National climate scenarios: (un)building climate knowledge and inducing environmental ignorance in Mexico

Teresa Guadalupe de León Escobedo, Francisco Estrada Porrúa

The interactions between climate information producers and local decision-makers have remained largely underexplored. The processes of building a local climate research agenda and informing adaptation policies are still unknown in many Global South countries. In this context, we discuss from a Human Geography and Environmental Social Studies of Science and Technology (STS) perspective how the climate knowledge geographical divide operates and encounters ruination politics that serve to keep climate impacts unknown and adaptation policies missing. Through the empirical case of national climate scenarios making in Mexico and its political consequences, this paper advances the literature on climate knowledge infrastructures. From interviews with scientists and former public servants, this paper argues that underfunding science, unbuilding climate institutions and keeping knowledge under a commissioned model are slow ruination processes that result in strategic environmental ignorance. These conditions have shaped the scientific climate and political agenda in Mexico. Through a multiscalar analysis, we explore the production processes of the national climate scenarios for the National Communications on Climate Change. Thus, we discuss the power of climate funds influencing the country’s climate research agenda and the national institutional designs constraining the development of usable climate

Full paper: https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/geo2.70009