| 英文摘要: | To the Editor —
Castree et al.1 call for a new social contract that rethinks global environmental change research. Their “new intellectual climate” would encompass a deeper analysis of societies affecting and affected by global environmental change, as well as incorporating the often-overlooked focus of environmental humanities research on issues of values, rights, perceptions, trust and fear, among many other topics. These innovations hinge on a richer, more invigorated engagement of the environmental social sciences and humanities in global environmental change research, thereby yielding more diverse understandings and perspectives of Earth systems. Castree et al. make excellent points, but their recommendations are unlikely to trigger changes in the climate change community without fundamental restructuring of the IPCC.
Disciplinary bias and organizational structure of the IPCC Working Groups for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) tend to inherently divide (rather than couple) natural and human systems. They are also dominated by natural scientists, while the humanities are almost entirely absent, and the participating social scientists are predominantly economists. The three IPCC Working Groups (WGI = science/nature; WGII = science/society; and WGIII = economics/policy) do not promote integrative, transdisciplinary approaches in line with more than a decade of research on coupled natural–human systems or social–ecological systems2, 3. Instead, the structure separates nature from culture and privileges the natural sciences by making WGI solely about the physical science basis, authored predominantly by natural scientists. This arrangement will not yield the new intellectual climate Castree et al. promote. It also ignores previous pleas, including those in this journal4, that call for more humanities in global environmental change research, that critique the IPCC's physical science and economics bias in the Third Assessment Report5, and that highlight AR5's neglect of indigenous knowledge6.
Our analysis of the Coordinating Lead Authors (CLAs) of the IPCC's AR5 exposes this continued bias towards natural scientists and economists, as well as the persistent absence of humanities research. As expected, CLAs for WGI consist almost entirely of natural scientists. Focused on human impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptation, WGII is dominated by natural sciences, with 39 natural scientists (including 5 engineers working on physical environments), 25 social scientists, and zero humanities researchers as CLAs, according to our analysis. To put this in perspective for WGII on human systems, imagine if 61% of WGI CLAs on the scientific basis were from environmental social sciences and humanities disciplines. WGIII on climate change mitigation has stronger social sciences representation among CLAs, with 12 fitting broadly into natural sciences, 23 in social sciences, and zero in humanities. Yet, 18 of the 23 social scientists are economists, demonstrating the IPCC's narrow conception of social sciences. Overall, of the 99 CLAs in WGII and WGIII, there are none detected from the humanities. At a lower level of authorship, the WGIII AR5 methods chapter (Chapter 3) — which outlines the principles, theories, and values underlying WGIII — does have one humanist (philosopher) as a lead author. This philosopher is among 16 CLAs, lead authors, and review editors, 13 of whom are economists.
The IPCC might yield broader impacts if it included environmental social sciences and humanities researchers from a much wider diversity of fields and approaches, as Castree et al. explain. Philosophers such as Dale Jamieson7, who analyses humans' cognitive capacity to grapple with global environmental change ethics and causation in climate change, and musicologists such as John Luther Adams8, who introduces weather through an ecology of sounds and emotions, can effectively uncover humanity's experiences with climate change and thus help adaptation and mitigation. But the IPCC's current disciplinary bias and organizational disjuncture is unlikely to change because IPCC authorship is by invitation only, from a group of natural scientists and economists who may not embrace the work of most environmental social sciences and humanities fields and who lack an understanding of which disciplines and individuals' credentials are valuable to climate change research. Such a transformation in the IPCC leadership and structure — to include environmental social sciences and humanities researchers on equal footing with natural scientists and economists — would be a step towards implementing the goals of Castree et al. It would also provide a useful starting point for deciding how to communicate climate change research to a diversity of human populations living in profoundly different cultures, political–economic systems, and communities. |