Climate Change and Political Mobilization in the Global South Initiative
Climate change is expected to increase political instability as the effects of a warming planet impact human health, economic growth, migration, and armed conflict. But scholars have paid relatively little attention to these dynamics in the developing world, where the impacts of climate change are strongest and where carbon emissions are growing most quickly.
The Climate Change and Political Mobilization in the Global South Initiative was launched in 2024 to address this research gap by studying a range of topics related to climate politics in the global south. The initiative’s first project was to develop a novel, algorithmic tool that allows it to compare survey information from across countries and years. Using the tool, the team has created a comprehensive database of Afrobarometer survey questions combined with geocoded measures of environmental exposure to give a picture of the association between climate change and public opinion over time.
Another project involves hyper-localized informational treatments on climate’s long-term costs in an effort to make the scale of the crisis understandable to ordinary citizens. The initiative also has plans to conduct broad public opinion surveys in emerging economies to get a better sense of how citizens perceive and understand climate change and also how they want their governments to respond to the problem.
Team
- Amanda Kennard, principal investigator
- Brandon de la Cuesta, postdoctoral scholar and co-principal investigator
- Kidanewold Demesie, predoctoral research fellow
Past Team Members
Dawson Verley, research data analyst
Selected Work
Publications
Climate Change and Political Mobilization: Theory and Evidence from India
My Brother’s Keeper: Other-regarding preferences and concern for global climate change
Climate and health benefits of a transition from gas to electric cooking
The Political Economy of Pro-poor Climate Adaptation in Latin America and the Caribbean
Contact
For more information about the initiative, please contact King Center Executive Director Jessica Leino at jleino@stanford.edu.