[Sci-tech-public] STS Circle, October 22 - Martin Mahony (Please RSVP)

[STS]

STS Circle at Harvard
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Martin Mahony
University of East Anglia/Harvard, STS

on
The Predictive State: Science, Autonomy, and the Future of the Indian Climate

Monday, October 22
12:15-2:00 p.m.
Pierce Hall, 29 Oxford Street, Room 100F

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Lunch is provided if you RSVP.
Please RSVP to sts<mailto:sts at hks.harvard.edu>@hks.harvard.edu<mailto:sts at hks.harvard.edu> by 5pm Wednesday, October 17.

Abstract:This talk will explore the changing geographies of climate prediction through a study of the ways in which climate change is rendered knowable at the national scale in India. The recent controversy surrounding the erroneous prediction of melting Himalayan glaciers by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) provides a window onto the complex and at times antagonistic relationship between the Panel and Indian political and scientific communities. The Indian reaction to the error – made public in 2009 – corresponded with a number of institutional innovations including the establishment of a national scientific assessment network which has given the state a new platform on which to bring together knowledge of the future climate. The establishment and activities of the network were instigated by the Minister for Environment and Forests, who was widely praised for promoting an Indian scientific voice on climate change at a time of both scientific and political controversy. However, alongside assertions of national scientific autonomy sits a broader epistemic network which inextricably links the practices of climate prediction in India with those of the United Kingdom and other Western nations. This talk explores the scalar politics of these emergent networks and considers the increasing centrality of knowledge about the future of pre-defined territories (for example, climate change predictions for nation states) as an epistemic foundation for certain forms of governing.


Biography:Martin Mahony is a visiting fellow with the Program on Science, Technology and Society (STS) at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. His current research focuses on the epistemic geographies of climate change, including the practices and politics of scientific assessment and simulation modelling. He has published work on the practices and governance of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the contested role of regional climate predictions in adaption decision making, and on practices of visualization in efforts to communicate the risks associated with climate change.
Martin is currently in the final year of his PhD at the University of East Anglia, UK, where he works within the newly-formed Science, Society and Sustainability (3S) Research Group. He holds a BA (Hons) in Geography from Oxford University and an MRes in Environmental Social Science from the University of East Anglia.




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