12 November 2007

Duke-Triglav Environment and Health Conference Remarks
Jeffrey Plank, University of Virginia
 

Introductory Remarks for Panel Discussion

Ruth Bell’s experiences as a practitioner in global climate change policy, Chunling Lu’s case study about China, and all the subsequent seminar discussion make a compelling argument that different countries will require different motivations for reducing carbon emissions and retarding the rate of global climate change—or simply preserving environmental resources.

Not all countries have in place the financial systems or regulatory institutions that support market-based incentives.  So an approach to climate change policy that is informed by the assumption of cultural diversity holds the promise of more equitable, more successful, more sustainable agreements.

More than any other contemporary social institution, universities have the resources for marshaling the knowledge for this alternative approach.  In academic institutions we find expertise in a wide range of disciplines and professions—anthropology, history, languages and literatures, ecology and geography, economics, philosophy, biomedical science, and laws, medicine and public health, and business administration.

But the very values that define our academic communities sometimes impede our capacity to inform the policy community.  We value intellectual diversity and debate over consensus; we typically credential and reward scholars by their contributions to single disciplines; as scientists we carefully acknowledge the limits and conditions on our data, once hypotheses are advanced, they are meant to be challenged; and we value rigor over speed.

The challenge for climate change policy, as Ruth presents it, is a rare opportunity for academic institutions. We have much to contribute.  Doing so will require interdisciplinary research that integrates expertise from fields that are widely distributed in our academic communities.  With that distribution comes specialized languages: as scholars we may use the same terms, but they may mean differently in our different disciplines.  Even the principle terms that we use to define this conference—development, environment, and health—have different meanings in different cultures.  And, when we talk about culture and the environment, what spatial scale do we have in mind?  Is it a political or a natural unit or scale?  Some anthropologists and environmental scientists claim that human and natural systems resonate most strongly at the regional ecosystem scale. For reasons of method, for reasons of equity and effectiveness, we must work collaboratively with colleagues across disciplinary and cultural boundaries and collectively develop research products.  Here is a process with many hands, many voices, and one that is difficult to compress in time.  But the outcomes must be clear and responsive.

How do we deliver this research to the international policy community?  What form does the information take, what form does the communication of information take?  To put the matter as bluntly as I know how: what is the point of investigating the philosophical and cultural issues associated with sustainability if not to improve climate change policy?  What are the deadlines for us?  Who do we have to persuade?  What exactly do we need to deliver?

These remarks are meant to applaud and endorse the Triglev Conference, to emphasize the value of Ruth’s perspective, and to recommend some attention to the policy endgame.

By comparison to the pre-workshop materials, perhaps I’ve harped here on climate change at the expense of indigenous knowledge.  That’s because human-induced climate variation will change indigenous practices by subverting their ecological foundations.  Climate variation in monsoonal Asia, for example, has the potential to dramatically affect food security and consequently health in China. What well-developed practices does China have for protecting against climate induced production failure?  What is the historical record?  A historical understanding of human/environment shifts such as these in China and in other regions that will experience early and significant climate variation will be critical to the prediction of possible future shifts and the development of appropriate policy for connecting environment and health.

To summarize:

We must understand cultures—indigenous knowledge and practice—if we are to fashion effective global climate change policy.

Policy goals can help focus academic treatment of complex cultural issues.

Indigenous knowledge and practice is grounded in particular ecosystems.

Because human-induced climate variation is causing interrelated environmental/cultural shifts, history—that is, explanations of these changes—and historiography—that is, the conceptual bases for these explanations—thus become fundamental disciplines within the humanities and sciences implicated in academic contributions to climate policy.

Response to Rich Burton’s Saturday morning question about an especially valuable moment in the Duke Conference

For me, Anthony So’s comment, made yesterday, almost in passing, that policy presumes a theory of change was especially valuable because it provides the link between the humanities, especially history and historiography, and policy.  Our discussion this morning about motivations for behavior change has been wide-ranging and uneven.  With each anecdote we recognize that our understanding of the behavior of individuals, institutions, and nations has gaps, and that the theories of change we presume need further scrutiny.

As Charles Courtney implied in his remarks, policy is too important to be left to policy makers.  Those in the academy who study human behavior—in the arts and humanities—have some responsibility to engage with the policy community about the history and theory of social change.  As Charles implies, the point is not simply that the academy give policy makers what they need, but that the academy engage the policy community on fundamental assumptions and provide evidence or case histories about the relation of environmental and cultural change.  We can initiate this engagement by reaching out to policy communities at every scale, from the very local to the global, and creating forums appropriate for genuine exchange.  As each of the Triglev commentators have demonstrated, there are rich traditions in the humanities and substantial experience in international development policy for describing and measuring non-economic motivations and benefits that may be useful for environmental policy as well.