Transformation towards Climate Just Societies

The intended effort to shape action on climate change mitigation and adaptation, to solve societal problems and create societal opportunities, is a central aspect of climate change governance. The research line studies the formal and informal rules, rule-making systems, actor-networks and overall organizational models purposefully driving or preventing change and steering society towards mitigating and adapting to climate change, in the normative framework of a socio-ecological transformation and at multiple levels. It considers who is responsible or to be hold accountable as well as perspectives of how transformation should be 'governed’ (politics and power dynamics). It aims to contribute to an increased understanding of what transformative climate governance looks like, how it can be strengthened within existing governance regimes or newly developing ones. We are also interested in lock-in effects related to values, worldviews, knowledge as well as persisting narratives and discourse coalitions at different levels and in different climate governance settings. This research line works closely with the research line Risk Governance.

Contacts: Sonja Gantioler & Mariachiara Alberton

This research line examines transformative initiatives in the context of current climate and environmental crises. It focuses on transformative practices such as social and radical innovations, grassroots initiatives, citizen protests, social experiments and communities of practice and investigates how they address and tackle climate change and other environmental problems at the regional/local level. We also analyze how the transformation processes initiated in these practices are determined by social norms, power relations, knowledge regimes, socio-cultural dispositions, imaginaries, or technical and material infrastructures. In doing so, we draw on a variety of methods, ranging from classical social science approaches (e.g., qualitative interviews, participant observation) to more novel participatory approaches (e.g., living labs, real word experiment, real world labs) that involve working with local actors and co-developing experimental yet practical approaches supporting a social-ecological transformation in the region.

Contacts: Elisa Ravazzoli & Christoph Kircher

This research line tackles climate justice from the perspective of vulnerable groups in a socio-legal perspective. Climate justice generally refers to a concept, and a movement, that points at the different degrees of climate change adverse impacts at social, economic, health, and other levels on underprivileged sectors of the society. Therefore, it also aims to guarantee a just access to mitigation and adaptation measures, participatory measures to ensure people that are affected may have a say, mutual learning and knowledge exchange, and a people-centered approach to lead to socio-economic transformation. In particular, this research line focuses on those sectors of the society that are either marginalized or have less access to power and resources than others, such as minorities and indigenous peoples and, among them, to those who may be find themselves at the intersection of race, ethnicity and gender (e.g., migrants, women, LGBTIAQ+ individuals) and/or other social drivers, e.g. age, disability, gender-based violence. At the same, it also takes into consideration the role of agency and empowerment, by looking at social movements run by minority and indigenous women, youth and others.

Contacts: Alexandra Tomaselli