Events

Anthropological research for future climate governance

10 June 2024, 13.15-16.00
Hbrid: IRI THESys, Rudower Chaussee 26, room 3.25, & on Zoom

What if an independent public auditing institution specialized in controlling the entire federal management of climate protection? What tasks would such a national audit office for climate take on? How would it impact public accountability? The recent anthropological research project “Pre-enacting climate change knowledge”, based at the University of Vienna, addressed these questions of future climate governance (FWF TAI-663). Together with actors from academia, activism, public administration, and civil society, the project publicly explored the knowledge base and work practices of the Austrian Climate Court of Audit (in German Klimarechnungshof) as if the authority were already in operation. This talk discusses the project’s methodological approach of a multimodal real fiction, at the center of which was the conception and implementation of the activist campaign Klimarechnungshof Jetzt! (Climate Court of Audit Now!)

Milena D. Bister is Professor of Environmental Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies and head of “The Laboratory: Anthropology of Environment | Human Relations” at the Institute of European Ethnology, HU Berlin. Her research focuses on the linkages between multispecies health, anthropogenic climate change, and urban living.