New Episode of Resources Radio Features an Anthropologist's Take on Climate Change
Washington, DC—Resources for the Future (RFF) today released a new installment of Resources Radio: “An Anthropologist's Take on Climate Change, with Susie Crate.”
Host Daniel Raimi interviews Susie Crate, a professor of anthropology at George Mason University. Crate discusses her experiences working with a Siberian community that is dealing with a changing climate. She also explains how anthropology can shed light on the different ways in which policymakers and scientists can communicate climate change.
Notable quotes from the podcast:
- “It's critical for policymakers to understand and scientists . . . to understand that the majority of people on the planet do not think and act based on science. They think and act based on local knowledge or indigenous knowledge. So for policymakers to understand that, to understand that the only way their policies can be effective is if they bring them into the understandings [of] the people that they are addressing.”—Susie Crate (6:00)
- “So one of the important things to think about when we're talking about how climate change is affecting these people culturally is that connection to place, that connection to homeland . . . I would argue that perhaps we need to understand that more difficult for [certain communities] is this place attachment and seeing their homeland changing the way it is and not knowing what it's going to be in the future.”—Susie Crate (18:55)
- “These cultural effects we could say of climate change are very much part and parcel of understanding knowledge systems, understanding that people have a specific way of understanding how their world works and that's critical for policymakers to grapple with.”—Susie Crate (22:43)
Resources Radio is a weekly podcast series exploring timely environmental, energy, and natural resources topics, and can be found on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and SoundCloud.
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