Abstract
Dr. Julie Matthews, from University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia, addressed the conference on "Asia, Climate Change Complexity and Cultural Hybridity." "Climate change has made climatologists of many of us, and if it hasn't it should have done," she said, "Our survival on the Earth is dependent on our capacity to understand what is happening and to act accordingly." Dr. Matthews believes that identity and tradition will not save us: "There is no going back to any pristine world we've lost." What is needed, instead, is a hybrid consciousness, one that raises awareness of complexity and the "mixness of things," she said, and that forces a radical critique of everything we take for granted, not least "the boundaries that we know to be of our own making, historically and culturally constructed." An example of a hybrid project is the South East Queensland Climate Adaptation Research Initiative, on which she is one of many scientists and academics, working with government decision-makers to try to figure out what kind of policies need to be initiated over the next 10 to 20 years to address expected sea-level rises of 0.5 and 0.8 meters. The Earth's ecosystem resilience - that's how the scientists refer to it, she said - will be exceeded this century, but so far climate change is a future risk that does not have a tangible effect on everyday life for most people. "This makes urgency in action quite difficult to get across to people," said Matthews. In hybrid visions, everyone's viewpoint is needed. "Unless we bring together indigenous knowledge with science and social science, we're not doing our job as academics."