Marta Maria Maldonado
Iowa State UniversityWhat do we know: What does Sociology bring to the table for studying the human dimensions of global
climate change?
Sociological analysis has revealed the complex ways in which social dynamics and structures of inequality are
implicated in the production and distribution of, as well as in responses to environmental impacts, including
global climate change. We know, for instance, that unequal development is tied to markedly unequal rates of
consumption and fossil fuel use across nations and regions of the world, and thus, to substantial differences
in greenhouse emissions, with the wealthiest 20% of the world’s population being responsible for over 60%
of emissions. As Roberts and Parks (2007) argue, “the issue of global climate change is fundamentally about
injustice and inequality,” which causes poor countries to suffer “the effect of a problem to which they contributed
virtually nothing.” We also know that the position of a country in the global economy is bound to affect its policy
positions on global climate change (Roberts, 2001).
Similarly, research indicates that, while global warming is a threat to all people across the globe, some are
bound to suffer its consequences more than others, with the poor, ethnoracial minorities, and women facing the
heaviest burden. Unequal development, class, race/ethnicity, and gender inequalities give rise to varying levels
and multiple dimensions of vulnerability. Not only do people in various social locations face different “initial
conditions” (e.g., livelihoods associated with different levels of stability and resilience, different levels of health
and nutrition, different levels of mobility), but they also have unequal abilities to protect themselves, different
networks through which they access resources and information, different relationships with social institutions, and
different levels of access to social protection (Cannon, 2000; Rashid and Michaud, 2000).
Sociological focus on the institutionalized and structural dimensions of inequality (that is, on how
inequality is produced on a day-to-day basis, gets built into “business as usual,” and becomes effectively invisible)
has helped reveal the ways in which vulnerabilities to climate change are created. Sociologists have contributed
to a body of knowledge on environmental inequality and environmental justice, which documents how race, class,
and gender become entwined with the distribution of environmental impacts in various places, and how various
vulnerabilities are shaped by social, cultural, and institutional factors. Such knowledge can be readily applied to
the context of climate change.
What do we need to know: What are the major sociological research questions?
While we have a fairly good understanding of how power and inequality become linked to both environmental
conditions and vulnerability, we have yet to articulate how our attempts to manage climate change should account
for and be responsive to the differences in vulnerability that exist within and across countries and regions of the
world.
Sociological research needs to explore one central question pertaining to the issue of vulnerability.
How can those who are most vulnerable to climate change become less vulnerable? What kinds of structural,
institutional, and organizational changes would reduce various kinds and dimensions of vulnerability in different
regions and places? What obstacles or impediments exist to realizing such changes? What political mobilization
strategies might be effective for creating change? There is also the empirical question of what dimensions of
inequality become more salient in different places (we know that inequality structures, and the cultural factors that
sustain them differ across geographic and sociopolitical contexts).