The Routledge Handbook of Applied Climate Change Ethics

Abstract

Ensuring proper public participation in climate change policy and decision-making is a legal and an ethical imperative. This is because participation is essential to ensuring inclusive, sound, and legitimate public decision-making, but also to recognizing the agency and autonomy of those affected by decisions on climate change policy and programs. However, participation processes themselves may deny rather than secure participants this recognition, exposing them instead to practices of discrimination and epistemic injustice. This chapter explores the ways in which participation in climate change information services, designed to make technical and scientific information accessible to farmers, may result in the epistemic objectification and exploitation of the farming communities they are meant to empower and serve. Focusing on climate information services policies and programs in Africa, this chapter investigates injustices that arise as a result of inclusion in participation and explores strategies for addressing these injustices.

Topics & Concepts