Barriers to ideal transfer of climate change information in developing nations

Abstract

Global climate change is one of the most pressing crises of the 21st century, with its economic impact anticipated to be in the trillions of dollars, causing major political and social upheaval. While evidenced-based research suggests means through which nations can adapt to climate change, there are tremendous barriers to this information reaching the most vulnerable populations: those who live in developing nations. An investigation of the factors contributing to these barriers identifies three broad phases in the lifecycle of information that have contributed to these unfavorable conditions: the reproduction and dissemination of information, the organization and storage of information, and the diffusion of information/knowledge. Each of these phases is described as well as potential solutions to improve the transfer of information and the effectiveness of developing nations to adapt to climate change conditions.

Keywords

Climate change developing countries diffusion of knowledge information transfer international librarianship policy

Introduction

Developing countries are, and will continue to be, disproportionally affected by global climate change. Developing nations (below 0.7 on the human development index) represent 40% of all nations worldwide and nearly one-third of the earth’s population, but have a total pollution output of less than 3% of the global total (Huq et al., 2004). These nations will, however, experience the same challenges caused by global climate change as all other countries. Unfortunately, since developing nations typically have weaker political, economic, and information infrastructures, significant changes in policy, economy, and agriculture caused by climate change will likely devastate these nations unless efforts are made to educate the public about climate change and help strengthen infrastructures to meet new environmental challenges. While research exists that demonstrates how nations may successfully adapt to climate change, this research is presently not accessible to the broad majority of individuals within developing nations due language, social, and infrastructure barriers. Strategies are needed to overcome these barriers to information and prevent economic and health disaster.

What is global climate change?

Global climate change, also called global warming, is a body of evidence, causes, and solutions stemming from the systematic decrease in the earth’s ozone layer and increase in levels of CO2, global average temperature, and extreme weather events. Though the cause of climate change was initially unknown, virtually all independent researchers and academic scholars agree that the emission of greenhouse gases during practices such as manufacturing, transportation, forestry, and energy production has contributed significantly to the development of these conditions over the past two centuries (Adger et al., 2005; Campbell-Lendrum and Corvalan, 2007; Haines et al., 2006; Mendelsohn et al., 2006; Mertz et al., 2009; United Nations, 1992). Global climate change represents a significant and worldwide economic, social, and political crisis that has the potential to impact virtually all industries and threaten public health and safety. Hundreds of millions of dollars are invested annually into the investigation of climate change and its causes and ways to reduce its impact on society and the earth. Due to the economic and social ramifications of human-caused climate change and efforts to reduce its impact, advocacy and industrial groups on both sides of the issue also spend billions of dollars each year to influence climate change policy and initiatives. These factors make global climate change a heated issue with major immediate and longitudinal impacts.

Many climate change prediction models suggest that the average annual temperature will increase two-and-a-half degrees Celsius (four-and-a-half degrees Fahrenheit) over the next four decades, and precipitation will decrease globally by 6% (Mendelsohn et al., 2006; Reid and Goldenberg, 1998). These changes vary from region to region across the globe. Asia, Africa, South America, and Western Europe are expected to see greater increases in temperature and decreases in precipitation, while North America, South Africa, Australia, and Eastern Europe are expected to see smaller increases in temperature and increases, rather than decreases, in precipitation.

Developing nations are anticipated to be the most negatively impacted by global climate change. Whereas highly developed countries (e.g. United States, Canada, Western Europe, Australia) are anticipated to have slightly-negative to moderately-positive growth in overall economy directly resulting from climate change, economists almost unanimously agree that developing countries will experience moderate-to-severe economic decline as a result of climate change (Huq et al., 2004). The difference in growth/decline in these nations stems from the type of economy by which they are characterized. Agrarian economies (where the largest industry is agriculture) and those that have a large tribal population, particularly when they are situated near the equator, are anticipated to experience economic losses as temperature and precipitation conditions change. Industrial and post-industrial nations (where manufacturing, technology, and/or management is the largest industry) are less likely to experience economic losses and may, in fact, experience gains as the new climate conditions require adaptation to new technologies and innovative thinking.

Climate change is anticipated to have major effects on public health and safety (Campbell-Lendrum and Corvalan, 2007; Haines et al., 2006). Among the risk factors expected to increase as a result of climate change are included flooding, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornados, extreme heat/heat-stroke, air pollution, sanitation, vector-borne diseases (Malaria, West Nile), cardiovascular disease caused by lack of mobility in poor climate conditions, and malnutrition (Campbell-Lendrum and Corvalan, 2007; St Clair and Lynch, 2010; Weber and Stern, 2011). These conditions will, directly or indirectly, affect virtually all individuals living in developing nations (McSweeney et al., 2010).

Infrastructures are expected to face unparalleled strains due to climate change. Information systems, like disaster response systems and broadcast radio, are likely to play a major role in the ability of nations to adapt to climate change and respond to disasters caused by these conditions (Huq et al., 2004). Transportation and roads will take a toll from increased temperatures, which will likely ground many older planes that were not built to fly in such conditions and cause substantial cracking and wear on roads and railway lines (McSweeney et al., 2010). Increased costs for transportation will result in increased costs for agriculture and industry, causing further strain on developing economies (Mendelsohn, 2008; Mendelsohn and Dinar, 1999).

Social paradigms and public policy

Global climate change planning and policy has traditionally been informed by a functionalist way of thinking, which emphasizes utility and maintenance rather than flexibility and change (Miller, 2002). This way of thinking is dominated by its emphasis on the whole rather than parts, and majorities as opposed to all. Functionalists will look to do what is best for the largest number of people and apply policy accordingly, even if it leaves some minority groups behind. Functionalism is dominant in climate change policy that seeks to impose the same punishments and strategies for combatting and adapting to climate change for all nations (Miller, 2002). These strategies are beneficial to the majority of the world’s population and will help reduce the effect of climate change in large countries like the United States, China, and India, which have industrial or postindustrial economies; however, these functionalist strategies leave developing nations, with smaller and evolving economies, at tremendous disadvantage.

A philosophical shift is needed to reorient policy and planning to best serve the diverse and individual nations that share the planet. This shift should move our thinking from a functionalist perspective to a more relativistic paradigm that challenges preconceptions about variable policymaking. An interpretivist or radical humanist perspective may reframe policy decisions in a manner that considers the unique situation of each nation, adopting one set of guidelines and restrictions for more developed nations and another for developing nations (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). These new perspectives inform the strategy that follows, which targets information transfer and the diffusion of knowledge about climate change research in developing nations.

Adaptation to global climate change as an information issue

Evidence-based research exists that provides guidance for how developing nations may adapt to global climate change conditions. In other words, the information has been created. This research, however, rarely reaches the academics and policymakers in developing nations, let alone the general public. There are several reasons for this inaccessibility of climate change information, each of which is discussed below. These information issues are not necessarily unique to climate change information, but given the immediate and longitudinal effects of climate change, the severity with which it has and will continue to impact global infrastructures and economies, and the incentives among certain industries (oil producers, manufacturers, etc.) to suppress climate change information and limit policy, the need to identify solutions for the transfer of climate change information is at an immediate, crisis level.

Reproduction and dissemination of information

First, and most fundamentally, the research about global climate change is not produced or translated in the native languages. The vast majority of published peer-reviewed literature is written in one of seven languages: English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Hindi, and Mandarin (Miller, 2002). These works are generally not translated into other languages, unless a researcher takes on the task of doing so (which many academics do not, since it does not carry nearly the weight of original research in academic promotion and tenure review settings). In nations where none of these seven languages are spoken, access to existing research is limited. Furthermore, even in countries like India, Brazil, and Nigeria, where the majority of the high-school educated population will learn to speak English, many individuals do not complete their education due to social and economic constraints, or lose the language due to a lack of use. India and Nigeria each have over 500 native languages and English is mainly used only by those working in commercial and academic settings. English, the language spoken in the most nations on Earth, is still only used in 101 of 196 countries worldwide and only about 20% of the world’s population has a sufficient understanding of the language to understand academic writing (Miller, 2002). If the information is not available in a format that an individual can understand, then a barrier exists to information access. This situation is not dissimilar from a library system that has no audio book collections for the visually-impaired. These types of services, that produce accessible content, require significant public funding, which is often not possible in developing nations.

That information that has been translated is still often inaccessible to the inhabitants of developing nations, due to the high costs of scholarly publications and the limited budgets of many libraries, academic institutions, government organizations, and individuals (Heeks, 2002; Zanello et al., 2016). Very few academic libraries – let alone public or school libraries – in developing nations can afford a subscription to a major library database like ABI/INFORM. Students generally rely on open-access publications for research. Most climate change journals, however, do not subscribe to an open-access model, meaning that this information is not reaching these individuals (Zanello et al., 2016).

Few publishers of scholarly work take measures to ensure the dissemination of this research to academics in developing nations. The Association for Information Systems suggests a means by which this could be done while still remaining profitable as an organization, i.e. by charging higher institutional membership rates in nations with very high and high human development indices and very low membership rates (1/20 of the high-developed nations) for institutions in developing nations (Association for Information Systems, 2018). This subscription provides access through an e-library to all AIS peer-reviewed journals and books (many of which are the most prominent journals in the field). The American Library Association takes this model a step farther, with many of its peer-reviewed journals being open access to the public. These models, however, are extremely rare. The American Psychological Association charges, at minimum, $5,795 US per year for academic institutions to provide access to its journals (American Psychological Association, 2018). This is equal to the total annual income of five full-time workers in low-income developing countries, and only slightly less than the starting salary of a PhD-credentialed assistant professor in most developing countries (World Bank, 2018).

Organization, access, and preservation of information (information infrastructure)

Developing nations often struggle to maintain a strong, consistent, and secure information infrastructure. In developing countries only about 42.9% of the population, on average, have regular access to the Internet, with only 14.7% on average for the least developed countries (bottom half) (International Telecommunications Union, 2017). Less than 50% of individuals from these nations have used the Internet before. Libraries can be scarce, particularly within rural areas of developing nations, and do not necessarily provide access to the Internet either. Budgets for libraries are often strained, which may preclude the purchase of the newest resources available. Regular access to television, radio, or newsprint is not a given within developing nations (Zanello et al., 2016). The primary means for the transmission of information is through direct communication amongst individuals. This presents barriers to access in regards to the latest research on time-critical issues like climate change, which grows in severity with each passing day that measures are not taken to reduce emissions and adapt to new environmental conditions.

Information that is collected by organizations like libraries and schools often is not properly cataloged due to a lack of time and labor resources (Ganimian and Murmane, 2016; Lund et al., 2019; Tella and Issa, 2011). This makes information retrieval a challenging endeavor and leads to frustration from the information seeker. The lay person in a developing country is extremely unlikely to come across any news about climate change, unlike in developed nations, where the knowledge is usually diffused even if it is rejected by the individual. This is true of many academic subjects, but with time-critical issues like climate change it is particularly detrimental to the ability of individuals to inform themselves and make necessary adaptations before it is too late. In recent decades, many developing nations, particularly those bordering large nations within their region like Brazil, Nigeria, Kenya, India, and China, have placed a stronger emphasis on hiring trained librarians and developing programs of library education (Tella and Issa, 2011). However, this effort has led to its own problems, with more trained librarians without jobs than with them and the librarian positions themselves often barely offering a living wage. Libraries in many developing countries lack computers and still rely on traditional paper card catalogs to organize resources in the library.

Resources in these libraries, most of which are physical books and periodicals, are often stored in conditions that leave them exposed to quick wear and damage. The physical buildings may experience flooding, extreme heat or cold, power outages, and theft – not unlike the conditions that threaten materials in developed countries, but at a more frequent rate (Tella and Issa, 2011). These conditions present another justification for governments not to provide funding for new acquisitions. Poor organization and preservation of information, unfortunately, is often used as a rationale for not acquiring new information. Climate change will only make these damaging conditions (extreme temperatures, storms, power outages) all the more common, resulting in a spiraling effect if immediate actions are not taken to disrupt the status quo.

Diffusion of knowledge/information

What is knowledge of climate change? Wolf and Moser (2011) define knowledge of climate change as the acquisition and use of information about climate change and strategies to accommodate to it. It is not sufficient to say that one knows that climate change exists, as many individuals in developing nations know it exists but lack the knowledge to do anything about it. True knowledge of climate change requires the application of information to combat or adapt to climate change conditions. This knowledge, unlike the simple awareness that climate change exists, is typically acquired only through active engagement of information. An individual can passively watch a TV show or film about climate change and be convinced that it exists, but must engage in active inquiry to understand the specific conditions of their environment and how to enact change (Wolf and Moser, 2011). Information organizations (including schools and libraries) can support this active inquiry through the process of diffusion of knowledge, a concept derived from the work of Everett Rogers (2010). Diffusion of knowledge, unlike simple dissemination, describes the process of transferring knowledge into personal action (Greer et al., 2007).

Adaptation of knowledge is closely related to the concept of diffusion. Adaptation is the process of changing an innovation/information to suit a specific context (Buttolph, 1992). While journal articles and scholarly books are excellent for the diffusion of knowledge among academics in developed nations, they are less efficient for those who do not have a post-graduate education and the general public in developed and developing nations. In nations that already have a poor information infrastructure, presenting information only in this dense, scholarly form does no favors to diffusion. Adaptation encourages the reworking of the format in which knowledge is presented to be relevant to a new audience. In the case of individuals in developing nations, this may be revising works that were designed to describe crises in global climate change in the post-industrial world to those relevant to agrarian and industrial economies. Instead of suggesting a shift from gas-powered cars to electric cars (which would be mostly feasible in developed nations, but would not within developing countries due to cost barriers), a more sensible suggestion might be using more public transportation as opposed to personal vehicles. Instead of suggesting that ‘political agents redirect advocacy towards the financing of relocation away from coastlines,’ the adapted research work might read as ‘everyone living on the coastline should demand funds from the government to relocate.’ The second message is much easier to understand than the first and effectively communicates that the coastlines will be affected by climate change and those living on the coastlines should ask for funding from their government to move away from the coastline.

Diffusion of knowledge in developing nations is often hampered by political, social, and education crises (Chen and Hicks, 2004; Zenello et al., 2016). Fractured political systems, particularly those caught up in civil conflicts, are unable to support the diffusion or adaptation of knowledge in developing nations, or may not wish to do so based on political factors (intentionally keeping the public uninformed). The public may not trust scientists, particularly if they are from other countries and share views that conflict with religious or political beliefs. No matter how well-articulated statements are, they will not be diffused if individuals reject them based on a priori beliefs (even if that a priori belief appears completely false to an external observer). Thus, the religious and political structures within nations that might suggest, for instance, that climate change is the wrath of ancestors, will often overrule empirical findings communicated well (Zenello et al., 2016). This is a tricky issue to navigate, as preserving cultural beliefs and practices is important, but failure to diffuse this knowledge about climate change is almost certain to lead to devastating results. Education systems in developing nations may also present challenges. Most schools in developing nations do not have computers, let alone Internet access. While it is more common at universities, there is still no guarantee of consistent access (Chen and Hick, 2004). Materials, like updated textbooks and access to scholarly journals, are often limited. Many schools may use books that are over two decades old. These materials do not make it easy for researchers and advocates to communicate new research to the public.

Suppression of information

A unique challenge for the transfer of climate change information is the suppression of veracious information by industry agents who have a vested interest in having as little climate change policies and adaptation as possible – agents like energy companies and manufacturers, which tend to hold significant sway in emerging economies. These industries may be the largest employers in many countries. In adapting to climate change, through strategies that would likely affect the prosperity of these agents, individuals risk losing employment due either to necessary layoffs or retaliation. Research from the discipline of evolutionary psychology indicates that individuals will choose to satisfy immediate needs over future needs, even if satisfying immediate needs occurs to the detriment of future needs (Van den Bos and de Ridder, 2006). Overcoming this barrier to the transfer of climate change information requires demonstrating the immediate and life-altering impact of climate change and disrupting the social systems that support those entities that would suppress information at the cost of human well-being, which likely requires international collaboration as well as local political and economic changes.

Strengthening the transfer of information

Without overlooking the financial, social, and political constraints that limit monumental shifts in developing nations’ support of the information transfer process (e.g. investing a half-trillion dollars to provide consistent Internet access to everyone in India), strategies can be implemented that will improve individuals’ access to evidence-based research about global climate change. Following the same structure as the previous section, the following section will describe practical strategies for informing individuals in developing countries about climate change adaptation by supporting the specific stages in the information transfer process.

Reproduction and dissemination of information

To support the transfer of information, publishers should make an effort to work with local publishers or academic institutions in developing nations to reproduce information resources in a language and format that can be read by the populations in these nations. There are two potential challenges that this change could face. First, there is little financial incentive to translating manuscripts that only a few academics will read into minor languages. The incentive for the publishers must not be monetary, but rather humanitarian. Having a longitudinal perspective of the future of the publication, these journals may recognize that, in creating an informed citizenry in these countries, they are promoting future academics and researchers who will contribute to their journals (Chen and Hicks, 2004). The second challenge is time, and the recruitment of translators. If nothing else was found amenable, if publishers at least made their documents easier to copy and paste from, then individuals could use online translating programs to translate the articles into a language they understand.

Journals would also be wise (for humanitarian and financial reasons) to install a sliding-scale subscription rate based on the human development index, as with AIS. This is likely to encourage new subscriptions from organizations that previously could not afford subscription, increasing financial earnings and expanding the prominence of the journal. It will also increase the number of academics in developing nations who have access to this research and will be able to help diffuse it to the population.

Organization, access, and preservation of information (information infrastructure)

Libraries in developing and developed nations may work together to solve many of the challenges those in developing nations face in regard to organization, access, and preservation of information. Programs, like those hosted by the American Library Association, to support international librarians’ study (both in MLS degree programs and at annual conferences), helps to diffuse new ideas about library management and organization. Fulbright scholar programs, when taken full advantage of, allow for the exchange of ideas between library science scholars across borders. Grant projects may support the strengthening of information infrastructures and library science education in developing nations. Each of these opportunities takes a small step towards bolstering library service in developing nations; however, there are still far too few of these opportunities available. Thousands of highly-qualified individuals and libraries are champing at the bit to get the opportunity to engage in these learning and infrastructure projects, but only a select few receive the opportunity (Tella and Issa, 2011). In addition to limiting the impact of the programs, this also places a lot of pressure on those individuals and institutions that are selected to serve as exemplars and make no errors in how they utilize their newly acquired and highly valued knowledge. Organizations, like the International Federation of Library Associations and the American Library Association should be more proactive in presenting these opportunities, seeing them as an opportunity to expand the diversity of the profession. Successful programs, like the Emerging Leaders, should be expanded to include international participants from developing nations, who stand to make the biggest contributions to the field with what they learn from the process.

Libraries in developing nations, given limited resources, should place an emphasis in acquisitions and access on information pertinent to local and global crises. While all knowledge is certainly valuable, perhaps, given the choice, subscribing to journals about climate change and health crises is more valuable than subscribing to journals of literature and arts. Again, this is not to mitigate the importance of these fields, but rather to prioritize publication subscriptions based on the immediacy of its impact on broad social, political, and economic conditions.

While there is no perfect free solution to preserving information in environments with many environmental hazards, a sensible step could be taken to preserve collections: have a disaster preparedness plan in place. Many publications written in the late-2000s described the importance of disaster preparedness plans in the context of Hurricane Katrina, which caused substantial damage to libraries throughout New Orleans, Louisiana and the surrounding areas (Featherstone et al., 2008; Jaeger et al., 2006; Skinner, 2006). In the case of a natural disaster that can be anticipated (a hurricane, long-term flooding), the total damage can be reduced by relocating the most valuable resources in the collection. By having contact information for volunteers and emergency contacts, damage can be mitigated by a quick response. Those institutions that had an emergency response plan in place before Hurricane Katrina were not fully free from the damage of the event, but were able to minimize damage. Virtually all libraries in New Orleans that did not have an emergency response plan before the hurricane put one in place soon thereafter. This disaster provides a valuable lesson for ensuring the preservation of materials in developing nations subject to similar conditions.

Diffusion of knowledge/information

Diffusion is best supported through the transformation of scholarly writing into colloquial language (Chen and Hicks, 2004; Zenello et al., 2016). This process can be managed by academics in developing nations or counterparts in developed nations. Formats like recorded and in-person lectures/educational sessions and brief written descriptions and articles, distributed through free avenues, should be sought. Large university presses in developed nations (e.g. University of Chicago Press) may take it upon themselves to facilitate the diffusion of knowledge, or universities in developing nations with Internet access may gather enough resources to print Internet resources and distribute them throughout the surrounding region. Much of the recent research on the diffusion of knowledge has centered on the use of the Internet to communicate knowledge in formats that are approachable for the general public (Chen and Hick, 2004; Detmer and Shortlife, 1997; Siegel et al., 2003), which would, unfortunately, be a barrier to developing countries. Universities, however, may have the capacity to reproduce and disseminate Internet information and reduce the barrier for these populations. There are many resources available online that discuss climate change adaptation in easily-understood terms – such as the FAQ published by the European Commission (https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/adaptation_en#tab-0-2) – but this information must be diffused to the population through intentional efforts (e.g. printing the FAQ and distributing it at the marketplace and urban centers where people engage in daily activities).

Communication is an important component of diffusion (Chen and Hick, 2004). Developing nations could facilitate town hall-type discussions between university scholars, scientists, and the general public that would allow the experts to share information about climate change adaptation and allow the public to ask questions or express concerns that the experts could address. The only barrier to this form of diffusion is space to host the event and encouraging participation: financial and technology barriers would not exist. Based on the large percentage of individuals in developing countries who believe climate change is occurring (up to 89%), there is a strong chance that they will be enticed to listen to strategies for adaptation, so long as the presenters are sensitive to tribal and religious beliefs that exist among some populations and are willing to communicate strategies in a way that does not offend these beliefs but encourages individuals to consider additional strategies to adapt along with their traditional beliefs and practices (Apata et al., 2009).

Participation in national and international conventions and resolutions

Several nations and international organizations have made pledges or ratified measures to ensure public participation in climate change and environmental decisions and to guarantee that the public has access to information pertaining to environmental issues. One example is the Aarhus Convention, or the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters. The ideas outlined in this convention may be seen as an ideal for the transfer of climate change information – to ensure information equity and participation in the political process regarding environmental change – though it was not without challenges regarding the responsibilities of private companies, the enforcement mechanism, and limited participation (no nations from Africa, South America, or North America ratified the convention) (Brisman, 2013; Haklay, 2003; Mason, 2010). The convention has only had significant impact within the European Union. Nonetheless, it serves as a model by which a larger effort may be made to gain participation from the governments of developing nations across the globe.

Another example is the Rio Earth Summits of 1992 and 2012 and several of the treaties/conventions to emerge in the subsequent years pertaining to adaptation to climate change. The Earth Summits had a more global audience and, though they did not specifically focus on information access and diffusion, included elements that aimed to support the transfer of climate change information to the public (Barratt-Brown et al., 1993; Sheats, 2000). Particularly in the 2012 Summit, information took a fundamental role, as public participation in decision making was a focus of discussion (Banisar et al., 2011). These conventions have yet to bring many practical solutions to developing countries, but offer an optimistic outlook and guide for efforts that developing countries might take in ensuring information access.

Future research in diffusion of climate change information

Future research in the area of diffusion of climate change information may benefit from a shift in assumptions and methodologies from the traditional functionalist paradigm, to the interpretivist or radical humanist paradigms, as discussed by Burrell and Morgan (1979). Whereas the functionalist paradigm emphasizes objectivity, positivism, generalizability, and regulation (i.e. maintaining status quo, cohesion, and order, associated with theorists like Talcott Parsons), the interpretivist and radical humanist paradigms are more subjective, antipositivist, and focus on individuals and complexity in the social world rather than cohesion. As identified in this paper, applying the same climate change policies and strategies to all nations is ineffective. These entities need to be viewed based on their specific concerns and socio-political and environmental constraints. Often, this way of thinking is challenging for academics, particularly in developing nations and the United States, whose education systems, from primary school onward, are often dominated by functionalist ways of thinking and social structures. However, these are challenges that must be faced to attain radical change in how climate change information is diffused.

The two paradigms of interpretivism and radical humanism offer very different sets of questions, assumptions, and methodologies, but each has promise for redefining how information about climate change is diffused within developing nations. Interpretivist methodology in this context of climate change information would very likely align with phenomenological methods. By investigating the understandings and beliefs of individuals in developing nations specifically, we may be able to continue to improve how knowledge is diffused among these populations, enabling the design of more efficient communication and information systems. By understanding the individual in these nations, rather than attempting to view societies as homogenous entities, services and strategies become better tailored to the populations for which they are designed. Interpretivism has made some headway in existing foreign policy efforts, including within the European Union (Bollen, 2018). This interpretivist form of thought is the same that, to a large extent, influenced the evolution, or reorientation, of librarianship as a service profession in the second-half of the 20th century in many nations around the world.

Radical humanism, as described by Burrell and Morgan (1979), is similar to interpretivism in many of its assumptions about social experience, but more actively opposes the social structures currently in place. Radical humanist thought might be associated with anarchic or existentialist thought, whereas interpretivism perhaps aligns more with liberalization and inclusion. Radical humanists, then, might question the legitimacy of existing policy-making organizations in redefining policy to support developing nations. They may look to form completely new organizations that would challenge the dominance of the United Nations by the ‘major world powers.’ For that matter, they may question the need for such organizations whatsoever, suggesting that the very nature of these organizations will always favor the powerful and majority and leave others behind. Solutions to the diffusion of information about global climate change, then, may be centered on the actions of individual agents rather than reliance on organizations and alliances.

Either of these two paradigms offers a needed departure from the functionalist thinking that has contributed to many of the current problems with the transfer of information in developing nations and offered few practical solutions. Researchers in ‘developing’ and ‘developed’ nations alike would be well-suited to consider these approaches in investigating new understandings and strategies of the transfer of information and climate change adaptation.

Conclusion

While global climate change poses a major challenge for all nations, evidence-based research and theory suggests means for individuals and societies to adapt to the new conditions without many of the negative consequences currently anticipated to befall them. In developed countries, many of these strategies are already being implemented in government, industry, and among individuals and communities. In developing countries, however, very little of this knowledge has made it to the public policymakers, let alone industry and the general public. This has left developing countries, already disadvantaged economically, falling further behind developed nations. Serious social, political, economic, and health issues are expected to result from this climate change crisis if developing countries are not able to adapt. Intervention is needed to overcome barriers in information transfer and create informed academics, politicians, and citizens in developing nations so that they may prepare for the changing world. Libraries in the developed and developing world can collaborate to create low-cost solution for improving the recording, organization and storage, and diffusion of knowledge throughout populations that will save lives.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Brady Lund

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