How do the general public experience climate change narratives? In recent studies, MAE and AE-Bergen Knowledge Hub Knowledge Hub steering group member Kjersti Fløttum sees that “the general public is more preoccupied by the tone that characterises climate narratives. They criticize the overwhelming negativity and gloom-and-doom perspectives and request a more positive approach”, our steering group member say. Read the complete interview made by the Academia Europaea Cardiff Hub.

 

About Kjersti Fløttum

Kjersti Fløttum MAE is a Professor Emerita of French Linguistics at the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen. She has had an extensive academic career, serving as Vice-Rector for International Relations from 2005 to 2009 and as a member of the University Board from 2013 to 2021. From 2020 to 2023, she was the Chair of the Board of the Holberg Prize. Professor Fløttum has published extensively in international journals and is (co-)author/editor of several books.

Professor Fløttum’s research interests encompass text and genre theory, narrative structure, semantics, pragmatics, linguistic polyphony, and discourse analysis. Since 2012, she has led the interdisciplinary research group LINGCLIM, which investigates the role of language in climate change discourse. From 2020 to 2023, she led the CLIMLIFE project, which explores motivations for lifestyle changes in the context of climate change, funded by the Research Council of Norway.

In recognition of her efforts in promoting bilateral relations between France and Norway, she was honoured with the French Ordre national du Mérite in 2023.

Read the interview

Your work emphasises the importance of language in shaping climate change discourse. How do you believe narrative structures influence public perception and policymaking on climate change?

“Stories’ are made up of narratives, which have different components, of which complication and reaction are the most important. The influence narratives may have is dependent on the focus given to the complication element (climate change itself and its causes) and/or to the reaction component (possible solutions to curb the consequences of climate change). A narrative in which the reaction component is prominent may have a motivating effect, by providing people with suggestions for measures that could be taken at individual, community or societal levels.Conversely, a complication-focused narrative may induce a sense of despondency and fatalism. In addition, narratives may contain different characters (explicitly or implicitly), such as hero, victim and villain, that may display different distributions of responsibility.”

The LINGCLIM project has explored the role of language in climate discourse since 2012. What are the most significant findings that have emerged from this research?

“We have shown that there is a great variety of climate change narratives, caused by the immensity and complexity of the issue and the interests involved. Climate change refers to a process which manifests itself at scales far beyond those of daily experience, and which can only be understood through knowledge from a broad range of scientific disciplines. If we add to this complexity the fact that climate change is a phenomenon that goes well beyond the geophysical domain, to encompass the social, political, ethical, cultural and communicational, then any discourse on climate change is a simplification.We have also found, through the approach of linguistic polyphony, that climate narratives are particularly multi-voiced, with both explicit and implicit voices. With different voices come different values and interests. It has been particularly interesting to reveal how hidden voices can adopt, refute or concede other narrative voices within the same text.”

How do you ensure communication about climate change is both scientifically accurate and accessible to a general audience?

“As linguistics researchers, we cannot ensure scientific accuracy, but our cross-disciplinary approach of including climate researchers helps to avoid inaccuracy. With regards to accessibility to the general public, we have to enter into a dialogue with different segments of the population. For example, in a study where we included students from upper-secondary school, they told us that they found the relation between global and local changes particularly difficult.However, what we see in our most recent studies is that the general public is more preoccupied by the tone that characterises climate narratives. They criticise the overwhelming negativity and gloom-and-doom perspectives and request a more positive approach, pointing at possible solutions and where they can contribute.”

What do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities for the next generation of researchers in climate linguistics?

“It will be important to focus on the importance of individual action and individual voices. There is increasing interest in who should act, as well as in what should be done to avoid or mitigate the most serious consequences. Clearly, international and national agents are needed to develop policies and implement changes, but individuals are also expected to contribute, especially through lifestyle change. A challenge will be to change the excuse of , “What I do will not have any effect” into an understanding that, “You matter more than you think”.We have seen a trend, both in psychological studies and public debates, that preferences are oriented towards more positive language, with an objection to negative and alarming language, which may demotivate people from engaging in climate action. This tendency should encourage communicators to strike a balance between alarming and encouraging people, when the aim is to motivate them towards climate action.As the consequences of climate change manifest globally, it’s also important to study its linguistic representations in relation to phenomena such as technological innovation, energy policies, armed conflicts, hunger, migration, as well as the destruction of nature and wildlife habitats.”

 

For the University of Bergen (UiB) and for the Academia Europaea Bergen Hub, the seminar and ERC board meeting in Bergen on 26th-27th June marked both the end of the first half of 2024 and the beginning of summer. It also concluded a very active season for the AE Bergen Hub.

Our Academic Director Eystein Jansen, who is also the Vice-President for Physical Sciences and Engineering at the ERC, played a key role in bringing the ERC Board to our hometown of Bergen at the close of the spring semester.

“Frontier research is key to securing Europe’s role in the world, in terms of providing more innovations in society, solving global challenges and securing democratic processes. It has been said that that the creation of the ERC is the best European innovation of recent times, and I think I subscribe to that view.” Eystein Jansen said in his welcome speech at the meeting.

Science diplomacy during crises

In 2024, Academia Europaea Bergen has focused extensively on mapping the conditions for scientific cooperation and science diplomacy during geopolitical crises, with a special focus on Arctic relations. Our report The Future of Science Diplomacy in the Arctic, published in 2023, has led to the Rethinking Arctic collaboration project, funded by a 400 000 NOK grant from UArctic. The project team includes renowned scientists from Europe, Canada and the USA.

The Rethinking Arctic Collaboration project was presented at the Arctic Circle Berlin Forum, on 8^th May providing an opportunity for team members to meet in person. The project’s aim is to engage with stakeholders and produce a comprehensive report. Outreach is important, and our proposal for an event at the 2024 Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavík, Iceland, from 17th-19th October, was recently accepted amidst strong competition.

Academia Europaea Bergen is committed to expanding our work in Science Diplomacy and Arctic Relations. We have submitted a pre-application for a grant from Nordforsk to fund a 3-4 year project titled Arctic knowledge and knowledge systems in flux – threats and coping strategies for a sustainable Arctic. If awarded, this project will be a truly Nordic effort, with partners from Norway, Finland and Sweden, as well as Trans-Atlantic connections including experts from Canada and the US.

In addition to these major projects, spring 2024 saw Academia Europaea Bergen continue to co-organise a well-established meeting series (mainly held in Norwegian) together with the Bergen offices of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences (NTVA Bergen) and The Norwegian Society of Graduate Technical and Scientific Professionals (Tekna Bergen). Other collaborations included the Horizon Lectures series at UiB and the Arctic Frontiers Conference.

With this summary of our activities at Academia Europaea Bergen, we wish all Members, collaborators and friends a nice summer!

 

Working group members, as well as external keynotes and commentators, offered new perspectives to the “Rethinking Arctic Collaboration”-project from Academia Europaea Bergen, when the project was presented at a session at Arctic Circle Berlin, May 8^th. The panel discussion also added new context.

The first keynote of the session was from Melody Brown Burkins, Director of the Institute of Arctic Studies at the John Sloan Dickey Center, Dartmouth.

– What you’ll hear today during our session is that, even in our group, we are not all defining science diplomacy and cooperation challenges in the same way, but we all want to see a future with shared Arctic science diplomacy goals. We want to see if we can learn what paths to future Arctic science cooperation will work. And we want to see Arctic science done with just, ethical, and inclusive Arctic governance, Melody Brown Burkins said in her introduction.

She highlighted that an ethical and equitable future for Arctic science diplomacy would have to include Arctic Indigenous Peoples in both knowledge creation and diplomatic decision-making.

Two objectives

She described the foremost challenges of future models of Arctic science diplomacy to be ensuring primarily two objectives:

– The practice of science consistently, ethically, and equitably includes the engagement of diverse knowledge systems – most specifically Arctic Indigenous Knowledge systems – to inform Arctic policy, and:

– The practice of diplomacy consistently, ethically, and equitably supporting governance models where leaders of recognized Arctic Indigenous Peoples organizations wield decision-making power alongside leaders of Arctic Nations.

– This is a goal for Arctic science diplomacy we can address now, regardless of full Arctic Council cooperation, Melody Brown Burkins said.

On the situation resulting from missing Russians climate data following the current sanctions, she said:

– I do not think more climate data is the sole answer to the existential threat we are facing of a warming earth, eroding coastlines, permafrost thaw, sea level rise, the loss of sea ice, and the rise of powerful storms across the globe. Because we know what the science is telling us. We have known what the science has been telling us since the 1950s. We need to move to low-carbon, net zero economies as soon as humanly possible.

The second keynote of the session was Frode Nilssen, professor at Nord University Business School and research professor at Fridtjof Nansens Institute.

– The current change in the geopolitical situation affecting Arctic collaboration have been taking place gradually over the last two decades. This is not a new situation, even as it has been amplified by the terrible, Russian aggression in Ukraine, thus creating an entirely new situation, particularly in the European Arctic, Nilssen emphasized.

Nilssen drew a parallel between science diplomacy and another, continuing collaboration between Norway and Russia, namely the joint fisheries commission, deciding on the annual quotas of the fish stock.

– This collaboration rests on scientific advice drawn from solid research over time and has also been able to continue during the current sanction regime, Nilssen said.   

Identify both mechanism and motivation

The final keynote was Rolf Rødven, Executive Secretary of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, AMAP.

– In the internal talks at AMAP, the discussions about continued scientific collaboration with Russia boiled down to defining scientific integrity as our most important asset. Whatever we wanted to do, we needed to make sure that our scientific integrity was maintained. For instance, we would resist any pressure to exclude Russian co-authors from scientific papers, as that would constitute scientific misconduct, Rødven said.

– If we would like to resume a full pan-Arctic cooperation including Russia, and the need to understand the impacts of rapidly warming Arctic is the reason for doing so, we would need to identify both the mechanism and the motivation. The legally binding Agreement on Enhancing International Arctic Scientific Cooperation provides such a mechanism, and to join efforts towards the International Polar Year in 2032 in meeting the most important challenge for our Arctic future may be such a motivation, Rødven added.

In her introductory comments to the panel, Clara Ganslandt, Special Envoy for Arctic Matters, European External Action Service, said:

– This session has been enlightening on the complexities of the current geopolitical situation, when also intersecting with the global threat of climate change.

Academic director of Academia Europaea Bergen, Eystein Jansen, also had introductory comments to the panel:

– It is easy to become pessimistic about the role of science diplomacy today and whether the concept has any meaning at all. Taking part in conversations here at Arctic Circle Berlin, I’m convinced that there still is a role for science diplomacy. Continuing to do scientific research the way it should be done, will create a space for science diplomacy, Jansen said.

Additional avenues

– Also important to consider, is that there are more avenues for science diplomacy than just collaboration with Russia. Organizations like IPY, IPPC, AMAP or the UN system still operates and some of these may be able to provide avenues for cooperation with Russia further down the line.

In the following panel discussion, Clara Ganslandt pointed out several organisations where science diplomacy is still happening and functioning:

– In my view, projects like the All-Atlantic Ocean Research and Innovation Alliance, the EU Polar Cluster, The Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership and also the G7 Future of the Seas and Oceans Initiative are examples of science diplomacy that is ongoing and working, Ganslandt said as part of the panel discussion during the session.

More on the “Rethinking Arctic Collaboration”-project from Academia Europaea Bergen.

Currently, Arctic climate research does not have access to critical climate data from 45% of the Arctic area. This is because climate data from the Russian Arctic areas is largely no longer available to the global research community, as a by-product of the Russia sanctions. We’ll look into the consequences of this at our session at the Arctic Circle Berlin Forum “Arctic Scientific Cooperation in Flux”, on May 8th, 11:30– 12:30.

The above is one of the findings in the report “The Future of Arctic Science and Science Diplomacy”, initiated by Academia Europaea Bergen, the Nordic hub for the pan-European science academy Academia Europaea.

The absence of complete and comprehensive observations for the actual climate development of the Arctic is potentially dramatic, as the Arctic is seen as a “temperature gauge” for global warming and processes of global impact occurs there. In the Arctic, temperatures are rising three times faster than the global mean. A related situation demanding attention in the Arctic is the thawing of the permafrost and the methane emissions and other climate feedbacks resulting from this. A complete picture of this situation will also require complete data from all Arctic areas including the Russian ones.

This lack of complete data sets is a by-product of the sanctions following the Russian war in Ukraine, sanctions that also affect cooperation with Russian scientists, within a broad portfolio of scientific topics and science-based management. We ask what consequences the lack of science diplomacy has had and will have on the sharing of climate data and international scientific collaboration in general and particularly with respect to the collection and distribution of data? And what are the scenarios for Arctic climate and environmental research in the longer run?

For our session at the Arctic Circle Berlin Forum, May 8th, 11:30– 12:30, panelists will be Clara Ganslandt, Rolf Rødven, Eystein Jansen,  Melody B. Burkins and Frode Nilssen. Moderator will be Volker Rachold. Bios on all below. 

Organisers

Academia Europaea Bergen, University of Bergen, Nord University Business School, Institute of Arctic Studies in Dartmouth, Alfred Wegener Institute (all partners of the Rethinking Arctic Project (2023-2025), funded by UArctic, UiB and Academia Europaea Bergen).

Moderator and panelists:

Volker Rachold is head of the German Arctic Office at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), which serves as an information and cooperation platform among German stakeholders from science, politics, and industry. Before moving to the German Arctic Office in 2017, he had served as the executive secretary of the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) in Stockholm and Potsdam since 2006. Rachold graduated as a geochemist from Göttingen University, where he also obtained his PhD in 1994. Since then, he has worked with the AWI. His research focused on land-ocean interactions in the Siberian Arctic, and he led several land- and ship-based Russian-German expeditions.

 

Clara Ganslandt is Special Envoy for Arctic Matters at the European External Action Service (EEAS), the European Union’s diplomatic service. Ganslandt’s role is to drive forward the EU’s Arctic policy, enhance cooperation with partner countries and other interested parties, improve coordination between the different EU institutions, mainstream Arctic issues in policy-making, and promote and publicise the EU’s Arctic engagement externally. She entered the Swedish diplomatic service in 1990. Following Sweden’s accession to the EU in 1995, she joined the first structure set up in the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers of the EU to build the EU Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP); and she has since then worked in EU external relations in various functions. She holds a Master of Laws (LLM) from the Lund University in Sweden, and also studied at the College of Europe in Bruges, and at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris.

Melody Brown Burkins, PhD, is the Director of the Institute of Arctic Studies, Senior Associate Director in the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, and Adjunct Professor of Environmental Studies at Dartmouth. In January 2022, she was also named the UArctic Chair in Science Diplomacy and Inclusion. With over 30 years of experience as a polar scientist working in academia and governance, she is an advocate for policy-engaged scholarship, experiential education, and the support of science policy and diplomacy initiatives advancing sustainability, inclusion, and gender equality in the Arctic and around the world.

 

Frode Nilssen is a professor at Nordland University Business School, High North Centre for Business and Governance. Most of his research has been on international trade and marketing within the frames of economic and governance issues, on food trade in particular. International Political Economy in the Arctic is a field of interest, particularly the blue economy and institutional frames, and on tensions between Economic Behaviour, Bilateral and Multilateral Governance and Politics in international food trade and exploitation of natural resources. Nilssen is also a research professor at the Fridjof Nansens Institute, head of the research department for marketing, strategy and management at the Bodø Graduate School of Business. He has served as a Special councillor at the Norwegian embassy in Moscow dealing with trade, fisheries and economic matters in the Norwegian-Russian relation.

Rolf Rødven is the Executive Secretary of the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program (AMAP). AMAP is mandated to monitor and assess the state of the Arctic region with respect to pollution and climate change issues, as well as their impacts on ecosystems and human health, and to provide policy recommendations to the Arctic Ministers. Rødven holds a PhD in Northern Populations and Ecosystems and an MBA in strategic leadership and finance from UiT – the Arctic University of Norway. He has been authoring several scientific papers on Arctic sosio-ecological systems. His previous positions include research director and director at the Norwegian Institute of Agricultural and Environmental research – Northern department, research director at the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomic research, and head of research section at Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economy, as well as leading positions in environmental management.

Eystein Jansen is professor of palaeoclimatology at the University of Bergen. Jansen was the founding director of the Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, which he led for 13 years. Jansen is Academic Director for the Academia Europaea Bergen Knowledge Hub and Vice President of the European Research Council (ERC) and a member of Academia Europaea, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, The Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences and the Norwegian Scientific Academy for Polar Research. Jansen was in 2019 awarded the Brøgger prize and the Meltzer prize for excellence in research. His research has primarily dealt with the influence of changes in ocean circulation on climate and on natural climate changes.

Ole Øvretveit is currently Director of the Coastal Impact Hub in Kirkenes, Norway, which is a pilot project funded by the Norwegian government. In addition, he is the project manager at the Academia Europaea Bergen Hub for the UArctic funded project Rethinking Arctic Collaboration, holding a 10% researcher position at the host institution, the University of Bergen. Previously he has served as Director of Arctic Frontiers for eight years. Subsequently and as Director of Science to Policy for the Sustainable Development Goals at the University of Bergen. He has also provided leadership with Initiative West, a think tank on sustainable ocean economy, societal growth and the green transition from the west coast of Norway.