Butler, Frances;
(2025)
Materialising Climate Responsibility: Water, Land, Oil and Air.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
Preview |
Text
Butler_10208076_Thesis.pdf Download (4MB) | Preview |
Abstract
The climate and ecology emergency raises significant questions about responsibility for action. The irresponsibility of fossil fuel capitalism and insufficient measures from nation states have left an ethical burden on individuals. However, as climate impacts increase so do the responses from state agencies. The research investigates the kinds of state responsibility emergent from the matter of water, land, oil and air in coastal Louisiana, a place of extreme land loss, hurricane damage and sea level rise. It is also the ancestral homeland of Indigenous peoples and a site of colonialism, racism, oil and gas production and governance failures. Deploying an ethnographic sensibility and material thinking, the study practised an epistemological constellation of reading, walking, observing and listening while paying attention to the relation between matter and state responses. The research shows that these responses materialise into responsibility as the role or task of the state. However, state responsibility practised as mere action, while necessary is not sufficient, as its effects tend to marginalise affected communities leading to injustice. The research reveals the ways in which communities and advocates challenge the state to undertake a form of responsibility that promotes justice. Developing a taxonomy of state responsibility for climate matter, the thesis proposes a concept of climate responsibility which extends beyond individual ethics to understanding it as the job of the state. It seeks to contribute the notion of state responsibility as a counterpart to power in material politics scholarship and the significance of the relation between climate matter and the role responsibility of the state in climate governance literature and scholarly debates on the nature of responsibility in the climate changing world. It is argued that interrogating the way in which the state assumes and exercises responsibility in response to increasing climate impacts has implications for accountability and climate justice.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Materialising Climate Responsibility: Water, Land, Oil and Air |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2025. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208076 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
