(This is an excerpt from ‘India in a Warming World: Integrating Climate Change and Development’, edited by Navroz K Dubash and published by Oxford University Press. The book is due to release in November 2019.)
Climate change has been evocatively described as a ‘wicked’ problem– it has no unambiguous definition, is riven with scientific uncertainty, and proposed solutions are complicated by their embedding in social, political, and economic systems (Hulme 2009). If climate change is an environmental issue for some people, for others it is predominantly about justice and equity, and for yet others, it is largely an economic and technical challenge.
In contrast with ‘tame’ problems, even the problem definition is fraught, and, therefore, how we discuss and debate climate change is a challenge; differences in interests are further confounded by differences in interpretation.
As a result, even as evidence mounts that climate change could result in a near-unliveable ‘hothouse earth’, raising the spectre of an existential dilemma (Steffen et al. 2018), action on climate change proceeds at a glacial pace, seemingly embedded in endless and protracted debate.