The Fight for the Climate Begins in the Backyard
Research on climate is not only about CO₂ and rising temperatures, but also about cultural understandings and everyday social practices. To create green habits, we must learn to live in harmony with nature rather than exploiting it — and that begins in our own gardens.
By Christian Uhre Di Gregorio
At the University of Southern Denmark (SDU), we take a holistic approach to addressing the planet’s climate challenges. That’s why researchers at the Faculty of Social Sciences are also engaged with climate issues — from a social science perspective.
One example is Dikte Reeh Andersen, a research assistant working with the SDU Climate Cluster to understand people’s relationship with the environment. In the research project Digging for the Climate, she investigates the social, cultural, and political questions that arise when people try to rethink their relationship with nature through the ways they design and use their gardens.
Our gardens are a microcosm of the nature that surrounds us — so it makes sense to explore what our relationship with our gardens reveals about our environmental attitudes. Together with a group of other researchers, Dikte examines how people experience and act within ecological contexts and in coexistence with other forms of life on Earth. She also brings educational science perspectives into play, looking at how learning environments and pedagogical methods can support sustainability education.
- The overall goal is to rethink how our education system can promote learning in, with, and for nature — an approach that doesn’t just inform, but engages people in a deeper understanding of nature and climate as an integral part of our social lives, Dikte says.
Academic Diversity Opens Doors to Holistic Solutions
The SDU Climate Cluster brings together researchers from diverse backgrounds to work on climate solutions, and this interdisciplinary collaboration brings both potential and complexity.
– It can be challenging to find a common language and understand each other’s disciplinary logic. The collaboration requires patience, openness, and a willingness to stay with what may initially seem unfamiliar. But it is precisely in these encounters — in misunderstandings, new concepts, and different perspectives — that the most fruitful and innovative conversations often arise, Dikte explains.
This kind of collaboration is crucial for understanding the complex interplay between people and nature. The cultural and social dynamics that shape human relationships with their surroundings are closely linked to the learning processes that can support more sustainable behaviors. That’s why social science perspectives are vital contributions to climate research.
A sociocultural lens — one that focuses on people’s values, perceptions, and everyday practices — is central in addressing the climate, biodiversity, and environmental crises. Not because it can solve them on its own, but because any solution requires a deeper understanding of how humans see themselves in relation to each other, the Earth, and the non-human actors with which all life is inextricably connected.
New Knowledge Must Foster Sustainable Habits in Everyday Nature
There is a widespread belief that technological progress and innovation will solve the climate crisis. But without a simultaneous change in the fundamental understandings, values, and habits that shape societal development, we risk repeating the same patterns that caused the problems in the first place, Dikte argues. Real transformation requires not only new technologies but also new ways of understanding and being in the world.
This is exactly why interdisciplinary collaboration is so essential. Climate change is complex and far-reaching — it cannot be understood or solved within a single field alone.
When we work across disciplines, we open the door to more holistic perspectives that encompass the material, social, ecological, economic, and existential dimensions of the climate crisis. When we gain more insight into how people engage with sustainability in their everyday lives and in their immediate surroundings, we acquire valuable knowledge about how climate action can be communicated to different groups and become part of lived experience. These types of insights can help lay the foundation for good habits and new ways of acting — which benefit the individual and point toward solutions to the climate challenges we face now and in the future.