Mapping the climate change context of Copenhagen

Insights for the Future from the Change of Climate in Copenhagen (Part #8)

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David Price of Debategraph and the Global Sensemaking community enabled a mapping process to gather arguments presented at Copenhagen, in collaboration with the MIT Climate Collaboratorium team, and The Open University Cohere COP15 team, The Copenhagen Summit map team, and The Independent / Debategraph team (see David Price, ESSENCE and the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, 2009; Copenhagen Summit Map, 2009). This was hosted via The Independent (Debategraph: Copenhagen - what's happening?).

Such initiatives are exceptional with respect to international gatherings, despite the availability of technology of increasingly sophistication for decades (Complementary Knowledge Analysis / Mapping Process, 2006). A quite different approach was taken using the text analysis application Leximancer (see illustrative gallery) in various distinct experiments to generate interactive maps and reports from texts available during the the Copenhagen process. With thanks to Julia Cretchley of Leximancer, these included:

1. Interactive concept map derived from text of existing UNFCCC treaty (see below)
2. Interactive concept map derived from text of draft UNFCCC treaty (see below)
3. Automatically generated report: Leximancer comparison of insights in existing and draft texts

Screenshots of Leximancer interactive concept maps From the highest level. indicated below, users could drill down to more specific concepts access the specific texts citing them
Existing UNFCCC treaty (click image for larger version)	Draft UNFCCC treaty (click image for larger version)

In a further experiment, a text by regular contributor environmental commentator George Monbiot (Clive James isn't a climate change sceptic, he's a sucker - but this may be the reason, The Guardian. 2 November 2009) together with the 869 comments it attracted, was analyzed using the web-crawler feature of the Leximancer application. As with the texts above, an interactive map was generated and made available to interested parties during the Copenhagen process. In this case the screenshots (below) indicate the kinds of detailed information extracted at various stages of any interaction by users with the facility.

Various screenshots of interactive analysis of concepts in a commentary on the pre-conference climate change process, together with the 869 comments it attracted

Curiously few international initiatives, if any, take formal steps to map their own discourse as a contribution to self-reflexivity and learning in order to improve upon the initiatives of the past when envisaging new initiatives. Such an approach has never been a characteristic of intergovernmental events.

It is therefore interesting to contrast this aversion to an analytical overview by the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US of the counterinsurgency (COIN) initiative in Afghanistan as represented by the PA Consulting Group. This takes the form of a map, notably publicized on behalf of McClatchy Newspapers by Dion Nissenbaum (The great Afghan spaghetti monster, Checkpoint Kabul, 20 December 2009; Graphic Shows Complexity of US Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, The Huffington Post, 22 December 2009). Coincidentally this map has been publicized over the web at the end of the Copenhagen event. It will be interesting to see whether analysis of that event gives rise to a map of equivalent detail.

In the absence (to date) of any such map for Copenhagen, as an experimental exercise it is instructive to adapt the rich analytical framework of the Afghanistan counterinsurgency analysis to climate change. The legitimacy of such an adaptation may be argued on the basis that the viability of both strategic initiatives is dependent in cybernetic systems terms on a set of interacting functions. From the perspective of general systems theory, it is to be expected that there is a degree of isomorphism between a systems analysis of the global initiative in Afghanistan and that with respect to climate change. Whatever the inadequacies of such an exercise, it may at least serve to highlight the knowledge tools used to focus initiatives on which unprecedented global resources are being expended -- given the shameful paucity of resources devoted to representing the challenges of climate change in the light of the conflicting relations between those party to that process.

Adaptation to climate change of a representation of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan (click on image for larger version)
Afghanistan COIN dynamic (clusters in original map)	Climate change COIN dynamic (clusters in adapted map)
Population/Popular support Infrastructure, Economy and Services Government Afghanistan Security Forces (ANSF) Insurgents Crime and Narcotics Coalition Forces and Actions Physical Environment	Population/Popular support Infrastructure, Economy and Services Governance Activist NGO Strategic Forces (ANSF) Dissenters ("Them") Crime and Distractions Initiatives of Coalition of the Willful ("US") Physical Environment

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