The geographical ontology challenge in attending to anthropogenic climate change: regional geography revisited

Abstract

AbstractAnthropogenic climate change is a complex process that does not respect political boundaries. Thus it is argued states are problematic agencies for tackling the global climate emergency. But it is the world political map that provides the geographical ontology foundation of the massive efforts of climate policy development. Geography's long tradition of regional study is suggested as a means of countering focus on states for policy development. Ontological inventions are proposed that transcend states. These take the form of experimenting with geographical regions encompassing human‐environmental interactions as alternative spatial policy framings to the world political map. Three examples are presented: intergovernmental resilient regions for mitigation; localization through urban sustainable regions; and regions for planetary stewardship of humans‐in‐nature. None of these are ‘solutions’, rather they are illustrations of possible future regional geographies intended to stimulate current cohorts of geographers to contribute necessary regional thinking to the scholarship unpinning climate change policymaking.