Anthropogenic climate change is no longer a scientific prediction but an unfolding, lived experience that is increasingly affecting people and the more-than-human world. As climate change mitigation has so far failed to stay within “safe” amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation to changing environmental conditions are becoming more urgent. In agriculture, climate change introduces further uncertainties in food security in addition to a wide range of other challenges.
With a focus on agriculture in the People’s Republic of China, this project seeks to understand ways in which climate change adaptation is addressed in a non-democratic political system and how socio-ecological transformations are discussed amongst domestic experts. The research focuses on rural meteorological services (incl. weather modification) and crop seeds and asks how do these fields interact with the questions raised by climate change? How does the issue of climate change enter and integrate into long-standing debates around progress and reform amongst experts and decision-makers?
A farmer of the Hani minority near his village of Puduo, Yuanyang county, Yunnan, China. Source: Takeaway / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 / GFDL.
The project’s in-depth reading of party-state documents and domestic scientific publications allows a nuanced analysis of debates, hierarchies, and practical sensemaking at the intersection of climate change and agriculture, environmental change and decision-making. The findings will contribute to research interested in reflexivity in environmental decision-making and coping with climate change uncertainties at the interface of science and policy.