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From analysis to action: should climate scientists engage in activism?
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The debate lives between concerns that activism will distract scientists from the science and protecting people from misinformation and the risk of apathy
People hold up a placard at a ‘Fridays for Future’ protest march in Bonn, Switzerland, March 19, 2021.
| Photo Credit: Mika Baumeister/Unsplash
Record-breaking heat waves scorching cities, landslides and floods sweeping away whole towns — the world is currently in the grip of a climate emergency. More than 2,300 local governments in more than 40 countries around the world have declared it.
At this time, when climate change is affecting the earth in unprecedented ways, climate scientists around the world are working hard to keep track of the damage. The question is: should they continue to make observations and analyse data impartially, as scientists usually do? Or should they raise their voices and engage in advocacy and activism to push for mitigation?
Raghu Murtugudde, a professor of climate studies at IIT Bombay, cautioned that excessive communication and activism around climate science can be a distraction to scientists, and they should still do what they are paid to do: the science. “My worry is that a little climate knowledge tends to lead to a massive saviour complex,” he said.
Karthik Ganesan, a researcher who works in policy research at the intersection of energy consumption and environmental impacts at the Council of Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), has a different view. Doing science alone may not be enough for scientists, he believes, especially if they are going head-to-head against entrenched interests in any specific area.
“So a stakeholder with a commercial interest in technologies and processes that are currently in use has significant incentive to keep the status quo,” he said. “How can we be sure that they’re applying the same outreach methods as researchers are? If they’re not, then it’s an unequal battle — which means scientists necessarily have to engage in different ways with policymakers, right? This will be needed to nudge the average citizen, and shake them out of their state of disengagement, when faced with claims and counterclaims.”
“I think it depends on what we call ‘activism’,” Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, said. “As scientists, we see global warming going up at an accelerated rate, and particularly in tropical nations like India, the impacts are much more. India is a poster child for climate change because here the weather is tropical. It’s much more unpredictable and extreme.”
“Because we are the first people to look at the data and see how these extreme events are unfolding, I see a huge need for bringing out that climate change research and development out into the public so that they understand this,” he added.
It need not go to the extent of going out onto the streets and protesting. Even just bringing out the data so people can learn how to work around it, and policymakers can frame policies based on correct information – that is good enough climate activism, according to him. “When scientists speak with authenticity and authority and with the data, there is huge value in that. People listen to that,” Koll said.
To each their own
Chandni Singh, a scientist working on climate change adaptation at the Indian Institute of Human Settlements, Bengaluru, believes everyone has their own part to play in addressing the climate change problem based on their choices, interests, and skills.
“Some people do research on it, like me, trying to figure out how to even act in such situations where floods and droughts and all are becoming more frequent. Building knowledge and evidence around climate change is one part of the story,” she said. “That’s where I see myself fit. I think I’m better in a classroom where I teach the next generation of learners about how to think about climate change.”
This said, given the urgency of climate change, she believes scientists may no longer have the luxury to first focus on the research and then take the findings towards action. “That is why many people say climate change researchers, the ones who are working on this day and night, should also be moving into spaces of activism, and many do,” she said.
“There are many IPCC authors who are activists in their non-IPCC life,” she added, referring to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “And some people aren’t. I really think it comes down to what is your idea of the impact you want to make, so there’s no right or wrong. If we are a society that thinks we are democratic and open, then you should allow for all forms of expression.”
Harini Nagendra, who leads Azim Premji University’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability, expressed a similar sentiment. In areas like conservation and climate change, where “the systems are collapsing in front of our eyes”, as she put it, scientists can’t afford to be mere documenters.
“These are not easy jobs to make careers in, they’re difficult to work in every day because you see these systems collapse, you have a sense of grief. Everybody that I know has seen things change in their lifetimes, and they are here because they think it is important,” Nagendra said.
Letting the research speak for itself and waiting for others to act on your work is futile, she added. “I’ve definitely seen in 30 years, nobody picks up your policy-relevant work. Unless you work with the people who will use it in some form and they could be activist groups, they could be the government, they could be corporate, or educationists,” she said. “But unless you work with them through and through, nobody is going to be a passive recipient of your work.”
Like Singh, she believes there are many paths scientists can take to engage with stakeholders: one to provide data to groups questioning urban development projects that involve tree-cutting of trees, while also working directly with the government in other urban planning projects, like restoring lakes.
Myth of the ‘objective scientist’
“Some people have taken the extreme path of becoming complete climate activists themselves,” Nagendra said. “I have a lot of admiration for that, but I think that’s not a path I would want to follow.”
Singh said people often have the misconception that scientists are purely objective and that activists are biased.
“I think at least from environmental movements in India, there’s a lot of evidence to show that the work that goes into activism is not small. There is space for evidence-based activism, and I think India has a decent history of doing that,” she said.
Just like activists do their research and aren’t always biased towards their causes, scientists themselves may not be as objective as people would like to believe, both Singh and Nagendra said. Nagendra called it the “myth of the objective scientist”, which she feels should have been debunked a long time ago.
“At the end of the day, scientists are also human beings, so even very carefully calibrated experiments could also have bias creeping in,” Singh added.
Nagendra continued that the scientist-activists around her are simply ethical: they don’t cherry-pick their data or exaggerate their results. Instead, she places a premium on them being passionate about their work. “Whether scientist-activists work with government officials on planning or take the risk of being thrown into jail, I think people recognise the fact that they’re so passionate about it that they’re willing to risk something, and they are then taken far more seriously.”
According to Ganesan of CEEW, one can tell apart scientists who engage in activism to just promote their own research from scientists invested in a cause. “A scientist-activist, who’s actually very sure about the science, would rely on the community and the diversity of voices to actually drive change,” he said. “Whereas somebody who is only interested in their research and is not seen as a collaborative individual would automatically give it away.”
He believes a scientist-activist’s activism would be deserving as long as their claims are evidence-based.
“Instead of commenting on … climate change, where India is in my sense a leader by far, it’s not a leader in things like addressing air quality, which is more important for us,” he said. “If anything, we need activist scientists on air quality because we are discounting the massive health costs that our system is bearing, and our air quality scientists are not doing enough.”
A rounded viewpoint
However, Murtugudde said one needs a 360º view of climate science and action to make specific recommendations, bearing in mind whether some actions are even affordable.
“Technically, which country will give up its dreams of economic growth to reduce impacts?” he asked. “It’s not just India that can reduce its carbon footprint and benefit from it. The whole globe has to work together, so in that sense, the job of the climate scientist should be to tell the lay audience who are protesting that there are many issues; whether it’s adaptation or mitigation, there are economic consequences, political consequences, and … national security consequences as well.”
He prefers scientists engage in a careful, well-rounded education of the public rather than communicating or advocating science with the agenda of changing minds or even behaviours, which can be more complicated.
One thing is clear: whether in the form of education, communication or activism, climate scientists should make sure their research is known. They should bridge the gap between science and society by virtue of being the first people to deal with the data.
“Society at large, even the media, cannot decipher the complex science part of” climate research, Koll said. “But scientists can, if they put some effort, put it in simple words – give some scientific solutions on how to work around [a crisis], what kind of adaptation can we do? How can we assess the impacts in a particular region?”
“There is immense potential in terms of climate scientists coming to that kind of activism,” he added. “Without that, they stop at publishing papers. But publishing papers is where actually it should start.”
Rohini Subrahmanyam is a freelance journalist in Bengaluru.
Published – October 01, 2024 05:30 am IST
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