“Climate Change: Learning from Complexity” is a book edited by academics Laura Gallardo, Anahí Urquiza, and Axel Osses. The work, which brings together diverse interdisciplinary perspectives, seeks to explain anthropogenic climate change and its complexity, making this global phenomenon accessible to the general public through clear and accessible language.
By: Comunicaciones CR2
On October 1st, the book “Climate Change: Learning from Complexity” was launched, edited by Laura Gallardo from the Department of Geophysics and Axel Osses from the Department of Mathematical Engineering—both from the Faculty of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (FCFM) at the University of Chile—and Anahí Urquiza, academic from the Faculty of Social Sciences, who are also part of the Center for Climate Science and Resilience, CR2. The event was held in the Ignacio Domeyko Hall of the Central House and was attended by various national and academic authorities.
The conversation panel included Laura Gallardo, book editor and CR2 researcher and academic from the University of Chile’s Department of Geophysics; Teresa Matus, Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Chile; and Andrea Rudnick, Head of Environment A&I, BHP Minerals Americas.
The book aims to delve into the particularities of the Earth system and the complexity of the current climate crisis, explaining, in simple language, how science faces the challenge of anthropogenic climate change.
The work was generated from a collective learning process, where diverse perspectives and areas of knowledge converge. Laura Gallardo, an academic from FCFM’s Department of Geophysics, valued this joint work. “The very birth of the center inspired this. We knew we were addressing a very complex problem, and we knew we required an interdisciplinary approach and, possibly, also a transdisciplinary one; that is, having a much greater combination of the various disciplines that converge to address a problem like climate change and also with the idea of building bridges with decision-making.”
For his part, Axel Osses noted that “converting this complexity into something more approachable was possible thanks to the mix of authors because they come from social sciences, physical sciences, and mathematical sciences.” The Mathematical Engineering Department academic also stated that “Chile has an incredible opportunity to be in a good position regarding climate change, but we have a long way to go, we need young people to get involved. And perhaps one of the things we lack is, precisely, greater simplicity to reach all people.”
Another objective of the book was to disseminate the work developed by the Center for Climate Science and Resilience in its more than ten years of existence, a chapter authored by Bárbara Morales, head of CR2’s dialogue and interdisciplinary area. For her, the book “invited us to observe more theoretically how our center has evolved. It was a super enriching result and shows how an organization has to adapt, create new areas, create new dialogues, create methodologies to dialogue between disciplines, and generate bridges of dialogue to face this complexity that climate change presents to us.”
Editorial Universitaria published the book, which can be found in their store at Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins Avenue 1050.
