On the Socioeconomic and Political Outcomes of Global Climate Change

Dear Colleagues,

The intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) expects that climate change will accelerate in this century, assuming business as usual climate change policy. By now, there have been several attempts to develop a global mitigation plan, but they have failed. It seems mitigation will remain an illusionary target in the short to medium run, if not forever. And so that “dreadful” word, adaptation, which we have all hoped will not take the driver seat, becomes for all practical purposes the only viable option to deal with climate change. It is within this larger picture that I invite the academic, practitioner, and the policy communities to address the question of this Special Issue.

Given the enormity of the expected effects of climate change on the environment worldwide -- including sea level rising and inundation; arable land degradation; changes in precipitation; changes in the patterns of the seasons; salinazation, drying, and dwindling fresh water resources; and more intense weather-related natural disasters such as windstorms, extreme precipitation, floods, droughts, heat waves, extreme temperatures, infestations, spread of diseases, and wet landslides – we must wonder what could be the sociopolitical outcomes within and across countries worldwide. The issue has received some attention in the literature, but it should be addressed more systematically if we are to learn to live with climate change.

Unlike the natural sciences, where we may conduct controlled experiments, in the macro social sciences the only meaningful laboratory is reality. In addressing the question of this issue, out best bet is to look for hints in the current and historical reality. If certain climate change-induced environmental effects have led to some sociopolitical outcomes, we may expect more of them in the future, as climate change accelerates.

I invite empirical contributions. The idea is to develop research questions that are linked to empirical data and show how they have linked to some or all of the environmental outcomes that are said to be associated with climate change.

The focus should be empirical, though the empirical method could take any desired form, including (but not limited to), detailed case studies, comparative case studies, qualitative analyses of data, statistical analyses of all types, simulations of analytical models calibrated to the real world, interviews of policymakers and stake holders, content analysis of media and other sources in the public domain, and surveys of various relevant stake holders.

Prof. Dr. Rafael Reuveny
Guest Editor