Exploring Local Experiences of Climate Change and Changing Climates
摘要
Climate change is already having tangible biophysical, social, and cultural effects throughout Europe. To address the question of how people experience climate change in their living environments—an aspect that has barely been investigated at the European level to date—the project Climate Walk, presented in this chapter, places people’s concrete experiences at the center of its ethnographic research approach. A rich corpus of data, including notes, audio recordings, films, photographs, participant observations, and both informal and expert interviews, was collected during an almost yearlong walk through 17 European countries. The approach is distinguished by the concept of ethnographic “footwork,” which involves physically interacting with landscapes, allowing researchers to get as close as possible to the experiences of the people inhabiting them. The results indicate that the direct and indirect effects of climate change are already perceived as a concrete and significant concern across Europe. The increasing intensity of extreme weather events was one of the most frequently mentioned issues, observed in all 17 countries. To adequately understand people’s experiences of climate change, a theoretical framework was developed based on the analytical perspective of Social Ecology, highlighting the intricate interactions between biophysical climate change and socially, culturally, and politically changing climates. These theoretical considerations are combined with climate activist perspectives, as the transformative approach of the Climate Walk echoes the call for an intensification of inter- and transdisciplinary research to address the climate crisis.