The workshop "Knowledge, beliefs, representations in understanding climate issues", organized by the Paris Consortium Climate-Environment-Society (GIS Climat- Environnement-Société) and the laboratory Paragraphe, was held in Paris-Meudon on November 29, 2013.

Workshop outline
The objective of the workshop was to study, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the role of knowledge, beliefs and representations of complex climatic phenomena in the adaptive capacity to its rapid changes. This topic is studied in a fragmentary way in isolated researches. However, the conceptualization of these phenomena is at the heart of resilience and adaptation strategies to build collectively and individually. The aim of this workshop was to continue to develop a research program, which began with the colloquium Individual and collective representations of climate change: interdisciplinary perspectives on 8 March 2013.

Program
See the program of the day

Download the syntesis written after the workshop (available in French only)

The speakers' presentations

Opening
Chantal Pacteau, deputy-director of the GIS Climat-Environnement-Société, CNRS, France
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Introduction
Annamaria Lammel, maître de conférences in psychology, Paragraphe laboratory, university Paris VIII, France
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"Uncertain spatial reasoning about environmental hazards"
Markus Knauff, professor in psychology and cognitive sciences, university of Giessen, Germany

Abstract
Most of our reasoning and decision making about ecological hazards is based on uncertain knowledge. Climate models, for instance, rely on many uncertain parameters and cannot account for unexpected events, be they human-made or "natural". As a consequence, experts make different predictions and the public opinion is based on guesses, often requiring the explicit weighing of conflicting evidence. The talk describes experimental findings from cognitive psychology showing that people prefer certain conclusions when reasoning with uncertain spatial knowledge about environmental risks. These preferences are also biased by prior beliefs and the person's individual interests.

"Psychological aspects of climate change perceptions, behaviors and adaptive capacities"
Torsten Grothmann, senior scientist at the department ecological economics, university of Oldenburg, Germany

Abstract
Psychological research up until now has focused on climate change mitigation behaviour and the lay public's misconceptions about climate change. There has been little study of the psychological dimensions of adaptation to climate change. Drawing from the literature in psychology and behavioural economics, we have developed a socio-cognitive Model of Private Proactive Adaptation to Climate Change (MPPACC). MPPACC separates out the psychological steps to taking action in response to perception, and allows one to see where the most important bottlenecks occur-including risk perception and perceived adaptive capacity, a factor largely neglected in previous climate change research. This model has been applied in various case studies and has proven its explanatory power. Building on this model we extended the Adaptive Capacity Wheel (ACW) by Gupta et al. (2010) to include two important psychological dimensions in this most comprehensive and operationalised framework to assess social dimensions of adaptive capacities: "adaptation motivation", which is strongly influenced by risk perceptions, and "adaptation belief", which is very much related to perceived adaptive capacities. We applied the extended ACW to assess adaptive capacities of four sectors - water management, flood/coastal protection, civil protection and regional planning - in North Western Germany. The assessments of adaptation motivation and belief provided a clear added value to understand strengths and weaknesses in adaptive capacities.

References
Torsten Grothmann
, Anthony Patt - Global Environmental Change 2005 - "Adaptive capacity and human cognition:The process of individual adaptation to climate change"
T. Grothmann, K. Grecksch, M. Winges, and B. Siebenhuner - "Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 2013 - Assessing institutional capacities to adapt to climate change - integrating psychological dimensions in the Adaptive Capacity Wheel"

"Sami knowledge and representations about climate change"
Marie Roué, anthropologist and senior researcher, Museum national d'Histoire naturelle, CNRS, France

Abstract
This presentation discusses the sophisticated sami knowledge about snow and ice in winter and how to cope. But climate change is not necessarily the first issue the Sami put forward.   « A year is not the brother of the next one » is a sami saying. You cannot guess what kind of climatic conditions you will get.  All you know is that it will be different, and within the same winter, changing all the time. It is thus not surprising if the Sami are reluctant to discuss climate change.
They have the feeling that our questions mean that we do not recognize their ability to cope. Today extractive industries are putting a lot of pressure on Sami territories and diminishing seriously their ability to move their herds in case of need. As their adaptation has always depended on nomadism, global change is the first issue they have to face.

See the pdf presentation
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"Scientific knowledge and linguistic framing: the case of geoengineering"
Trine Dahl, professor of English linguistics, Norwegian school of economics, Norway

Abstract
The idea of tackling climate change by means of geoengineering is controversial, not only in terms of the technology involved, but also in terms of social and ethical aspects. Considering this against Nelkin's (1995:2) observation that "for most people, the reality of science is what they read in the press", we realize that the media's framing of the phenomenon is likely to have an impact on how it is perceived by the general public. Geoengineering is a recent phenomenon in the public sphere, and it is to be expected that competing frames will exist side by side. The presentation starts by a discussion of the notions of frames and framing in discourse-based studies within social science and linguistics, before I present a study I have recently undertaken on how one geoengineering experiment is framed when it is presented by six different news sources.

Reference
Nelkin, Dorothy, 1995. Selling Science. How the Press Covers Science and Technology. W.H. Freeman and Company, New York.

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"Print and TV media representation of climate change : an Italian case study"
Federico A. Pasquaré Mariotto, researcher, university Insubria, Italy

Abstract
Climate change topics have been under the spotlight in Europe in the last 15 years and have received increasing print and TV media attention. Media coverage of environmental and climate change plays an important role in affecting public perception of these issues. The impact of news on the audience can be particularly powerful as news stories are often built to take one perspective or another and to define which issues have to be regarded as important. Hence, it is key to understand how the media "frame" global warming and climate change. The software-based, qualitative and quantitative analysis of 1253 news stories from two major Italian broadsheets has enabled to assess the presence of typical journalistic frames such as conflict and dramatization, as well as newly-introduced ones such as "prevention vs. damage", and "weather vs. climate".

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"Communicating risk through decision support system design: vulnerability, resilience and the design of cognitive pathways"
Jean-Paul Vanderlinden, professor in environmental studies and ecological economics, university of  Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, France

Abstract
This presentation explores the issue of shifting risk communication from unidirectional information transfer to dialogic deliberative exercises within the context of climate change induced coastal risks.  A first step of this analysis consists in applying grounded theory to analyze stakeholders' (coastal and climate change induced) risk perception in four coastal settings in Spain, France, Italy and Poland.  We then compare this theorization to the grounded theorization of a foundational model underlying the development of a Decision Support Systems.  The result of this comparison points to diverging, yet not incompatible, paradigmatic views on the nature of coastal risks. These divergences are further analysed through semi-structured interviews with key informants involved in the development of the DSS.  Building on these results we explore potential communication schemes that should allow for a progressive convergence of paradigmatic views occurring through the use of the DSS; we are thus proposing that the DSS in itself be a locus where risk communication as a deliberative practice occurs.

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"Imaginary representation of the planet after climate change"
Ferenc Fodor, researcher, EDF Research and Development, France

Abstract
The science fiction literature integrates climate change into the vision of the future as a real problem. The visions of the present and the future show how social and cultural imaginary takes climate change into account as a major factor to consider our future. Indeed, science fiction is only an original expression of our anguishes of the present moment with attempts to extrapolate. One of its objectives is to make us become aware of the major stakes of our time. In this literature, climate change is often presented as a phenomenon that multiplies existing threats and is considered as a meta-risk.
We propose to present representations of climate change, how they become a new social construction of reality, how it is put forward in fiction (novels, movies) especially for young people and how these discourses can influence human behaviours.
From a methodological point of view of semiotics, during the analysis, the semiotician does not just read the documents, he frames and hierarchically organises the traits of the images and words, relating them and interpreting them.

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Listen to the talk