Is it still possible to deny climate change? This is a phenome-non that has mobilized the world’s most important institu-tions, decision-makers, scientists, industrialists and bankers,

entire societies as well as individuals. Its man-made origins are more and more evident each day, yet people remain disconnec-ted from such a perception, both individually and as groups. It is therefore unproductive to think that we can inspire people to take action against climate change when their representation of the phenomenon does not entail a full and proper perception of its risks and dangers.

This paper addresses this concern and proposes to show how the study of human perceptions and representations can provide the key to a better understanding of climate-related problems.

To do so, we will explain the need (I) to overcome the obstacles to understanding this complex phenomenon; (II) to encourage a fuller awareness of climate risk; (III) and finally, to develop an ethic that encourages people to take action against climate change.

This paper makes use of knowledge gathered from the fields of cognitive science and anthropology to provide a fresh look at representations of climate change. In other words, this paper will look at both the processes by which information is processed by individuals, and the cultural and environmental contexts within which those individuals are embedded. That will lead to the presentation of the findings of our own researchers together with a number of studies that have examined individuals’ and groups’ specific experience of climate change, climate risks, their perception of uncertainty, the importance of the local en-vironment contributing to thinking patterns, and the building of environmental values and concerns.

Annamaria Lammel

ANNAMARIA LAMMEL

Senior lecturer and accredited research director in cross-cultural psychology (University of Paris 8) and researcher at the Paragraphe Laboratory. Anna-maria Lammel is an anthropologist and holds a doctorate in cognitive psycholo-gy. She is one of the leading authors of the fifth IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report.

N°5 - September 2015English edition November 2015

#Climate#COP21

#Environment#Perception

#ClimateAction

Climate change : from perception to action

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To understand the importance of studying cognition and the cultu-ral context in relation to individuals’ capacity to respond to climate change, the individual and his or her specific characteristics must be placed at the centre of a theoretical model of dynamic adapta-tion to change. The diagram below clearly shows the interactions between the different components, as environment , culture, and cognition and how individuals’ behaviour affects the world around them1.

CONCEPTS USED

CognitionThe set of mental processes that enable and structure knowledge. Many functions are involved in the cognitive process, such as me-mory, language, perception and learning. While classical psycholo-gy at one time contrasted cognition and emotion, modern cognitive science generally recognises the important role played by emotion in the cognitive process.

Cognitive vulnerability (ACOCLI definition)Il s’agit d’un état cognitif dans lequel le sujet ne dispose ni des in-formations / connaissances suffisantes, ni des modes de traitement de l’information nécessaires à la compréhension optimale des phé-nomènes auxquels il est confronté.

I. Overcoming obstacles to knowledge of a complex phenomenon

A. Climate change – a complex phenomenon requiring “complex cognition”

In contrast to basic cognitive processes (data exploration, atten-tion, visual structuring, etc.), complex cognitive processes2 need to apply a set of higher order processes permitting reasoning or problem solving .

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Note n°5 - September 2015 Climate change : from perception to action

The ACOCLI research project

This paper is partly based on research conducted as part of the ACOCLI project (the name ACOCLI comes from the French for Cognitive Adaptation to Climate Change), financed by the French National Research Agency and coordinated by Annamaria Lammel and Frank Jamet within the Paragraphe Laboratory at the University of Paris 8.

The general aim of the ACOCLI project is to investigate the re-lationship between environ-ment and society and more specifically the relationship between society and climate.

The general hypothesis is that human cognition makes adaptation to environmental changes possible. However, rapid climate change creates cognitive conflicts which give rise to cognitive difficulties and increase vulnerability.

This project includes in parti-cular the study of various as-pects of cognition in relation to climate change (mental re-presentation, categorisation, comprehension, temporal and spatial cognition, and problem solving) in populations with different degrees of exposure to climate change.

More than 800 individual in-terviews were conducted as part of the project in both me-tropolitan France (in Paris, the Alps and Ile de Ré) and overseas (French Guiana and New Caledonia). The objective was to identify the cognitive models underlying climate change.

1. Voir: - Lammel, A., Dugas, E. Guillen Gutierrez, E. (2012). L’apport de la psy-chologie cognitive à l’étude de l’adaptation aux changements climatiques: la notion de vulnérabilité cognitive. VertigO, 12.1.- Lammel, A., Dugas, E., & Guillen, C. (2011). Traditional way of thinking and predic-tion of climate change in New Caledonia (France). Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge, 10(1), 13-20.- Lammel, A., Guillen, C., Dugas, E., & Jamet, F. (2013). Cultural and environmental changes: Cognitive adaptation to global warming. in Selected papers from Steering the cultural dynamics: 2010 Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology, Melbourne Australia, 49-58.

2. Sternberg, R. J., & Ben-Zeev, T. (2001). Complex cognition: The psychology of human thought. Oxford University Press.

3. - Osman, M. (2010). Controlling uncer-tainty: a review of human behavior in com-plex dynamic environments. Psychological Bulletin, 136(1), 65.- Knauff, M., & Wolf, A. G. (2010). Complex cognition: the science of human reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. Cognitive processing, 11(2), 99-102.

4. - Kahneman, D. (2003). A perspective on judgment and choice: mapping bounded ra-tionality. American psychologist, 58(9), 697.- Fischer, A., & Glenk, K. (2011). One model fits all?—On the moderating role of emo-tional engagement and confusion in the elicitation of preferences for climate change adaptation policies. Ecological Economics, 70(6), 1178-1188.

5. - Johnson-Laird, P.N. (2008). Mental models and deductive reasoning. in Rips, L. and Adler. J. (Eds.). Reasoning: Studies in Human Inference and Its Foundations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 206-222.- Evans, J. S. B. (2008). Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social cognition. Annual Review of Psychology, 59, 255-278.

6. Cf. Data from Météo France: http://www.meteofrance.com/climat/france

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These processes, such as learning, memory, perception, cate-gorisation and emotions, are influenced by human cultures in various ways. To adapt to climate and climate change, humankind needs to gradually develop specific reasoning and problem sol-ving capabilities to understand and respond to complex condi-tions3. However, rationality in terms of calculating probability and decision-making based on mathematical rules are not intrin-sic human qualities, nor do they occur naturally in larger human organisations4. Numerous studies suggest that human cognitive capabilities are limited5 and that the modern mind struggles to grasp the systemic character of climate, the understanding of which requires the processing of a large number of interactions between variables, and positive or negative feedback loops (i.e. a reaction to an initial action that either amplifies or reduce its effects), all in a state of uncertainty. It is therefore necessary to make use of highly complex cognitive processes to understand and mentally represent climate change.

One of the difficulties hampering better cognitive representation of climate disruption can be shown by what might be termed “psy-cho-physiological obstacles” to the perception of global warming. Thus, the current stated target for effectively combating the ef-fects of global warming is to limit the average worldwide increase in the atmosphere’s temperature to 2°C. But what does such a target mean to individuals, based on their own “physiological” experience of climate? Some individuals in fact experience fairly wide diurnal temperature ranges; in Paris, for instance, the average temperature range is 7.1°C and in Mar-seille it is 9.4°C6. For such individuals, a temperature increase of 2°C consequently seems insignificant when viewed in the light of their day-to-day experience of temperature variation.

However, this perception is very different in individuals living in the tropics. Our research conducted in French Guiana shows that climate change, experienced as global warming, is rather more frightening. The temperature in French Guiana is practically the same all year round in the whole country and with no cold season, experience suggests that heat is a permanent and irreversible fea-ture. The average temperature is 26.5°C in the rainy season and 27.5°C in the dry season, the annual average being 27°C. This experience of a stable temperature all year round conse-quently influence the cognitive representation of a 2°C increase. As one of our interviewees said to us: “It is very, very hot here. If it’s going get hotter, we’re going to burn, so we’ll have to leave.”

It can be seen that experience of the climate in an area alters the picture of climate change held by individuals living there, and can add a further obstacle to the understanding of the problem.

Note n°5 - September 2015Climate change : from perception to action

7. Du, N., Budescu, D. V., Shelly, M. K., & Omer, T. C. (2011). The appeal of vague financial forecasts. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 114(2), 179-189.

8. GIEC, Volume 2 (2014). « Incidence, vulnérabilité et adaptation. » Résumé à l’intention des décideurs de la Synthèse du 5e rapport d’évaluation du GIEC (version française, 2014).

9. Smithson, M., Budescu, D. V., Broomell, S. B., & Por, H. H. (2012). Never say “not”: Impact of negative wording in probability phrases on imprecise probability judg-ments. International journal of approximate reasoning, 53(8), 1262-1270.

10. Weber, E. U., & Hilton, D. J. (1990). Contextual effects in the interpretations of probability words: Perceived base rate and severity of events. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor-mance, 16(4), 781.

11. - Harris, A. J., & Corner, A. (2011). Com-municating environmental risks: Clarifying the severity effect in interpretations of verbal probability expressions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37(6), 1571.- Patt, A. G., & Schrag, D. P. (2003). Using specific language to describe risk and pro-bability. Climatic change, 61(1-2), 17-30.

B. Making science more accessible to enable the understanding of uncertainty

What are the possible consequences of climate change? What course will it take? How much will temperatures rise? How can this process be halted? Scientists can only rarely give precise answers to such questions, which are frequently asked of climate change specialists, and the answers they do provide are always carefully worded. Firstly, the course of climate change is uncertain given the dynamic (chaotic) nature of the climate system and the unpredictability of the human system, hence the various scenarios produced by the IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change). Secondly, city dwellers in Western countries build their cognitive representations of climate change in the main from information disseminated by the media, and possibly from popular science magazines and articles. Contradictory information and uncertainty is in this way passed on to the general public; how then can the public interpret the scales, data intervals and wording by which any certainty is qualified?

What meaning should be ascribed to the statement: “High tempe-ratures contribute to a 0.5% to 2.3% increase in annual mortality rates”? The issues of perception and acceptance of scientific data are crucial here. Cognitive science has, for example, highlighted a pheno-menon known as the “accuracy paradox”. Thus, research has shown that the general public has more confidence in data describing a smaller interval (a temperature increase of 2 to 3°C) than it does in data describing a broader spread (a temperature increase of 1 to 5°C) even if the latter is actually more accurate scientifically7.

Similarly, in everyday speech, uncertainty is expressed in terms of degree of certainty/uncertainty, possibility or indeed probability: “unlikely”, “highly probable”, etc. In the fifth IPCC Synthesis Report8, the confidence ascribed to scientific findings is partly indicated by a qualitative level of confidence, ranging from “very low” to “very high” or by probability, from “exceptionally unlikely” to “virtually certain”. Research has shown that the public can misinterpret such terms, which muddies understanding of climate change phenomena9. The interpretation of indicators of uncertainty can be influenced, for exa-mple, by expectations10 or by the seriousness of the consequences11. Uncertainty can in this way constitute a cognitive obstacle to the mental representation of climate change and subsequently have significant behavioural consequences, either encouraging or in contrast acting as a hindrance to individual actions and changes in behaviour.

It is vital that current work on making science accessible so as to explain climate change, its causes and its consequences, takes these effects into account and demonstrates science in ways that improve understanding of scientific uncertainty.

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Note n°5 - September 2015 Climate change : from perception to action

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II. Fostering an accurate perception of climate risk

A. Cognitive vulnerability is perception of risks

Climate change, by virtue of its uncertainty, is one of the most signifi-cant risks posed to human societies, and to life in general. Risk is one of the central notions in volume 2 of the latest IPCC report, “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability”, which includes an examination of methods to reduce and manage impacts and risks related to climate change, using adaptation and mitigation measures12.

The question thus arises of how we perceive and represent climate change-related risks. A survey conducted in 2012 by Ipsos for AXA Insurance on “Individual perception of climate risks” showed that people are aware of the existence of climate change: 87% of those questioned were worried, and 88% were optimistic and felt that cli-mate change could be controlled if action is taken.

However, psychological research shows that people underestimate the scale of climate risk13. Anthony Leiserowitz, a recognised expert on surveying public opinion about climate change and Director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC)14, gives va-rious reasons for this underestimating of risk15:

(1) “Optimism” reduces the feeling of personal risk;(2) The signs of climate change are perceived as being “natural”;(3) Current climate change is attributed to normal variation in weather conditions;(4) The risk to the planet from climate change seems low in com-parison to other risks;(5) Human beings probably do not have the cognitive (and emo-tional) capabilities for them to adequately assess the risks.

The adoption or otherwise of changes in behaviour to combat the effects of climate change depends to a great extent on individuals’ cognition processes. In one of the most remarkable studies of recent years, two researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research showed that, when it comes to effective measures to com-bat climate change, the steps that people will take depend a great deal on their perception of the level of risk16.This first overview of the analysis of the perception/representation of risk is well worth following up with a comparative approach that fully incorporates the role of multisensory experiences with the envi-ronment and thinking patterns.

Thinking patterns, representation of risk and role of the environment

Within the ACOCLI research project, our interest is in how the inha-bitants of various regions with very different climates picture climate change-related risks. Research was accordingly conducted in Paris, the Alps (in Chamonix), New Caledonia and French Guiana. This stu-

Note n°5 - September 2015Climate change : from perception to action

12. GIEC, Volume 2 (2014). « Incidence, vulnérabilité et adaptation. » Résumé à l’intention des décideurs de la Synthèse du 5e rapport d’évaluation du GIEC (version française, 2014), p.3.

13. - Sundblad, E. L., Biel, A., & Gärling, T. (2007). Cognitive and affective risk judge-ments related to climate change. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 27(2), 97-106.- Böhm, G., & Pfister, H. R. (2000). Action tendencies and characteristics of environ-mental risks. Acta Psychologica, 104(3), 317-337.

14. Yale Climate Change Communication - Bridging Science and Society, http://envi-ronment.yale.edu/climate-communication/about/staff

15. Leiserowitz, A. (2006). Climate change risk perception and policy preferences: The role of affect, imagery, and values. Climatic change, 77(1-2), 45-72.

16. Grothmann, T., & Patt, A. (2005). Adaptive capacity and human cognition: the process of individual adaptation to climate change. Global Environmental Change, 15(3), 199-213.

dy enabled three types of cognitive representation of climate risk to be identified, namely simple risk, multiple risk, and complex risk. The issue is then not to simply investigate perception of the level of risk, but the actual nature of the risk itself.

Simple riskThe cognitive representation of risk observed in Paris residents is mainly a “simple risk” representation. Such a representation is linear, based on a cause-and-effect relationship. According to such linear thinking and the analytical reasoning accompanying it, defining an object in terms of its own properties, if the causes disappear, then the risk also disappears. For example, if we find clean energy, then the threats from climate change disappear too. This linear picture may lead to individuals underestimating the scale of the risk, because, as Albert Einstein rightly pointed out, “informa-tion is not knowledge”. This representation actually results in unde-restimating the global risk of climate change. The underestimating observed is a sign of cognitive vulnerability, which can be linked to the absence of climate experience and the difficulty of converting in-formation about climate change into knowledge, and from there into stable cognitive representations.

Multiple riskThe “multiple risk” cognitive representation was identified in the in-habitants of the Alps (Chamonix) and in certain cultural groups in French Guiana. The “multiple risk” representation is not linear; it is based on an iterative picture, where interaction between various com-ponents can alter the climate change process. Risk is not embedded in the “climate” object represented by one of its components such as the atmosphere, but is calculated using the signs of environmen-tal change. In Chamonix for example, alterations in the conditions of rocks and the risk of collapse or landslides are accordingly repre-sented in comparison with other risks from climate change. From a very young age, the cognitive representations of this region’s inhabi-tants incorporate a notion of risk connected to the weather’s unpre-dictability, by virtue of both the transmission of local knowledge and their own personal experiences.

Complex riskWe were able to show the existence of a “complex risk” cognitive representation in New Caledonia and in certain cultural groups in French Guiana. This entails an iterative representation, as for “mul-tiple risk” representation, but this representation is also systemic. This representation is not confined to local aspects, but connects both local and global spatial dimensions in the cognitive assessment of risk. For instance, within their cognitive representation of climate

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Note n°5 - September 2015 Climate change : from perception to action

Measures to be promoted: cross-cultural international

exchanges

The separation factor, the distance between the inhabitants of “Western countries” and poorer countries and their inhabitants, which are the first to experience the effects of global war-ming and will suffer the most serious consequences, does nothing to encou-rage efforts to combat climate change.Closer ties between the inhabitants of different parts of the world can be thought of as helping city dwellers to understand the urgency regarding cli-mate problems by those living in the areas most exposed to risk, and as ma-king a fuller and more systemic picture of global warming possible. In this res-pect, experiments in twinning between western cities and more exposed towns and cities are to be encouraged and could increase the feeling of belonging to a world community, in the same way that twinning arrangements between European towns and cities fostered a sense of European community “lower down” after the Second World Wari.

Such links should also be explored more systematically in education, in parti-cular by “pen pal” schemes between children, firstly between schools in me-tropolitan France and French overseas territories or French-speaking coun-tries, and then between French schools and schools in non-French-speaking countries that are most exposed to global warming, when the language barrier can be overcome. As the anthro-pologist Charlie Galibert has shown, corresponding with foreign schoolchi-ldren can transform a school into a “glo-bal school” and suggest “other ideas of spatiality and temporality beyond the here and now”ii.New communication methods make worthwhile, interactive connections between children possible, without the need for travel, and can help in unders-tanding the problems facing the inhabi-tants of such areas while encouraging systemic thinking patterns.

i. Hamman, P. (2003). Les jumelages de communes, miroir de la construction eu-ropéenne “par le bas” ». Revue des sciences sociales, 30, 92-98.

ii. Gallibert C., (2003). De la mise en corres-pondance de correspondances. Contribu-tion à une anthropologie de la communi-cation. Communication et langages, 136(2), 106-122.

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risk, the Kanaks of Ouvéa island incorporate the systemic interaction between the local and the global, industrial activity, consumption, the warming of the oceans and the atmosphere, ice melting, extreme events, changes to the biosphere and rising water levels. This syste-mic view of “complex risk” is linked to both their direct experience of the environment’s fragility and a thinking pattern that is systemic. “Complex risk” cognitive representation can help form a picture of uncertainty over the course of events that includes the likelihood of human beings becoming extinct.

The following description of our dependency on climate that we heard one day from a Totonac Indian in the Gulf of Mexico provides a good illustration of this systemic thinking pattern that still persists in many traditional communities: “The air is in us and we are in the air; if we pollute the air, we pollute ourselves.”

B. Strengthening the spatial representation of climate change

How do members of the represent climate change-related problems in spatial terms? Are they able to take an interest in climate problems that do not directly affect them? The media, a multitude of environ-mental organisations, international negotiations and education have strongly influenced the public’s view of the worldwide seriousness of environmental problems, often by downplaying local or even national environmental problems. Strangely, research shows that city dwel-lers are more aware of distant problems than they are of local ones. As part of the ACOCLI project, Parisians participating in the research said that the destruction of the polar bear’s habitat was a sign that climate change exists yet they did not think the same about glaciers melting in the Alps; they believed that rising sea levels would destroy cities such as New York within thirty years yet not that the French coast might end up under water. How can this paradox be explained?Research has shown that individuals tend to only take a serious inte-rest in environmental issues when these are concrete, immediate and local. The fact that the direct consequences of climate change have until now tended to appear in distant lands has accordingly acted as something of a brake on action. Professor David Uzzell17 carried out research in Australia, Britain, Ireland and Slovakia on the psycho-spatial dimension of global en-vironmental problems. This research is in line with our findings: the general public takes the problems of global warming more seriously in proportion to their spatial distance. The influence of environmen-tal organisations, political measures, the mass-media, and education therefore make it possible to create a wider greener conscience and awareness of global issues, yet at the same time, this information can prevent the perception of local problems and the way in which global climate change has effects at a local level.Our research has shown that the perception of local problems related to climate change does not rule out an abstract global representation of these phenomena and that a systemic mindset makes it possible

Note n°5 - September 2015Climate change : from perception to action

17. Uzzell, D. L. (2000). The psycho-spatial dimension of global environmental pro-blems. Journal of environmental psychology, 20(4), 307-318.

18. - Jamieson, D., (1996). Ethics and inten-tional climate change. Climatic Change, 33, 323-336.- Gardiner, S.M., (2004). Ethics and global climate change. Ethics, 114, 555-600.Arnold, D.G., Ed. (2011). The Ethics of Global Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.- O’Brien, K., A.L.S. Clair and B. Kristof-fersen, Eds., (2010) Climate change, ethics and human security, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

19. Gardiner, S.M., (2011). A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change. Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, p.xii.

20. Ibid.

21. Schneider, S. H., & Lane, J. (2006). An overview of ‘dangerous’ climate change. In Schellnhuber H.J, Cramer W, Nakicenovic N, Wigley T, Yohe G, Eds. Avoiding dange-rous climate change. Cambridge University Press, 7-24.

22. Thomas, D. S., & Twyman, C. (2005). Equity and justice in climate change adaptation amongst natural-resource-de-pendent societies. Global Environmental Change, 15(2), 115-124.

to connect various spatial dimensions. The indigenous populations of New Caledonia and French Guiana connect local and global spa-tial dimensions together and so assess the seriousness of climate change’s consequences, both those existing and those yet to come, using a continuous cognitive representation of space.These findings open the way to raising the awareness of urban po-pulations which might reduce their cognitive vulnerability (see inset p.11).

III. Nurturing ethics that encourage action

A. Ethics and climate change

Climate change undeniably raises ethical questions, and research into this aspect of the problem has expanded over the last twenty years18.However, the current literature on the ethics of climate change is still lacking a robust theory, given the controversies, uncertainties and complexities surrounding the problem.Climate change as it stands can be viewed as a primary ethical ques-tion and, according to Stephen Gardiner19, this ethical question needs to take due account of a very large number of factors including in-tergenerational equity, questions of balance, scientific uncertainty, economic policy decisions, international justice, etc.20

The notions of equity/inequity and responsibility are basic concepts in the literature of this area of science. Article 3 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) stipulates that “The Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of pre-sent and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities.” The authors believe the question of equity / inequity can be included in deliberations in various areas. Researchers Stephen Schneider and Janica Lane from the Stanford University propose three distinct areas of equity21:

(1) inter-country equity;(2) intergenerational equity;(3) inter-species equity.

In 2005, the British academics David Thomas and Chasca Twyman defined a fourth area, “sub-national or intra-country” equity22. Last-ly, a fifth area has been added to this list, ethics relative to energy transition solutions (renewable energy sources) and recently geo-en-gineering. From all these ideas emerges the necessity of developing equitable solutions to protect not only the most vulnerable groups of people but also different forms of life.

Very little empirical research exists on ethical questions concerning climate change in the general public, and this is a field that very much warrants further study.In this area, some research nonetheless shows that children have a moral attitude towards the environment. Their moral conscience is

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Note n°5 - September 2015 Climate change : from perception to action

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in particular identified in attributing human responsibility to envi-ronmental problems23.In addition, the growing number of non-profit organisations, NGOs, community initiatives and social networks in favour of protecting the environment are just some of the signs of burgeoning moral aware-ness in the general public as regards climate change problems.

B. Environmental concerns as a trigger to action

Climate change is one of many environmental threats of anthropoge-nic origin. Homo sapiens, the destroyer of its own environment is, paradoxically, the only species able to be concerned about its envi-ronment and able to “do something about it” by determining the most appropriate actions to counter the threat.The term “environmental concern” appeared in social psychology in the 1980s. Environmental concern is a form of individual assessment that, through varying attitudes to the environment, shows in beha-viour. Environmental concern is strongly linked to values, which we will deal with next. There are substantial differences in levels of envi-ronmental concern between individuals. The factors influencing en-vironmental concern, and therefore indirectly, awareness and taking action, include knowledge, belief systems, individual responsibility and assessment of the risk posed to the individual’s health. An indivi-dual’s level of environmental concern is first and foremost a product of the local environment - air pollution, waste, toxic substances, etc.Yet how can this concern be shifted from the local level to the global level, the setting for worldwide climate change? As seen previously, individuals in big cities are in fact in a state of cognitive vulnerability which can form an obstacle to genuine concern in relation to the glo-bal level, and is therefore an obstacle to large scale collective efforts.Many studies have investigated this issue. Just one example will be mentioned here, a longitudinal study (74 surveys) conducted in the United States between 2002 and 201024. Every three months, resear-chers measured the level of individuals’ concern over global climate change based on the following factors:

(1) extreme weather events;(2) public access to scientific information;(3) media coverage (including economic aspects);(4) involvement of politicians and/or media personalities (elites & celebrities);(5) discussions about climate change.

The results show that extreme weather conditions have no effect on public opinion, and that scientific information and discussion have very little. In contrast, what the study calls “elite cues” and economic consequences presented by the media play a significant role in rai-sing awareness taking the form of concern over climate change. This study therefore shows the importance of the involvement of politi-cians, elites and climate protection groups.Anthropology has shown that concern for the environment is found in the majority of small societies and, when this concern disappears

23. - Howe, D., Kahn, P. H., Jr., & Friedman, B. (1996). Along the Rio Negro : Brazilian children’s environmental views and values. Developmental Psychology, 32, 979-987.- Kahn, P. H., Jr. (2002). Children’s affi-liations with nature: Structure, develop-ment, and the problem of environmental generational amnesia. in P. H. Kahn, Jr. & S. R. Kellert (Eds.), Children and nature: Psy-chological, sociocultural, and evolutionary investigations, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 93-116.

24. Brulle, R. J., Carmichael, J., & Jenkins, J. C. (2012). Shifting public opinion on climate change: an empirical assessment of factors influencing concern over climate change in the US, 2002–2010. Climatic change, 114(2), 169-188.

Note n°5 - September 2015Climate change : from perception to action

25. Diamond, J. (2006). Effondrement: com-ment les sociétés décident de leur disparition ou de leur survie. Gallimard.

26. Shome, D., & Marx, S. (2009). The psychology of climate change communica-tion. Center for Research on Environmental Decisions. Columbia University.

27. Thompson, S. C. G., & Barton, M. A. (1994). Ecocentric and anthropocentric at-titudes toward the environment. Journal of environmental Psychology, 14(2), 149-157.

from human thinking, civilisations are threatened and might even collapse. Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed25 analyses the factors that have contributed to the collapse of various societies (for instance, those on Easter Island, Mayan so-ciety, Viking colonies in Greenland, etc.). His view is that the world is currently facing some important decisions, and needs to learn les-sons from past mistakes to ensure humankind’s survival. In line with this way of thinking, a stable level of environmental concern there-fore needs to be developed within our societies.

Conclusion: On the necessity of developing environmental values to act against climate change

One of the problems with concerns over climate change is that such concerns are superficial and short-lived. How, then, can they be converted into actions? A new sub-discipline, the psychology of cli-mate change communication, attempts to find psychologically effec-tive communication methods so as to develop lasting environmen-tal concern, leading to environmental attitudes that are conducive to action26. Current methods, using various conditioning techniques (tax reductions, the eco-tax, etc.) attempt to galvanise the public ( economic stakeholders, consumers or businesses) into pro-environ-mental behaviour – climate change therefore manifests itself in eco-nomic goods and takes a monetary value. The change in behaviour brought about by such methods is not a “principled” change and thus may well prove not to be lasting, in particular if a subsequent change in public policy should jeopardise the financial incentives. Furthermore, such methods confine the question to an issue of pro-fitability without entailing any development of genuine, value-based environmental concern. The values influencing concern over climate change have been stu-died alongside other environmental values. As abstract entities and aids to thinking and to behave, values make it possible to include the global dimensions of environmental changes. One of the directions taken by research in this area looks at the relationship between va-lues, attitudes and behaviour directly related to environmental pro-tection, because these are the actual values that guide an individual’s actions.

In 1994, Suzanne Gagnon Thompson and Michelle Barton pu-blished a research article in which they defined two types of va-lue-based attitudes to environmental issues, namely ecocentric and anthropocentric27. Ecocentrism concerns individuals who value na-ture for its own sake and hold the view it should be protected for its intrinsic qualities. Nature possesses a spiritual dimension for such individuals, and has a value outside of economic considerations and the quality of life it provides. Anthropocentrism, meanwhile, connects environmental protection to the satisfaction of material needs, ascri-bing a value to nature that is essentially utilitarian. The two attitudes agree on the necessity to preserve the environment, but for different reasons. The first attitude will usually culminate in personal commit-

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Note n°5 - September 2015 Climate change : from perception to action

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ment, joining environmental organisations and taking practical steps in favour of environmental protection. Any actions taken by those holding the second attitude will conform to the values held by consu-mer society.From a broader perspective, in 2004 a team headed by a californian professor Wesley Schultz described categories connecting values, attitudes, world views and behaviour as regards the environment28. They drew a distinction between the following values:

- Egoistic: values are focused on self and self-oriented goals (me, my future, my prosperity, my health, etc.).- Altruistic: values are more focused on others (future genera-tions, humanity, people in the community, children, etc.).- Biospheric: values are focused on the wellbeing of living things (plants, animals, marine life, birds, etc.).

The team formulates the hypothesis that a person’s involvement in en-vironmental issues depends on the extent to which that person feels part of the natural environment. In a test designed by the team called the INS (Inclusion of Nature in Self) scale, research participants had to indicate their level of “connection” with nature, or more precisely a level of their inclusion with nature. The research showed that indi-viduals who associate themselves with nature tend to hold broader sets of concerns for environmental issues (biospherical attitudes). An individual with less of an association with nature can be concerned about environmental issues but these concerns will be more focused on problems that directly affect the individual.

Environmental values do not merely differ from one individual to another, but they also vary across different cultures. This difference is not limited to a dichotomy between western countries and the rest of the world; even within Western countries, cultural differences may be significant depending on proximity to the natural environment.This fact can prove to be an obstacle in international negotiations over climate change, as can for example, very different attitudes to time (tendency to look to the past, present or future), hierarchical relationships and authority, or indeed social organisations (indivi-dualism or collectivism).Problems relating to climate change have an intrinsic temporal di-mension. Our research (ACOCLI) on the role of values in the percep-tion and cognitive representation of climate change has shown an omportant dimension linked to temporal cognition, and more speci-fically to temporal orientation. It is based on the following question – can humankind project itself into the future and if so, how far?

Climate change scenarios use different timescales, with predictions for the short term, the medium term or for 100 years’ time. We won-dered whether individuals could cognitively process these different timescales, so we questioned our survey participants in Paris, the Alps, New Caledonia and French Guiana about how they saw the course of such changes in the next 5-10 years, 30 years and 100 years. The Parisian participants, of a certain age, told us they were not inte-

Note n°5 - September 2015Climate change : from perception to action

28. Schultz, P. W., Shriver, C., Tabanico, J. J., & Khazian, A. M. (2004). Implicit connec-tions with nature. Journal of environmental psychology, 24(1), 31-42.

Measures to be promoted : urban nature to develop positive

environmental attitudes

The inhabitants of large cities such as Paris have a binary reperesen-tation of climate change. Cities’ lack of contact with natural envi-ronments is also seen to result in a lower propensity to developing awareness of climate change.Initiatives aimed at developing the idea of “urban nature” are thus to be encouraged. Over and above the purely ecological bene-fits of making urban environments greener (maintaining biodiversity, combating pollution, managing run-off, resilience through urban agriculture, etc.), projects encou-raging inhabitants’ involvement can serve to promote “biospheri-cal” attitudes which will boost the fight against climate change. It is therefore desirable to increase the number of shared family or com-munity garden schemes, and those part of rehabilitation projects, flower planting along pavements or within school projects, the set-ting up of spaces conducive to pol-linators combined with running beehives and harvesting honey by local people, skyrise greenery, etc.

See notably the internet portal « Nature in the city » http://www.nature-en-ville.com/content/plan-nature-en-ville , web-site initiated by the Ministère de l’écologie, du développement durable et de l’énergie (MEDDE) et par le Ministère de l’égalité des territoires et du logement (METL).

Lise Bourdeau-Lepage, « Nature(s) en ville », Métropolitiques, February 21th 2013. URL : http://www.metropolitiques.eu/Nature-s-en-ville.html

rested in the problem because they would no longer be around. The participants from New Caledonia, on the other hand, gave us answers about changes in the next 30 years, and told us their predictions for the next 100 years or, if they were not able to do so, told us that 100 years was too far ahead to provide a well-considered answer. Not one of them, however, answered that the problem was of no interest be-cause they would no longer be alive. This difference in the represen-tation of climate change depending on timescales is extremely impor-tant, because it indicates opposite attitudes to temporal orientation. Parisians have a dimension that is oriented to the present. The times-cale is their own lifetimes. New Caledonians, although they might struggle to predict the course of climate change, have a continuous temporal orientation, between the past, the present and the future and think about events against an intergenerational timescale.In the issue of climate change, and more generally with a view to pro-tecting the natural environment, the development of values and atti-tudes plays a key role in ensuring trans-generational environmental concern of a kind able to generate long-term commitment to addres-sing environmental problems.

The author

Annamaria LAMMEL

Senior lecturer and accredited research director in cross-cultural psychology (University of Paris 8) and researcher at the Paragraphe Laboratory. Annamaria Lammel is an anthropologist and holds a doctorate in cognitive psychology. She is one of the leading authors of the fifth IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report.

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Note n°5 - September 2015 Climate change : from perception to action