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Paper short abstract

STS highlights that the planetary scale of climate models is a local vision. I empirically explore “the visions of locality” to examine which versions of locality are at stake in data-based imaginings of climate futures, which alternatives are proscribed, and how it can be otherwise.

Paper long abstract

STS has drawn attention to the importance of “provincializing” the climate and highlighted the “locality of vision” in the planetary scale that climate models have enabled (as opposed to the universalist, “from nowhere” vision they often imply). However, climatologists, environmental scientists, and epidemiologists are increasingly working to make data a common ground for climate adaptation, a “going local” approach where the promise is to reduce the effects of climate change on specific places and communities. For epidemiologists, addressing “the next pandemic” or the rise in infectious disease cases driven by climate change is a global urgency. For climatologists and environmental scientists, more fine-grained data is important for determining how extreme weather events affect local communities and territories.

In this paper, I suggest that the trend towards “going local” in climate adaptation raises new questions for STS scholarship, particularly regarding the competing visions of locality and the planetary that emerge in the practices of “harmonizing” data and “downscaling” models. I do so by presenting empirical examples from a project that seeks to integrate environmental, climate, and health data in Latin America to support climate adaptation in health, paying attention to the forms of knowledge, community participation, and care that they enable and foreclose. I propose ‘visions of locality’ as a new avenue for STS research to examine which versions of locality are at stake when the future of climate governance is imagined based on data, which alternatives are proscribed, and how it can be otherwise.