Abstract
Global environmental crises are intensifying to a worrisome degree, and increasingly intertwined. Anthropogenic climate change, for example, threatens human security through more frequent and intense extreme weather events like heat waves, droughts, and floods. At the same time, it aggravates problems related to soil degradation, biodiversity loss, disease spreading, and water scarcity, among others. These developments have been hypothesized to affect patterns of economic development, political stability, and human mobility. But while the underlying ecological, climatological, and (geo)physical changes are undeniable, environmental crises are perceived and framed by experts, decision-makers, and broader publics in heterogeneous ways. This further complicates research on, and action upon, these growing environmental problems.
An interdisciplinary workshop1 was held in summer 2019 at the Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig, Germany, to discuss the interlinked economic, political, and social consequences of environmental crises, and the role of discourses and perceptions in this context.
