Ellen Maria Gorrissen Lecture

Climate Change and the Global South

Prevailing wisdom argues that people living in rich countries care more about climate change than those living in poor countries. This finding is consistent with modernization theory: As nations get richer, their citizens acquire “post-material values” such as environmentalism, which supposedly arise along with other liberal values. Iza Ding’s lecture challenges this idea, demonstrating that many contemporary surveys overlook the ways in which people in the developing world use vernaculars, heuristics, and contextualized practices to process the severe environmental challenges they face daily.