagues (2014:615) argued that “Climate change adaptation requires forward-looking decision-making that marries scientific diagnoses and technical innovation with social organisation and political debate around competing value systems.” And in June Pope Francis wrote in an encyclical on the environment that “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods.” Indeed, climate change (and extreme weather events such as heat waves) is not only an environmental problem, but also a political, development, economic and social challenge.

List of references

Adams CR Impacts of temperature extremes. Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere, Colorado State University:
Fort Collins

BBC (18 July) 2013 What happens to the body in extreme heat?

Christidis N, Jones GS & Stott PA 2015 Dramatically increasing chance of extremely hot summers since the 2003 European heatwave. Nature Climate Change 5: 46–50. doi:10.1038/nclimate2468

Herring SC, Hoerling MP, Peterson TC & Stott PA (eds) 2014 Explaining extreme events of 2013 from a climate perspective. Special Supplement to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 95(9)

Huber D & Gulledge J 2011 Extreme weather and climate change: Understanding the link and managing the risk. Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions.

IPCC 2014 Climate change 2013: The physical science basis (Working Group 1 contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC). New York: Cambridge University Press

Nature 24 June 2015 Landmark court ruling tells Dutch government to do more on climate change

News24 25 June 2015 Pakistan morgues run out of space as heat wave kills 1 000

Steffen W, Hughes L & Perkins S 2014 Heat waves: Hotter, longer and more often. Climate Council of Australia.

The Independent 25 June 2015 Karachi heat wave: Death toll tops 1 000 as government and electricity company trade blame

The New York Times 25 June 2015 Death toll from heat wave in Karachi, Pakistan, hits 1000

Time 24 June 2015 Pakistan declares a state of emergency as heat wave death toll soars to nearly 800

Vescovi L, Rebetez M & Rong F 2005 Assessing public health risk due to extremely high temperature events: Climate and social parameters. Climate Research 30: 71-78

Watts N et al 2015 Health and climate change: Policy responses to protect public health. The Lancet

Western Environmental Law Center 2015 Washington State youth win unprecedented decision in their climate change lawsuit – Press release on 24 June

Ziervogel G 2014 Climate change impacts and adaptation in South Africa. WIREs Climate Change 5: 605-620. doi: 10.1002/wcc.295