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Transdisciplinary collaborations can manage climate knowledge controversies

Opinion & Analysis
Climate change is the biggest threat currently facing humanity and global development, with developing countries hard hit due to their exposure to the negative impacts of climate change, compounded by low adaptive, coping mechanisms and entrenched vulnerabilities.

By Peter Makwanya ALTHOUGH it is a given and in the public domain too, that climate change is science-driven and dominated by scientific research, interventions, projections and outcomes, that alone has failed to deliver positive results. That is why climate change remains a highly-contested domain, culminating in never ending knowledge controversies, denials and scepticism.

In attempts to manage these recurring knowledge controversies and participate in sustainable co-production of climate change knowledge, transdisciplinary collaborations have been recommended, thereby making the cross-cutting nature of the climate change sector specific, multidisciplinary and inclusive.

The transdisciplinary thinking approach is comprehensive and sufficiently situate knowledge brokers from diverse knowledge, disciplines and linguistic backgrounds on how they interact and how they should interact in relation to climate change.

The objective of transdisciplinary collaborations is co-production of climate knowledge, information and understanding, including how best climate knowledge controversies can be reduced and sustainably managed.

Climate change is the biggest threat currently facing humanity and global development, with developing countries hard hit due to their exposure to the negative impacts of climate change, compounded by low adaptive, coping mechanisms and entrenched vulnerabilities.

The realisation that co-production of knowledge of climate change is key is the beginning of climate wisdom. To mitigate, prepare and respond to climate change, there is need to put our heads together and tame the phenomena collectively from all perspectives and worldviews.

It is also significant in this regard to note what knowledge controversy is.

Generally, knowledge controversies are those events in which knowledge claims and technologies of climate science, the regulatory and policy practices of government agencies that they inform, become subject to intense public interrogation, contestations, jockeying and disputes.

The first bone of contention is whether climate change is there or not. Is it caused by natural processes, human activities or none of the above?

These contestations breed three discourse communities, variations and communities of practice such as pro-climate change knowledge brokers, denialists and those who can neither believe nor refuse.

While the pro-climate change group are fighting the observable and existential effects of climate change, their cause is understood and can be proven both scientifically and qualitatively.

The group of denialists is aware of the status of climate change, but it pretends not to see or hear anything about climate change because through human activities, they have contributed more to climate change impacts, hence the need to protect and fortify their emission standpoints and ideologies.

Even within the pro-climate activists, there are pseudo climate believers who would want to continue polluting while at the same time bribing the whole world with greenwashing. The third group, which is saturated with climate confusion and ambivalence, is in resignation mode, waiting for fate to take its course as it lacks decision.

It lacks decision on whether climate change is caused by natural causes, human activities, or maybe it’s God angered by human immorality or the ancestors angry about death of culture.

Therefore, knowledge controversies are hatched, nursed and nurtured within the three discourse communities mentioned above. It is then the duty of transdisciplinary thinking and collaborations to level matters and bring sanity to this raging and problematic issue.

Under normal circumstances, knowledge controversies emerge when there is lack of consensus, conviction and belief. People need to be convinced, they need proof and be in positions to make sense of everything at stake.

This is when climate knowledge becomes experiential while being a mirror of prevailing environmental situations rather than being contradictory, unsatisfactory, unreliable and inconsistent.

With regards to the current status of climate change negotiations, where the truth is bypassed, suppressed and manipulated, knowledge controversy arises when the truth is implied rather than real, where knowledge is fundamentally centred on whose evidence, opinions, arguments and framings are influential.

This also includes those whose politics and science come to have authority within a contested domain.

For instance, this is where the case of Madagascar comes in, when it thought it had made a breakthrough in coming up with a COVID-19 drug, the World Health Organisation was the first to deny it.

Therefore, where could Madagascar have gone when a global body which was supposed to provide it with support was the first to deny it? It also remains not clear what would have happened if the COVID-19 breakthrough was made by a country from the global North.

One other issue that leads to knowledge controversies is when political decisions overshadow environmental decisions at conference of parties negotiations.

As a result, one wonders if humankind is serious about tackling climate change, when it appears not to understand the subject as highly science-driven, and not a political bargaining tool.

Replacement of disciplinary research agendas with transdisciplinary knowledge production in which expertise is distributed through diverse institutional disciplines and discourse communities is key.

While climate scientific research currently outweighs social science research in terms of magnitude and output, more social science research would help the social realm of climate change, where both humanity and worldviews are at the centre of climate change.

This is important in how these social attributes influence and shape the scientific domain and landscape.

The realities of climate change continue to thrive, foreground, as problematic and agenda setting, even in the midst of uncertainties.

This makes climate change a knowledge controversy of magnitude and unprecedented nature and global significance.

Within the realm of climate science itself, scientific contestations remain visible despite decades of scientific inquiry. This means that there is no clear-cut way on how best to interrogate climate change issues even within the scientific domain itself.

One thing for sure is that there is no research that is fault proof and with no knowledge and information gaps.

Therefore, it is within the interests of all domains to take advantage of current and emerging gaps in order to make transdisciplinary collaborations successful and overcome obstacles brought about by knowledge controversies.

It is also significant to note that while hard sciences and indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) remain somewhat parallel and uncomplementary on certain issues, transdisciplinary collaborations should strive to integrate the two pillars.

This is important because IKS is highly contextualised and individual specific while some of its tenets might have been overtaken by events and technological advancements.

Finally, knowledge generation is no longer a property of science and the knowledge it produces, although vital should no longer be taken as the alpha and omega of the truth domain.

This would make co-production of knowledge an essential instrument for a comprehensive and strategic approach that focuses on aspects of adaptation, mitigation, technology, public education and awareness, geared to reduce knowledge controversies.

  • Peter Makwanya is a climate change communicator. He writes in his personal capacity and can be contacted on: [email protected]