As with some earlier podcasts, this stimulating conversation with Dr. Elinor Ostrom is also in two parts. Ostrom, the Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, Indiana University, and Co-Director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, brings a broad, system-based perspective to a discussion of responding to climate change. Having an appropriate, workable governance framework for such a response would certainly affect what was communicated about climate change.
The first part of the discussion moves from a review of systems thinking to focus on social-ecological systems and their resilience, to the challenge of managing these systems so they can be resilient: How will they best cope with change? In the second part of the conversation, Ostrom elaborates on the framework she’s been developing, which she describes as “a step toward building a strong interdisciplinary science of complex, multilevel systems that will enable future diagnosticians to match governance arrangements to specific problems embedded in a social–ecological context.” In wide-ranging observations, she also discusses how people self-organize successfully; the role of trust and reciprocity; and the preservation of ecological knowledge.
(Oct. 12, 2009 update: Dr. Ostrom is one of two 2009 winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics, and the first woman to receive the economics prize.)
She refers at points to an article (and diagrams in it), which is also linked below.
Episode 9, part one. Elinor Ostrom
Episode 9, part two. Elinor Ostrom
“A Diagnostic Approach for Going Beyond Panaceas”
Dr. Ostrom’s vita with links to other online articles
The social dimensions of climate change and vulnerability are discussed by Dr. Jesse Ribot, who leads a new initiative in the Social Dimensions of Environmental Policy at University of Illinois’ School of Earth, Society and Environment. Dr. Ribot conducts research on, among other issues, decentralization and democratic local government and household vulnerability in the face of climate and environmental change, both of which he discusses in this podcast.
Dr. Maibach is a professor in the Department of Communication at George Mason University and also the director of the Center of Excellence in Climate Change Communication Research. Among topics of our conversation are a communication model which he has been developing, the results of a recent and very large climate survey he conducted, and Americans’ perceptions of the threat from global warming.