Controversy Mapping. Tommaso Venturini
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(figure 6) illustrates how three of the most common climate vulnerability indexes diverge in their assessment. Countries like Australia, Canada, Germany, or Brazil, for example, are considered very vulnerable by some indexes and not vulnerable by others.
Figure 6 Map of how three different indexes of vulnerability disagree in assessing countries’ vulnerability to climate change. Only countries with a bold border are classified unanimously as either most or least vulnerable by all three indexes (adapted from the EMAPS project, climaps.eu and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0).
The map in figure 6 visualizes a central aspect of the controversy, namely that climate change vulnerability can mean different things and hence be assessed in different ways. It does not, however, take sides in the matter, at least not in the sense of accusing one index as being in the pocket of a given country, or writing off another index as unscientific. Yet, the map may still run against the interest of some actors. This is a field where plenty of countries and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have well-informed opinions about how vulnerability should be evaluated or how to guide funding. Countries that provide adaptation aid, for instance, may not welcome the occasion to question how they spend their money. Funding bodies may fear that studying the situation as a controversy will give visibility to arguments that they would rather silence or show a diversity of opinions that would make their own position less obvious.
Realizing that there is no disinterested representation of the vulnerability debate, we decided to design a new map exploring how the interests of different adaptation funders align with different indexes. In figure 7, we matched the way countries distribute their adaptation aid with the vulnerability of receiving countries according to different indexes. Canada, for example, helps countries that are vulnerable according to the GAIN index, but not according to the Germanwatch index. The UK, on the other hand, spends money on countries that are not particularly vulnerable according to any of the indexes.
Figure 7 Bilateral adaptation funding and vulnerability indexing. The chart shows how the recipients of adaptation aid from different countries are considered vulnerable (dark) or not vulnerable (light) by different vulnerability indexes. Adaptation aid provided by the UK, for instance, aligns well with the vulnerability assessments of the Global Adaptation Index (GAIN) or the Human Development Index (HDI), much less so with DARA’s. Germany’s aid instead aligns more with the assessment of the Germanwatch and GAIN indexes (adapted from the EMAPS project, climaps.eu and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0).
While some adaptation actors may prefer not to see the partiality of funders and indexes exposed in this way, there are many others, NGOs in particular, who do. It is not always easy to pry open a space for debate once national policies have been set and the visualizations in figure 7 can help with that.
By following the actors and showing their stakes in particular issues, as in points 1 and 2 of the cartographic creed, controversy mapping cannot avoid serving some interest over others. Such complicity comes with responsibilities, at the very least to be reflexive and transparent about your motives, as in point 3 of the creed. You might attempt to open a space for democratic inquiry, as in the example above, or to show how different commitments produce different outlooks or how different knowledge claims have authority in different groups. You could also aim to help decision makers, journalists, or other actors to make sense of the debate or take a stance in it. The point of your mapping could be to highlight different perspectives to help those who will eventually design a solution to do so in fullest view of the concerns they have to balance. Last but not least, the point of mapping a controversy could be to exploit an opportunity to do interesting research. It is not every day that you have the possibility to observe how economic, social, and ecological indicators are balanced against each other to produce the combined assessment of a country’s vulnerability and how this is a source of struggle behind the front desk communication of international aid.
Accepting complicity as a mapmaker
In his history of cartography, John Wilford (2002) recounts how, in the early days of aerial surveying, cartographers were occasionally attacked by people on the ground who mistook the mappers for a threat and met them with spears and arrows. Critical geographer Patrick McHaffie, however, suggests a different reading:
Perhaps the “frightened Africans” who once “threw spears at an Aero Service aircraft” or the “suspicious moonshiners in Appalachia” who “took a few rifle shots” at aerial mappers did so not because the intentions of the mappers were “not always understood,” but because those intentions, and the powerful forces behind them, were understood only too well. (McHaffie, 1995, p. 122)
Maps are not just tools for navigation but also instruments of power and appropriation, subversion and resistance, leverage and negotiation. This has been demonstrated time and time again in critical geographical scholarship (Harley & Woodward, 1987; Harley, 1989; Turnbull, 1994, 1998; Pickles, 1995, 2004; Corner, 1999). As Eilean Hooper-Greenhill notes: “to be ‘on the map’ is to be acknowledged, given a position, accorded an existence or an importance” (2000, p. 17). Whether such recognition is desirable or not depends on the situation. The scientist chasing funding or the NGO striving to set the public agenda will likely want to be charted as influencers. Yet, while being left off the map can consign you to oblivion, it can also grant you protection. A group of indigenous people resisting appropriation by a state will likely prefer not to see their territory on a plan of taxable land; just like homeowners trying to obtain flood insurance do not want to see their property on a map of high-risk areas (Munk, 2010). Maps matter and this is true for geography as well as for controversies (November et al., 2010).
Figure 8 Controversy mappers accused of spying on wind turbine opponents. Meme circulated worldwide by anti-wind websites, including the European Platform Against Windfarms, caricaturing a controversy mapping project carried out by one of the authors (Munk, 2014) as Nazi and authoritarian.
While working on a project on energy transitions, one of us was tasked with mapping online debates about wind farms (Munk, 2014). The sample included wind energy advocates and opponents from several countries and the project was to trace their hyperlink connections and the issues present on their websites. Some of the early maps found their way to protest groups who reacted vehemently and decried them as an example of how the wind industry was spying on them. The maps were adorned with Nazi imagery