ANT3CAE Climate Change Issue - Essay Help

• Summary

Climate change has been chosen as the environmental issue which is considered to create major threats for affecting stability, wellbeing, livelihood, physical environment and security of humans all across the globe. The anthropological research on climate change considers a differentiated stance and states that issue of climate change can be well addressed by considering a clumsy solution that combines social and cultural change with respect to resolution of climate change issue. In the underlying research proposal, climate change will not be witnessed as the part of earth’s natural processes, rather an anthropogenic aspect of climate change will be considered, which considers climate change to be caused by human activities. The research proposal has provided detailed background information on the issue, highlighting that climate change is embedded in social institutions and cultural habits of individuals contribute to the escalation of issue at large. Likewise, importance of ethnographic case study has also been considered with respect to climate change. Followed by this, the aim of research is signified and outline of research method is provided. The method’s detail is combined with views of chosen ethnographic case study. Finally, significance of research study for both theory and practice is detailed. 

• Background

Climate change has been considered as years’ old phenomenon which has its inception in industrial revolution, which could be linked with substantial reliance on economic growth and increasing use of fossil fuels. The notion of primarily natural concept of climate change has played an enormous role in defining the bio-cultural development of human activities (Adger, Lorenzoni & O'Brien, 2009). It has been noted that climate change has contributed in creation of different roles and has also led to collapse of civilizations, which has drawn attention of anthropologists towards this issue (Batterbury, 2008).  Anthropologists consider climate change as a pressing issue and they consider its implications on human development. Anthropological studies consider climate change as a human problem, rather than a natural problem. The involvement of culture and cultural choices in escalation of climate change has been considered as major concern of anthropologists (Crate & Nuttall, 2016). These views are being supported by large body of research which states that human activities intervene with natural patterns of the ecosystem, and release of hazardous gases into environment leads to cause climate change (Orlove, Crane & Roncoli, 2016). Some instances of human activities which cause climate change are; burning of fossil fuels, release of CO2, usage of land, deforestation, animal husbandry and numerous other activities of routine human lives. Therefore, the main focus is on the notion that climate change is caused by humans rather than natural mechanism of ecosystem and climate change can be better studied from the lens of anthropology, which combines cultural perspectives with climate change issue (Crate, 2011). 

The foundation of anthropological aspect of climate change dates back to 1990s, and since then many developments have been made in this area of research. It has been noted by Adger et al. (2013) that most of the research focus on eco-social perspective with the purpose of investigating association of humans, culture and environment. This perspective is often combined with political ecology theory, which focuses on studying the association of capitalist production and environmental sustainability (Crate & Nuttall, 2016). It has been noted that climate change effects are unequally distributed and there is huge inconsistency between mitigation approaches of climate change and actual practices, which are escalating the issue further (Carothers et al., 2014). Additionally, the anthropological studies provide that development of knowledge and construction of social capital helps in driving most viable solution for addressing the issue of climate change (Orlove, Crane & Roncoli, 2016). It has been further noted by Kelman & West (2009) that anthropologists are focusing on issue of climate change at two differentiated levels. Firstly, the focus is maintained on getting involved with the environmental policies and movement, such that sustainability can be supported at mass level. Secondly, by offering participation in development of environmental policies (Marino & Schweitzer, 2009).