chasing the long tail of climate change – part 2
UPDATE. Here is the new version presented as a joint presentation / panel.
CHASING THE LONG TAIL OF CLIMATE CHANGE – IAMCR PROPOSAL
The paper/presentation “Chasing the Long Tail of Climate Change” is a small part of a wider ongoing research project and investigation into the current debates on climate change. Presented as a working paper and a theoretical intervention, it compares and contrasts the research of the two authors with their participation in the COP15 climate change conference as members of the official NGO delegation. Relying both on the participant’s close proximity as well as the distance of critical reflection, the paper provides a critical analysis of the recent event / media spectacle of COP15 – an event that many commentators have labelled as a “spectacular failure”.
More specifically, by juxtaposing our personal experience of participation at the COP15 with our research projects in India and Ethiopia, the paper will argue that, because of the hyper-mediated nature of the contemporary rhetoric on climate change, current frameworks of analysis are no longer capable of addressing the “antagonism” of climate change. Drawing theoretically on eclectic sources from contemporary assemblage theory, object-oriented philosophy and speculative realism, the paper therefore calls for a new more experimental approach and method that would look in detail at the complex assemblages, “objects” and relationships that underlie the contemporary discourse on climate change both in the North and the South. The existing closures and myths around environmental debates, we will argue, need to be pried open in order to allow space for new ways of imagining the pressing problem.
The paper relies on the ongoing research of its two authors. In specific:
Matti Pohjonen is currently a Fellow in Digital Culture at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), at the University of London. He has been working for the past six months on a pilot project in Ethiopia combines two unusual bedfellows: mobile phones and climate change. The aim of the project is to develop a mobile-based prototype that would encourage carbon sequestration by channeling carbon offset funds via the mobile phone to hundreds of thousands of farmers in Ethiopia planting trees on their small farms. His work therefore aims at investigate some of the methodological and theoretical challenges that such practice-based research raises when we try to leapfrog the digital divide by the use of mobile technology in especially rural part of Africa and Asia and by combining technology, forest ecology and and science in new ways.
Somnath Batabyal is a Research Fellow at the University of Heidelberg and works on environmental activism. His research particularly examines transnational networks and the role of media in changing the scope and understanding of environmental politics. His work in this presentation will seek to highlight through case studies the complex assemblages of actors, both in the Global North and the South, who control the discourse of environmental politics and in effect, limit the possibilities of producing real “antagonisms”.
So despite how it may sometimes seem, I am actually involved in research quite actively, yes. Knowledge works in mysterious ways. So just to give you Carouselians an idea of what is going on, here is a recent conference proposal I will submit for the IAMCR conference in Braga, Portugal this summer (together with a friend of mine who we are kind of doing something similar if I can commit to one topic for more than a week). The abstract below as of today:
CHASING THE LONG TAIL OF CLIMATE CHANGE
For the past 6 months, I have been working in rural Ethiopia developing a pilot project that combines two unusual bedfellows: mobiles phones and climate change. The prototype that we have been testing together with technologists, forestry experts and climate change scientists aims to facilitate the channeling of carbon sequestration funds between the North and the South: from the carbon offset markets to the hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers in Ethiopia in support of their ongoing reforestation efforts. A simple concept: more carbon dioxide that gets tied to the biomass of growing trees over time; the more money produced for the farmers who plant trees. And all of this mediated via the mobile phone from data gathering to calculating biomass patterns and carbon sequestration to accounting and payment.
The paper I propose has therefore two distinct aims. On the one hand, it will present some of the key problems that get raised when we research mobiles phones in the poorest parts of Africa. It will look specifically at the methodological challenges such practice-based research raises when we try to leapfrog the digital divide through the use of mobile technology. Yet, on the other hand, the paper will also extrapolate on some of the more radical theoretical implications such work on climate change and technology raises. Comparing my research in Ethiopia with my experience on taking part in the COP15 climate change conference/spectacle in Copenhagen, the paper will argue that because of the hyper-mediated nature of contemporary rhetoric on climate change, current frameworks of analysis are in fact no longer capable of coping with the real “antagonism” of climate change. Presented as a working paper, the paper therefore explores possible alternative theoretical frameworks that might help us better understand this pressing problem. In specific, drawing on lessons from contemporary assemblage theory, object-oriented philosophy and speculative realism, the paper proposes a new experimental approach based on the detailed analysis of the complex assemblages, relationships and objects underlying the contemporary climate change rhetoric.
Well, my ethic does unfortunately dictate me to go to conferences only in place I would go for vacation anyway so it does help that the conference is in Portugal and not in Sheffield or in West London. This does remind me, however, that I have a few hundred pictures I still need to work through from COP15 that I want to put up here eventually. Comments?
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