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Accepted Paper:

Reckoning resources and anticipating atmospheric futures in Belize  
Sophie Haines (University of Edinburgh)

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines social and cultural factors that influence how different forms of anticipatory knowledge are generated, recognised and acted upon (or not) in the context of efforts to address water management and hurricane preparedness in Belize.

Paper long abstract:

As a small, low-lying, coastal country, Belize is recognised as particularly vulnerable to impacts of climate variability and change at various timescales. The availability and skill of scientific predictions about future weather/climate has increased in recent years; however the social, cultural and institutional factors that influence their roles in decision-making about are incompletely understood. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken as part of an international, interdisciplinary study of forecast usability, I examine how participants in Belize's water and emergency sectors (including resource/emergency managers, scientists, environmentalists, regulators, forecasters, farmers) envision future quantities, qualities, and distributions of water and wind. In modelling workshops and forecasting centres, data-driven models and maps of future environments are generated and (re-)interpreted alongside situated knowledge and cultural practices, sensory experiences, resource politics and values, as researchers and practitioners engage with contested concepts of vulnerability, responsibility, ignorance and expertise. They and their interlocutors encounter challenges in identifying and living with shifting atmospheres, and in conducting the work of expectation given ambiguities in weather patterns, climate records, institutional resources and political commitments. Bringing anthropology, political ecology, and science and technology studies into conversation, I situate the contingencies that underpin predictions and policies in multi-scale contexts of environmental perception, socio-economic development, and the political and social meanings of anticipatory knowledge.

Panel P09
Knowing the atmosphere: exploring conceptual and practical dimensions of weather and climate knowledge for environmental decision-making
  Session 1