CRS RESEARCH INITIATIVE ON CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY AND SOCIAL TRANSITION

Climate change is recognized as one of the greatest challenges for humankind. In international policy and law, the call for climate governance to safeguard living conditions for future generations has become increasingly acute. This is not only a matter of preventive mitigation of climate change through addressing its causes, and thereby securing justice and equity between current and future generations. It is also a question of human and social adaptation to climate change in present day societies. The call for action is in line with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 13 of taking urgent action to combat climate change and its effects. More specifically the targets of this goal are focused on integration of climate change measures into national policies, improvement of education, awareness-raising and institutional capacity with regard to aspects of climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warnings. These targets call for climate change research within the social sciences and humanities.

Climate change is recognized to affect every country on every continent, disrupting national economics and affecting lives and livelihoods everywhere, often affecting peoples and societies already in a vulnerable situation. That brings about questions of individual rights and responsibilities, and calls for new and innovative models of governance with wide stakeholder participation and collaboration, as well as new means of education and awareness-making. Combating climate change is consequently a challenge for policy, governance and law, but also for each and every individual, thus relating to ethics, religion and behavioral science, etc. Traditional structures and fundamental norms have to be reassessed. Social science and human scientific research can contribute to a positive development in this sense. Research and development connected to climate change has traditionally been much tied to natural scientific and technological fields, pushing for a need for more scientific evidence and insights as well as technical innovations to solve the climate change challenge. The current Swedish research policy recognizes that social sciences and humanities have been under prioritized, and emphasizes the essential contributions of social science and humanities in the increased understanding of societal challenges in meeting complex societal challenges of today.

In the network we have gathered researchers from departments of theology, political science, behavioral sciences and law to act as a core group facilitating research collaboration and development between researchers from different scientific disciplines within our already existing research networks. This also means collaboration with research partners in natural scientific fields and with other universities, as well as with non-academic external partners. The aim is that this forum will lead to the development of several cross-disciplinary research projects with central focus on climate change policy and social transition and where the social scientific and humanities perspectives will have a central role. The network will promote the collaboration of the university and our research with civil society and climate change governance stakeholders today. Such collaboration has the potential of strengthening relevance and impact of academic research in society, a potential that is especially important in new and complex societal challenges such as climate change.

For more information on the initiative and activities organised by the network contact coordinator: Annika Nilsson, or CRS director Martha Middlemiss Lé Mon.