Climate Ethics
We address ethical and social questions about climate change at the interface of science, policy, and technology. Areas of expertise include:
- Just Transitions
- Climate adaptation
- Ethics and green technologies
- New European Bauhaus
- Climate change and Democracy
- Climate change and Indigenous Peoples
- Climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa
Current projects
Inserting Ethics into Adaptation and Resilience Policy
The project is a collaboration with the University of Cape Town and with Cape Town city’s climate adaptation department to look at how issues of ethics and justice can be incorporated into responses to climate-related risks and city policymaking more generally. Cape Town has already come perilously close to a city-wide drought and regularly suffers from flooding: the project seeks to ensure that the most vulnerable communities such as informal settlements are incorporated in an ethical manner into city-level protection plans. By doing so, it aims to model a pathway to inserting ethics into adaptation and resilience policy that can be utilised in other settings.
Previous projects
The Indigenous Peoples Observatories Network: Monitoring the interaction of pandemics, climate risks, and food systems
Indigenous Peoples are believed to be at particularly high risk from COVID, exacerbated by climate risks and socio-economic stresses. There is emerging evidence that national responses to the pandemic are compounding the vulnerability of Indigenous Peoples, exacerbated by little—if any—understanding on the unique pathways through which COVID will affect them. This project addresses this knowledge and policy gap by documenting, monitoring, and examining how COVID is interacting with multiple stresses to affect the food systems of Indigenous Peoples globally, and by examining issues of ethics and justice associated with policy responses. The project works with 20 Indigenous peoples in 13 countries.
Technological Risks in Development
Food insecurity poses a major risk to human lives and well-being in the Global South, especially in the face of climate change. In this project, we investigate how technologies that have been introduced as solutions to food insecurity have contributed to the creation of new risks, and ask how such technologies should might be governed ethically to reduce these risks. We focus on the loss of biodiversity as a result of the introduction of GMO crops, and the rise of antimicrobial resistance as a result of the overuse of antibiotics to combat communicable diseases in crops and livestock.
New Approaches to Equitable Resilience
A variety of behavioural and structural factors impact individuals’ ability to think and act in resilient ways. Based on field research in Kenya, the first aim of this project is to shed new light on key psychological factors that drive resilience, and determine whether this information can facilitate predictive modelling of resilient behaviour. The second aim of the project is to understand the ethical implications of individual differences in resilient behaviour. For example, are there reasons to direct particular attention and resources to those who, by virtue of psychological characteristics, do not easily adopt resilient behaviours?
Climate Change and Urban Violence
The two challenges of urban violence and of climate change adaptation for urban development in the Global South have been of increasing concern to the humanitarian, security, and development communities. But these two challenges have so far been treated in parallel, without a strong analytic basis for understanding the interlinkages between the two, and implications for policy interventions in both fields. The aim of the project is to develop new understanding about the interactions between urban violence and climate change risks in urban areas of the Global South. Climate and development policy in areas of urban violence raises a number of difficult ethical questions about legitimacy and authority, and about the ethics of working with ‘gangs’, which are at the core of the project.
Climate Change and Urban Violence WebsiteLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window
Improving Earth Systems Governance through Purpose Ecosystems
Biodiversity is being lost at mass-extinction rates, agricultural systems are under strain and pollution of the air and sea has become an increasingly pressing threat to human health. Coupled with climate change, rising inequality and entrenched poverty, these interconnected sustainability issues are triggering social instability and conflict. Yet incremental approaches to pursuing sustainability are insufficient for delivering change at the speed and scale necessary. The aim of this project was to investigate the role and agency of purpose ecosystems in contributing to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Earth System Governance. The project brought together researchers in Earth System Governance, equity, purpose ecosystems, sustainability and climate change. It developed a long term collaborative hub for future research and engagement based at the University of Warwick and the University of Monash.
Why We Disagree about Resilience
The concept of resilience is increasingly used in urban planning and disaster risk reduction. While resilience may appear consensual to some, disagreements exist regarding what urban resilience should look like. Some approaches to resilience focus on infrastructure and materials, whereas other approaches are more inclusive of social and environmental concerns. WhyDAR identified different ways in which urban resilience is understood while investigating the role of science, technology, ethics and expertise in the making of resilience strategies in the Global South. It examined key ethical questions arising from disagreement about conceptions to resilience, and asked what an equitable approach to resilience would look like in the face of this disagreement. (Warwick lead Prof. Keith Hyams).
WhyDAR WebsiteLink opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window
Remedying Injustice in Indigenous Climate Adaptation Planning
Indigenous communities are especially vulnerable to risks associated with climate change, yet their voices are often marginalised in climate adaptation planning. This project investigated ethics and equity aspects of the relationship between indigenous communities, climate change, and adaptation policies, bringing together both philosophical and social scientific research. It asked how adaptation policies that integrate indigenous voices into climate adaptation planning can work to reduce the unequal and inequitable distribution of climate impacts on indigenous populations. The project worked closely with collaborators at Makerere University and the Indigenous Health Adaptation to Climate Change research network, and included fieldwork with Batwa Indigenous communities in South West Uganda. (Warwick lead Prof. Keith Hyams)..
Read our policy report 'Remedying Injustice in Indigenous Climate Adaptation Planning'Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window.
Tackling Climate-related Health Risks in Urban Slums: an Interdisciplinary Analysis of the Challenge of Integrating Local and Scientific Knowledges
Many urban populations in the Global South live in slums with poor access to sanitation and clean drinking water. Changes to the local and global climate threaten to exacerbate these health risks; flooding increases exposure to infectious diseases, while droughts threaten food supplies. To help these challenges, this project developed a new framework for integrating different knowledges in the context of climate-related health risks in slums. We combined philosophical analysis of the concept of expertise, empirical research in Zambia on traditional ecological knowledge, and medical knowledge of urban slum health.