Meaning-making in a context of climate change: supporting agency and political engagement

Responding effectively to climate change requires an understanding of what shapes people’s individual and collective sense of agency and responsibility towards the future. It also requires transforming this understanding into political engagement to support systems change. Based on a national representative survey in Sweden (N = 1,237), this research uses the novel SenseMaker methodology to look into these matters. More specifically, in order to understand the social and institutional prerequisites that must be in place to develop inclusive climate responses, we investigate how citizens perceive their everyday life and future, and the implications for their sense of responsibility, agency, and political engagement. Our research findings show how citizens perceive and act on climate change (individually, cooperatively, and by supporting others), their underlying values, beliefs, emotions and paradigms, inter-group variations, and obstacles and enablers for change. The findings reveal that, in general, individual and public climate action is perceived as leading to improved (rather than reduced) wellbeing and welfare. At the same time, climate anxiety and frustration about structural and governance constraints limit agency, whilst positive emotions and inner qualities, such as human–nature connections, support both political engagement and wellbeing. Our results shed light on individual, collective, and structural capacities that must be supported to address climate change. They draw attention to the need to develop new forms of citizen involvement and of policy that can explicitly address these human interactions, inner dimensions of thinking about and acting on climate change, and the underlying social paradigms. We conclude with further research needs and policy recommendations.In general, citizens perceive increased individual and public climate action as leading to improved (rather than reduced) wellbeing and welfare.Effective responses to climate change require addressing underlying social paradigms (to complement predominant external, technological, and information-based approaches).Such responses include increasing policy support for: o learning environments and practices that can help individuals to discover internalized social patterns and increase their sense of agency and interconnection (to self, others, nature);o institutional and political mechanisms that support citizen engagement and the systematic consideration of human inner dimensions (values, beliefs, emotions and associated inner qualities/capacities) across all sectors of work, by systematically revising organizations’ vision statements, communication and project management tools, working structures, policies, regulations, human and financial resource allocation, and collaboration; ando nature-based solutions and other approaches to support the human–nature connection.