Through my on-site engagement with climate communities across several countries in both the Global North and Global South, one observation becomes difficult for me to ignore as a social science researcher and climate activist.
In virtually every setting, there is a shared language of โclimate change,โ โadaptation,โ and โmitigation.โ On the surface, it appears as though actors are aligned around a common problem and a common set of solutions. Yet, beneath this apparent convergence lies a far more complex reality.
What becomes evident through closer interaction is that actors are not, in fact, speaking from the same interpretive ground.
Within the same room, Iโve encountered fundamentally different ways of knowing and framing climate change:
scientists grounding their arguments in empirical evidence and probabilistic reasoning, policymakers navigating feasibility and negotiation, religious communities interpreting climate through spiritual and cosmological lenses, and civic actors mobilizing narratives of justice and human rights.
Through my own volunteering with climate organizations, Iโve also seen how investment logics and market forces shape how climate action is pursued.
All these are not simply different โperspectivesโ on the same issue; they are distinct interpretive systems, each with its own internal logic, authority structures, and criteria for what counts as truth.
And yet, despite these differences, these actors often converge discursively around the language of โclimate actionโ and โclimate solutions.โ This convergence can create the impression of coherence, but it is, in many cases, a fragile alignment rather than a shared understanding.
What is being coordinated is not a unified meaning of climate change, but a set of overlapping, and sometimes incommensurable, interpretations that are temporarily brought into alignment for the purposes of action.
This is precisely where the problem emerges. If climate change is interpreted differently across these systems: scientifically, morally, politically, economically, and spiritually, then the pathway to โsolutionsโ cannot be reduced to the advancement of scientific knowledge alone.
The challenge is not only scientific but deeply social. It concerns how meaning travels across systems and how coordination becomes possible in the absence of consensus.
It is in this sense that climate change must be understood not only as an environmental crisis, but as a problem of communication within plural social systems. What is at stake is not simply the dissemination of knowledge, but the conditions under which different systems, each with its own logic, can coordinate actions without collapsing their differences.
From my experiences across the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, this is what I refer to as the Social Science of Climate Change.
As I approach my dissertation proposal defense, I look forward to developing this conversation further.
#ClimateCommunication #PhDResearch