Russian Framings of Global Climate Change

Abstract

This chapter analyses how global warming has been framed or represented in Russia over a seven-year period in the government-owned leading daily newspaper, Rossiskaya Gazeta; and how expert voices (primarily those of climate and natural scientists) have intervened in such framings. Three different sets of representations are identified in the chapter. One of these — a frame that diminished the importance of debates over the causes of climate change by allowing for a ‘mixed causality’ approach — became the most prominent in the post-Kyoto ratification period and was utilized especially by government representatives. This suggests that Russia, over time, has developed its own national framing of climate change by drawing upon some central points of international framings of climate change and combining them, however ambivalently, with aspects of domestic debates. This casual approach to causality suggests that scientists and scientific knowledge are part of the theatre of policy debate without being decisive factors.

This chapter is a revised and updated version of an article originally published in 2009: Elana Wilson Rowe, ‘Who’s To Blame: Agency, Causality and Responsibility and the Role of Experts in Russian Framings of Climate Change’, Europe-Asia Studies, 61(4): 593–619. Text and figures reprinted with permission from Taylor and Francis, license number 2992960175013.