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Climate Change Mitigation in Developing Countries

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University of Cape Town

Climate Change Mitigation in Developing Countries

198 notes

This course challenges you to consider how one might lift societies out of poverty while also mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. We explore the inherent complexity of developing country governments wanting to grow their economies in a climate friendly way. You will be introduced to an approach with which to address this challenge. The approach consists of a facilitated process whereby academic researchers and high-level influential actors within society co-produce knowledge. You will track this process in four Latin American countries - Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and South Africa. You will hear from various professionals about their contexts and the different challenges and opportunities the process includes. This course will cover topics such as facilitation process techniques, energy modeling, scenario building, innovation and policy making. You will have the opportunity to respond to these topics with ideas and reflection from your own context. Whether you are a climate change practitioner, work in development or are simply curious about how climate mitigation is understood, this course will give you insights into the complexity of how countries from the South pursue development goals while addressing climate mitigation. The course is free to enroll and take. You will be offered the option of purchasing a certificate of completion, which you become eligible for if you successfully complete the course requirements. This can be an excellent way of staying motivated! Financial Aid is also available.

À partir de la leçon

Responding to mitigation challenges

There are limitations within our existing toolsets and ways of thinking how we might address the mitigation gap. We need to look more closely at the interface of economic and development pathways and to question the way in which climate change mitigation professionals are approaching this huge and complex climate and development problem. Responses to these challenges include linking of economic and mitigation model to better understand the interconnectedness of mitigation policies and economic development, and involves out-of-the-box thinking when imagining climate and development solutions of the future. This week we hope to inspire innovations and responses to challenges in the climate mitigation and development community.

Improving tools6:20

Looking at science8:49

Rencontrer les enseignants

Harald Winkler
Professor
Energy Research Centre, University of Cape Town

In our previous lesson, we looked at how linking models could give us more

sophisticated information that would allow us to better understand the impacts and

the effects of mitigation decisions on developing countries.

In this lesson we're going to take a step back and

look at our practice as climate change practitioners.

We're going to see what kind of information we produce and

why we produce this kind of information rather than other types of information.

We're also going to look at how we can move forward in a more inclusive way.

We're reflecting on how we do what we do, and

how this effects our ability to create positive change in our societies.

We're going to kick off this session by hearing from doctor Lisa Cain,

a specialist in the cross disciplinary field of engineering studies.

Lisa is going to introduce us to science and technology studies and

we're going to find out how this approach could be useful in reflecting

on our practice as climate change mitigation professionals.

>> After a few years working in the field of transport planning, I was

asking some questions about how roads and transport get to be the way they are.

And the reading around that I was doing in transport planning wasn't really

answering those sorts of questions.

So sort of exploring a bit more widely and I came across a field called science and

technology studies, and subsequently did my PhD in that field.

And it proved to be really interesting, it really helped me to understand how

transport planning got to be the way it is.

It helped me understand some of how transport gets to be the way it is, and

that's the field that I've been applying and working with on the MAPS program.

I think the most interesting thing about Science and

Technology Studies is it demystifies science in some ways for non scientists.

And it also demystifies technology and engineering for

those who are not in those fields.

It puts it in some context, so

instead of thinking as science as being something that's outside of society or

cultural history, it puts it in some historical and social context.

And by doing that, it stops it from being some sort of form of knowledge that's

somehow removed from society, and it helps us understand how science and

technology gets influenced by culture and politics and the other way around.

So it's a very large body of theory, and

it really helps non scientists and engineers to understand it better.

So one of the very early influential writers, and

in some ways somebody who defined the field, was a writer called Kuhn, and

he was a physicist, and in 1962, he was writing about signs.

He wrote a book called the Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and in that book

he really questioned ideas about science, and he used physics as an example.

And he said, Einstein, when he came along with his theories of science,

he really revolutionized thinking about science and he,

Kuhn suggested that science goes through phases.

So it goes through phases of so called normal science,

where scientists build on work that's already been done previously, and than

there are these revolutionary shifts such as the one that Einstein came up with.

And couldn't really impart what it meant to do normal science.

He said, during periods of normal science, then scientists operate

within a series of kind of unconscious or tacit sets of rules.

So they take for granted certain things, and that taking for

granted allows them to do, step wise, sort of knowledge production.

But there comes a time where the sets of rules for some reason don't quite work.

And that's where somebody sometimes from outside the field can come along with some

quite so called revolutionary thinking.

And they turn those taken for granted rules on their heads.

And the sorts of things he's talking about are for example commitments

to accuracy, reliability, those are two very important ones within science.

But it might be also that a community of practice takes for granted

certain ways of being in the world or certain commitments to certain values.

And these are the important things about these are they're somewhat unspoken.

So they bind a community of practice, but they don't need to be made explicit,

they are what binds this community practice.

And looking at those unspoken rules,

that's some of the work that we've been doing within MAPS,

is questioning what is it that climate change mitigation professionals,

what is it that climate change scientists, what is it that they take for granted?

What is it that that's tacit within how they operate?

So one of the things that's interesting about climate change work is that

it's adopted some of the methods of science.

And you see this in the conference materials,

in the papers that are produced.

That tend to work within a scientific or

a science policy framework, and that has a lot of value.

That produces evidence which is persuasive,

which has a lot of validity within political and social settings.

But it also has some problems, because working within a scientific framework

limits work to some degree to issues which can be quantified,

and clearly issues of climate can be quantified.

But when we start to ask questions about well then what, how do we intervene?

Then science is not as useful.

And some of the sorts of things that a science framework excludes are for

example, thinking about issues of power.

Where does power lie for change?

Is it within politics?

Is it within big business?

Is it within small business?

Is it within the civil society sector?

And remaining within a scientific or even an engineering framework stops us from

really asking and deeply understanding those questions about power and politics.

So one of the innovations within the maps project was a willingness to look

outside the project's business as usual operations.

And to ask them some questions about, could we be doing what we're doing better?

Could climate change work be more effective?

And some of the things that came up with in that enquiry was used STS methods and

theories for

looking beyond business as usual were questions about issues of power.

How do we better understand where the power lies within systems, and

once we understand that can we use that understanding to intervene more

effectively in the systems in order to accelerate climate change mitigation?

Also, we realize that our understanding of how,

at the drive for, development and alleviating poverty and

addressing inequalities, how does that fit with climate change action?

We still don't understand that very, very well.

Then there's a whole series of questions about how do we understand change?

What are the best ways of understanding change?

Can we understand change better?

Do we need another complex set of theories for

understanding how change might happen in our societies which have so

contested so many, deep needs within societies?

Then there's a whole set of questions about these skills, these, data modeling

and sort of quantitative analysis skills in an era where science, and where

there is deep skepticism about science and the role of science in politics.

How does data modeling and

quantitative analysis, how does that work best and most effectively?

And then, lastly, there's some big questions about how people,

human beings are engaging with issues of climate change.

At the moment,

there seems to be a lot of deep reluctance to engage on the part of many.

How do issues of fear or hope or trust,

how do those sort of more psychological issues, how did they play into

climate change mitigation intervention and the MAPS program?

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