Climate Change Discourse, Rights and the Poor: Scientific Knowledge, International Political Discourse, and Local Voices

Climate change as a scientific issue is now a widely accepted global challenge. Narratives of climate change become central to development discourse, and increasingly frame understandings of other global challenges, such as poverty and health. In this pro ject we ask how climate narratives affect approaches and responses to the poor and their rights, particularly social rights related to resources affected by climate change impacts such as water and food. We focus our analysis on a concrete country, South Africa (SA), in partnership with scholars involved in building new knowledge on the issues. We aim to strengthen the competence of Norway as a key player in the relations between climate and poverty; we aim to improve the knowledge base on Norways bilater al relations with SA. By building partnerships with SA scholars, the project will contribute to a better understanding of the challenges for development aid cooperation that is responsible towards both the environment and the poor. As an emergent discour se on climate change is rapidly developing, especially regarding assessment of impacts, some fundamental questions arise: What narratives on poverty are being used by different global and national actors in relation to climate? How is national level disco urses influenced by global discourses? How do activists on social rights incorporate concerns with climate change? How do various voices in the development debate relate to and how do political actors use scientific knowledge on climate change? Which clai ms have more epistemic and political weight? Whose voices are privileged? We address these questions through an integrated approach centred on analyzing and understanding the polyphonic (multi-voiced) nature of climate change debate. We seek to analyze th e framing of the issues, by using various complementary discourse analysis methodologies seeking an understanding of key concepts, voices-actors, and epistemic weight of knowledge claims.