Making climate science human Professor Jonathan Rigg, University of Bristol

Event details

One Planet Week Lecture

Climate science has achieved much in detailing and substantiating the case for climate change. Yet there are some areas of the broader climate change debate that science is either poorly equipped to tackle, or unwilling to confront. In this lecture, Jonathan Rigg identifies five intersecting 'reductionisms', or what might be termed 'narrowings', in climate science. These arise from the marginalisation of the social sciences and humanities in climate research and action. Recognising the role of such approaches can encourage a different kind of climate science, one characterised by deep interdisciplinarity, public engagement that is more than token, and an appreciation of the distinct local signatures of global processes. 

About the speaker

Professor Jonathan Rigg

Jonathan Rigg is Chair of Human Geography in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol and was formerly Director of the Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore. With Lisa Reyes Mason he recently edited People and Climate Change: Vulnerability, Adaptation, and Social Justice (Oxford University Press, 2019) and they also co-authored “Five dimensions of climate change reductionism” in the journal Nature Climate Change, on which this talk draws.