Global Environmental Change

The Anthropocene is marked by profound transformations in the natural environment. The intensification of extreme weather events, the melting of glaciers and permafrost, and shifts in the distribution of plant and animal species are just a few examples. While these changes are rooted on global-scale processes – above all global warming with its own roots in the capitalist economic system –, their effects are deeply felt in local contexts.

This raises important questions: What do these environmental shifts mean for the people living in affected regions? How is knowledge about these changes – and the emergence of new, unfamiliar elements – acquired? In what ways do they challenge existing social structures and cultural practices? What political conflicts and contradictions emerge as a result? How are environmental changes socially, culturally, and politically mediated? How do these mediations interact with and shape the material conditions of the natural world?

Our research examines these questions through in-depth case studies across diverse local settings. Employing a range of empirical and analytical methodologies – including interviews, visual methods, participant observation, and content and discourse analysis – we aim to capture the complexity of local experiences and global entanglements. At the same time, our work aims at a conceptual contribution for understanding global environmental change, one that also offers a critical perspective on possibilities for social transformation, where local perspectives can contribute address global environmental challenges.

Our Projects in Global Environmental Change

  • Navigating Uncertainty: Adapting Forests to Climate Change in the Swiss Alps

    This project explores how people understand, manage, and debate forest adaptation to climate change in the Swiss Alps, focusing on the region of Valais. Here, forests play a crucial role in protecting communities from natural hazards, yet their responses to a warming climate are slow and often unpredictable. 

    As uncertainty grows, forest science increasingly views forests as complex adaptive systems that rely on resilience and diversity rather than strict control. In contrast, social science has often reduced adaptation to questions of perception, overlooking the deeper complexity of how change unfolds in practice. This project takes a different view, suggesting that uncertainty is not merely a problem to be solved but a productive paradox—something that both challenges and enables practical action. 

    Drawing on Critical Realism, the project introduces the idea of the possible to explore how uncertainty emerges and to rethink the openness of the world as a condition of knowledge and practice. Based on interviews, observations and document analysis in Valais, the research shows how foresters actively engage with uncertainty through reflection, dialogue with nature, and continuous experimentation. Despite the challenges, their work endures through trial and error, grounded in a quiet belief that things will continue to evolve. Yet these practices also expose tensions, as prevailing social systems still favour what can be measured and controlled, often closing off space for openness and possibility. 

    Ultimately, the project calls for a broader understanding of ecological practice—one that embraces uncertainty as an inherent part of change, rethinks the aims of forestry, and fosters a more dynamic and responsive relationship between society and nature. 

    Project members: 

    Jan Zumoberhaus 

     

    Contact: 

    jan.zumoberhaus@unifr.ch

Our Team Members in Global Environmental Change

Jan Zumoberhaus

Diploma Assistant / Assistant paid with third-party funding

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