Climate Garden 2085

A public experminent adding a personal and emotional experience to what we learn from the media about the largely abstract scenario of climate change and its local effects

Global climate change is a frequently and controversially discussed topic. Yet apart from natural disasters that tend to be interpreted in any number of ways to serve vastly differing interests, it has so far hardly been a tangible phenomenon in our day-to-day life. The Climate Garden experiment enables the experience of climate change's consequences firsthand: It shows how the vegetation of a place might change in the future, what we may be eating, and what our gardens might look like. The experiment is conducted based on detailed climate scenarios that can be translated to different locations around the globe.

This new book serves as a manual for the implementation of such a public experiment on a local or regional level anywhere in the world. Contributions by human geographers, art historians, and ecologists are complemented by a practical step-by-step guide to creating a climate garden. It provides a tool for private and public institutions to tell their own story and in particular to add a personal and emotional dimension to the largely abstract climate scenarios we usually learn about in the media.

• Climate gardens enable the experience of climate change's consequences on a local or regional level
• The experiment adds a personal and emotional dimension to abstract climate scenarios

• The book serves as practical manual for the design of climate gardens

  Autorentext

Juanita Schläpfer-Miller is a science communicator and artist and has been working as a science communications specialist at Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center since 2012.

Manuela Dahinden holds a PhD in molecular biology. She works as a science communications specialist and as managing director of Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center, a joint research initiative of the Universities of Zurich and Basel and ETH Zurich.