Future Families: Climate Justice, Intimate Life and the Adaptation of the Human

Lead Research Organisation: Lancaster University
Department Name: Lancaster Environment Centre

Abstract

My research asks how the climate emergency is changing our understandings of what it means to be human. All over the world, people are adjusting their expectations about how to live safe, healthy and fulfilling human lives in a radically uncertain ecological future. In much political and media conversation about the climate emergency, the focus is on how to reorganise and transform our societies in areas such as governance, energy, transport, food and housing. As important as all these questions are, they often overlook the fact that if they are to take place, the required changes will depend on changes to how we live our private lives, in the "everyday spaces" of the family and the household.

My PhD research investigated how the idea of 'climate justice' is used and understood within international climate politics between approximately 2009 and 2019. By analysing an extensive set of documents, interviews with international climate experts and observations of international climate change events, I demonstrated that 'climate justice' is increasingly used as a frame for climate change and climate action, and one that highlights that the poorest people in the poorest countries will be affected by climate change. In other words, it talks about climate change as a social justice and 'human' issue as well as just one affecting the natural environment. However, I also argue that as well as simply providing a frame through which we can understand the climate crisis differently, 'climate justice' shows us that the figure of the human - and what it means to be human - are adapting to climate change.

The findings of my PhD research indicate the importance of asking how 'the human' is adapting to climate change. Therefore, my new research develops existing knowledge in this area by proposing a specific domain in which humans are changing their expectations about their lives and futures in a climate-changed world: their private family lives. For some people in wealthier, industrialised countries, the climate emergency is contributing to decisions to have fewer children, or not to have children at all. In other words, they are thinking differently about what a family, and a family life, look like. To look at this more closely, I will conduct in-depth, biographical interviews and focus groups with people who have decided not to have (more) children for reasons related to the climate emergency. This will help me achieve two aims. First, it will help me build an understanding of how participants have understood and made up their minds about (in)voluntary childlessness, family size and the climate emergency over a long period of time. Second, it will shed light on whether and how participants are cultivating any kind of alternative family structures or relationships. As well as contributing to academic scholarship, the findings of this research will be of interest to policymakers, non-governmental and cultural organisations who are invested in an inclusive, publicly accessible collective conversation about how we live under the climate emergency.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Description This summary will provide an overview of four key findings from this pilot research project.
First, its findings offer an early suggestion that people of all ages and genders in the UK have concerns about having children in the context of (future) climate change. While the majority of those showing interest in and participating in the study were, as expected, of the age where they would be considering having children (in their late 20s and 30s), others were in their 40s, 50s and 60s, and some who expressed an interest in the research had already had children. This spread of ages and family statuses indicates that while the subject has to prominence in the public and media conversations only recently, concerns about having children in the context of climate change may not be new.
Second, many of those who showed interest and/or took part in the study reported that this was a subject they felt they could not easily discuss in their everyday lives, and some had had their concerns dismissed or minimised by their friends and family, or felt that their friends and family might not understand how they felt if they shared their feelings with them. The participants welcomed this research project as an opportunity to have an open, honest conversation with someone not involved in their everyday lives (the researcher), in which they felt they would not be judged. Some of the interviews were long (up to 2 hours in length) because participants had so much to say, and there was a sense that they had been looking for an outlet through which they could share their narratives, which were long, complex and seemed to have been built up over a period of time. This suggests that despite recent media attention given to the topic of (non)reproductive intentions and climate change, there are a lack of opportunities for people to engage in compassionate, non-judgmental conversations about it.
Third, participants seldom cited climate change as the main reason for their reluctance or hesitation around having children. Instead, it must be seen as one factor in a complex web of considerations which included gender, sexuality, health, existing family and partner relationships, employment prospects, living away from a home country or family, and general sense of the world in the 2020s as an inhospitable place for raising children. Participants were invited to reflect on two prospects: 1) the added carbon and consumption burden that having a child would bring into the world, and 2) the likelihood of their hypothetical children experiencing hardship, fear and having to live in a degraded world in the future. They generally related more strongly to the second prospect than the first, which backs up the findings of existing research, and some pushed back strongly on the first prospect, feeling that it was important not to provide legitimacy to ideas of population control or people as 'burdens'.
Fourth, when invited to reflect on what a climate-changed future might look like, participants gave a range of views, from fears of a fundamental societal collapse to a sense that life would simply get gradually harder. When asked about whether they had consciously built up any alternative 'family' relationships, one participant gave a detailed account of this but most reported that they had not, though perhaps these responses would have been different if the question had been posed differently, or through more creative, participatory research methods.
Exploitation Route The outcomes of this research could be taken forward by policymakers, organisations in the third sector and researchers (both academic and non-academic). First, this is a relatively new area of research and these findings are based on a qualitative study, with a very small sample of self-selecting participants, so much more research needs to be done to to test these findings with different groups of people and with different methodological approaches. Such research could include large-scale surveys of a representative sample of the population that would produce a large amount of quantitative data, or in-depth studies using deliberative methodologies, bringing together a representative sample of the population, including people who did not self-select for participation in the research, and taking a more exploratory approach to the subject. Studies undertaken over a longer time period would also be useful for finding out how people's views on the subject are changing over time. Secondly, there are ample opportunities for third-sector organisations and cultural institutions to create spaces - such as discussion, peer support groups, or those involving creative activities - in which a broader collective conversation on the subject of having children in the context of climate change, and what families might look like in the future more broadly, can be cultivated.
Sectors Communities and Social Services/Policy

Education

Government

Democracy and Justice

Culture

Heritage

Museums and Collections

 
Description Co-written article for The Ecologist magazine 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact As part of a project I developed during this award, I co-authored an article for The Ecologist, an environmental news and analysis website. This article was titled 'Refugee Environmental Protection Fund: Fix or Fiction?' and its purpose was to showcase new research in an emerging area of focus. Since the global inflation crisis and influx of refugees into Europe following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) has become increasingly reliant on finance from private sources and 'innovative funding instruments' to plug its funding gap. One example of these funding instruments is the Refugee Environmental Protection Fund, which will support tree-planting and clean cooking programmes in and around refugee camps in order to generate carbon credits by reducing deforestation in these areas, as well as to save camp residents - who are mostly women - the labour of having to collect firewood. Given The Ecologist maintains a large mailing list of readers, this article found an audience among interested researchers and those outside of academia. This short, public-facing article is being followed up by a peer-reviewed academic journal article, to be submitted in early 2025. Please note that this article, and the forthcoming peer-reviewed article, are co-authored with two researchers who are not researchers or investigators on the Future Families award.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://theecologist.org/2024/apr/03/refugee-environmental-protection-fund-fix-or-fiction
 
Description Future Families X/Twitter account 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact At the beginning of the award, I created an account on Twitter (now X) for the project in order to recruit participants and inform fellow academic and other interested audiences about the progress of the project. Since late 2024, however, X has become a much less useful place for engagement on questions relating to this project, so I decided to mothball the X account and start providing updates via a Substack newsletter instead.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023,2024
URL https://x.com/_future_family
 
Description Future Families project website 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Study participants or study members
Results and Impact I set up a project website at the beginning of the project, which would be hosted on the Lancaster University Wordpress server, in order to recruit participants for the project, to connect with other researchers and to provide general information and updates to other interested audiences, such as the general public.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023,2024
URL https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/future-families/home/
 
Description Substack email newsletter for the Future Families project 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Following the mothballing of the Future Families project X account in September 2024, I set up an email newsletter on Substack in order to share future updates from the project, as well fostering a general audience for writing on the subject of families and climate change. Since there have been few project updates recently, this has not been updated in the past few months.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2024
URL https://matildafitzmaurice.substack.com/