the way industry and policymakers plan for and adapt to scarcity of water for drinking, nature and agriculture. The Drop Project involves policy analysis and
interviews with stakeholders in Somerset as one case study, and five other case study regions across Europe. Dr Alison Browne said: “What these recent floods teach us is that there is a risk of creating reactionary agendas to water management in a way that creates fragmentation, and contradictions in policy areas. For example, the Water Bill working its way through Parliament should be an opportunity to reconsider the connection of issues such as flooding and scarcity management for agriculture, nature, and the supply of drinking water. But fractured thinking still dominates, which has reduced the key debates in the Water Bill to ones about flooding and competition, and this restricts our ability to create strategies as opposed to ‘crisis management’ responses.” Will Climate Change week actually ‘change’
anything? Professor Elizabeth Shove of Lancaster University, an ESRC Climate Change Leadership Fellow, is not sure: “It turns the topic into a matter of personal opinion – sort of ‘if you believe in climate change, action will follow’. This kind of association with climate change, as an overt political topic, doesn’t necessarily play out into the areas of resource consumption that really matter for climate change. There is no reason to suppose our understanding of climate change will transform patterns of consumption which have a dynamic and logic of their own.” Nor did she believe floodwaters would fundamentally change how we use water: “There is a lot of discussion about people’s attitudes to energy or water uses, but using water is highly routinised. It’s not a matter of attitudes. It’s more tied up with the ongoing reproduction of shared social practices and habits like washing, showering and laundering, and not linked to attitudes about waste, the environment, droughts or floods or whatever.”
12 SOCIETY NOW SPRING 2014
For her part, Dr Browne said she believed that although it may not change everyday life and consumption, events like Climate Change week “can change the political intensity and support for climate change. I think that it is an opportunity to create ‘linked-up’ thinking in regards to broader water management policy – considering the way we manage water in the context of extremes, for example, rather than just dealing with flood policy or drought or supply/demand management policy.” Most experts are agreed that we need more
flood-resilient landscapes and farming practices, and working with nature and not against it is crucial. But Professor Pidgeon warned: “People want politicians to act because they see climate change as too big for them to act, while politicians worry about the electoral cycle so try to place responsibility on people, and no one does anything. That’s what I’ve described as a governance trap – no-one takes responsibility for organising the long- term. That can be got round with enough political consensus, which to some extent we have, and that’s why we have the Climate Change Committee (an independent body established under the Climate Change Act to advise the UK Government on reducing greenhouse gas emissions). That Committee will become increasingly important.” n
Sarah Womack is the former Social Affairs Correspondent and Political Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph
i
www.esrc.ac.uk/my-esrc/grants/RES-066-27-0013/read
www.esrc.ac.uk/search/search-page.aspx?q=*%3A*&topic_theme= Climate+change&current_page=1&items_per_page=10&sort_ order=publication_date&filters=on&author=Nick%20 Pidgeon&tab=outputs
www.sci.manchester.ac.uk/news/fifth-south-east-brits-wash- infrequently
www.sci.manchester.ac.uk/strategic-research-partnership -–-sci-unilever
www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/shove/transitionsinpractice/tip.htm
www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/shove/transitionsinpractice/ possibleshower.htm
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