Skip to content

Portrait of a climate city: How climate change is emerging as a risk in Bergen, Norway

Bremer Scott, Eleanor Johnson, Kjersti Fløttum, Kyrre Kverndokk, Arjan Wardekker, Werner Krauss. 2020. Portrait of a climate city: How climate change is emerging as a risk in Bergen, Norway. Climate Risk Management, 29, 100236.

Abstract

Climate change is dramatically shifting the way cities interpret and live with their local climate. This paper analyses how climate change is emerging as a matter of concern in the public spheres of Bergen, and interprets how this concern is affecting Bergen’s identity, with implications for the city’s climate risk governance. Historically, Bergen has a strong identity as Europe’s rainiest city, manifested in its cultural and social life. In the past 15 years, Bergen’s identity has been shifting from a ‘weather city’ to a ‘climate city’. This paper draws on ethnographic research, interviews and document analysis to map this shift as co-produced by certain social and natural events and processes; told as narratives of change. This identity shift is creating surprising hybrid representations of climate that are locally meaningful, shaped as much by Bergen’s cultural weatherworld as by incoming ideas of climate change. These representations influence Bergen’s attitudes towards climate risk governance, and may extend influence to global scales via climate city networks. This identity shift also moves the timeframe of risk governance. As a weather city, risks were implicit to the city’s heritage and peoples’ lived experience. But as a climate city, risks are predicted, to foresee and prevent impacts. Critically employing co-production as an analytical lens can help us understand the multiple facets to cities’ climate risk governance, including the role of culture and identity.

Full article available here

You might like these publication categories

Recent publications

Building Capabilities for Earth System Governance

This Element develops a new Strategic Capabilities Framework for studying and steering complex socio-ecological systems. It is driven by the…

Trade and the Environment: Drivers and Effects of Environmental Provisions in Trade Agreements

The mushrooming of trade agreements and their interlinkages with environmental governance calls for new research on the trade and environment…

The Politics of Deep Time

Human societies increasingly interact with processes on a geological or even cosmic timescale. Despite this recognition, we still lack a…