From Climate Change to Social Change: Perspectives on Science-policy Interactions

Providing new insights into climate science as a system as well as into climate-policy interactions, this account is concerned withthe challenges that climate change poses to the production and organization of scientific knowledge. Based on an international conference organized by Knowledge for Climatea Dutch national research program on climate change and adaptation strategiesthis account analyzes the issues from various angles, including epistemology, science-policy interface studies, political science, system analysis, science and technology, sociology, and knowledge production. Offering several perspectives on the implications of climate change and presenting a number of options for renewal of science-policy interrelations, this discussion argues for the development of regional, national, and international strategies for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Climate change, from many perspectives and for many reasons, is a complex issue: scientifically, politically, and in terms of global justice. As such, climate change might be the global societal and political challenge of the 21st century. Dealing with it, either via mitigation or via adaptation, will ask for enormous societal efforts. This book addresses only one of the questions related to this complex challenge: the social efforts to deal with climate change need to be scientifically sound. Yet scientists are uncertain in some respects, and society tends to distrust science to some extent. Therefore, this book's central question is: what kind of science-society and science-policy relations do we need in order to translate climate change into social change? Next to the uncertainty issue, the book discusses different approaches in the science-policy interface, such as transdisciplinarity, boundary work, transition processes, social learning, climate science policy roles, and science system analysis.

About the Author :
PeterDriessen is a professor of environmental studies at Utrecht University. Pieter Leroyis a professor of political sciences of the environment at Radboud University Nijmegen. Wim van Vierssen is a professor of science system assessment of water-related Research at Delft University of Technology."

Review :
"An immensely timely book. In a situation where our scientific understanding of climate change and its impacts becomes clearer and more solid, we urgently need to find ways to turn this knowledge into societal action. This gap between a richness of nevertheless uncertain scientific knowledge and a lacking understanding of processes of societal change is particularly intriguing in the case of climate change. The contributions to this volume profoundly reflect on this challenge and highlight steps to overcome it." Bernd Siebenhuener, professor, ecological economics, Carl von Osseitzky University" "An immensely timely book. In a situation where our scientific understanding of climate change and its impacts becomes clearer and more solid, we urgently need to find ways to turn this knowledge into societal action. This gap between a richness of nevertheless uncertain scientific knowledge and a lacking understanding of processes of societal change is particularly intriguing in the case of climate change. The contributions to this volume profoundly reflect on this challenge and highlight steps to overcome it." --Bernd Siebenhuener, professor, ecological economics, Carl von Osseitzky University