Title: Towards a ''folk integrated assessment'' of climate change?

Authors: Eric Darier, Simon Shackley, Brian Wynne

Addresses: Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC), Lancaster University, LA1 4YT, UK. Manchester School of Management, UMIST, Manchester, M60 1QD, UK. Centre for the Study of Environmental Change (CSEC), Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YT, UK.

Abstract: This paper questions the assumption that public participation in integrated assessment (IA) means finding (better) ways to make the public engage with IA. Following other studies about public perceptions of expert/scientific knowledge, it is unclear why the public should - or even want to - approach issues (such as climate change) from the epistemologically privileged expert-framed perspectives of IA. The objective of this paper is to reverse the order and re-centre the problematique of public participation and IA toward a public-centred perspective, toward a ||folk integrated assessment||. In order to undertake this task, illustrations of how groups of lay members of the public perceive and think about issues such as climate change are presented and analysed. They reveal the already existing, always context-dependent complexity, diversity, richness and ambiguity of lay knowledge and ||integration|| skills.

Keywords: climate; (dis)trust; folk integrated assessment; public perception.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEP.1999.002266

International Journal of Environment and Pollution, 1999 Vol.11 No.3, pp.351-372

Published online: 13 Aug 2003 *

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