Environmental Communication

ISSN: 1752-4032 (Print) 1752-4040 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/renc20

Communicating the Inevitable: Climate

Awareness, Climate Discord, and Climate Research
in Peru’s Highland Communities

Karsten Paerregaard

To cite this article: Karsten Paerregaard (2019): Communicating the Inevitable: Climate
Awareness, Climate Discord, and Climate Research in Peru’s Highland Communities,
Environmental Communication, DOI: 10.1080/17524032.2019.1626754

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2019.1626754

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Published online: 07 Aug 2019.

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ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION
https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2019.1626754

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Communicating the Inevitable: Climate Awareness, Climate

Discord, and Climate Research in Peru’s Highland Communities
Karsten Paerregaard
School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The paper discusses how anthropology contributes to climate change Received 7 August 2018
research and communication. Building on theoretical works that Accepted 29 May 2019
highlight the cultural framing of communication it investigates the signs
KEYWORDS
and symbols that a Peruvian highland community creates and the Climate change;
imaginaries and identities it generates to interpret and communicate communication; climate
climate change and its environmental impact. To explore the perceptions; Peruvian Andes;
community’s communicative repertoire the paper explores three climate anthropology
voices that illuminate the conflicting ways the global discourse on
climate change impacts the community’s future visions. Arguing that
anthropogenic climate change poses a new challenge to the
communication of urgent public issues the paper asks: Should the
communication discuss climate change as a matter-of-fact issue? Or
should it present climate change as a cultural phenomenon that is
acknowledged as an issue in dispute? The paper concludes that climate
change research is a post-normal science that not only must engage a
range of scholarly traditions and methods but also listen to the voices
that are affected by climate change in the real world. It encourages
climate change communicators to recognize that climate communication
is a dialogical relation based on the mutual interests of its experts and its
users in providing as well as receiving knowledge.

Introduction
Environmental change and, in particular, climate change have become urgent topics of research
within both the natural and the social sciences and the humanities. In response to the growing public
concern for global warming and its impact on the planet’s future a scholarship is now emerging that
studies not only how climate change is experienced and perceived (Arbuckle et al., 2013; Paerre-
gaard, 2013a; Crona, Wutich, Brewis, & Gartin, 2013; Pyhälä et al., 2016) but also how it is commu-
nicated in the media (Hardy & Jamiseon, 2017), in national politics (Nisbet, 2009), in the Internet
(Connor et al., 2016), in music (Wodak, 2018), in indigenous communities (Escobar Torio &
Tam, 2018) and in the society at large (Moser, 2010; Spence & Pidgeon, 2010; van der Linden,
Leiserowitz, Ferinberg, & Maibach, 2014). One of the questions addressed by this literature is the
nature of climate change science and its contribution to society, which in many places is an issue
of dispute and contestation (Hulme, 2009). Examining the relation between climate change research
and its users Werner Krauss and Hans von Storch find that “the communication between climate
science and the general public is severely disturbed” (Krauss & von Storch, 2012, p. 214).

CONTACT Karsten Paerregaard karsten.paerregaard@globalstudies.gu.se

© 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://
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original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
2 K. PAERREGAARD

The cause of this discord, Krauss and von Storch assert, is that “Global climate models and their
regional counterparts neither reflect nor match the climate reality people inhabit” (Krauss & von
Storch, 2009, p. 214). To conceptualize this discrepancy and understand why climate change has
become a political battleground and a key narrative within which all environmental politics is
now framed, Krauss and von Storch describe climate change research as a post-normal science
defined by four criteria: (1) facts are uncertain, (2) values are in dispute, (3) stakes are high, and
(4) decisions are urgent (Funtowicz & Ravetz, 1993). This approach demands what Krauss and
von Storch call “an extended knowledge basis,” which implies the inclusion of the social and cultural
disciplines and the voices of the people they work with into climate research (Krauss & von Storch,
2012, p. 226). In other words, to improve its communication with society climate change science
must collaborate with the social sciences and the humanities and make use of their qualitative-
oriented methods and frameworks to examine climate change as not only a physical but also a social
and cultural phenomenon. Only by recognizing the multiple ways climate change is experienced,
understood, and acted upon can climate change science communicate its findings to the wider
world and make a difference by offering meaningful and relevant answers to its users.
The aim of this paper is to discuss how anthropology and its research traditions can help making
climate change research relevant to marginal people in the Global South and create climate aware-
ness in rural communities that contribute little to global warming but nevertheless are among its
principal victims (Baer & Singer, 2014; Barnes, Lahsen, Dove, & Yager, 2013; Crate, 2012; Crate
& Nuttall, 2016; Hastrup, 2013; Rosengren, 2018). It examines how Peru’s rural communities appro-
priate the glossary of the global discourse on climate change and how such terms as “global warm-
ing,” “environment,” and “contamination” become objects of communication among their members.
The paper builds on theoretical works on communication that highlight its cultural framing and
examine its importance for community identity, social relations, and public performance (Carey,
1992; Geertz, 1973). Borrowing from anthropological literature that interrogates the modern notion
of nature as a realm separate from culture (Blaser, 2016; Ingold, 2012; Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010;
Kohn, 2013; Latour, 2011), the paper also questions the understanding of the environment under-
pinning the global discourse on climate change and its reduction of nature to a material, chemical
and biotic milieu that humans inhabit and exploit for economic aims.
To avoid such reductionism the paper takes its point of departure in a non-Western indigenous
notion of nature that sees this as an integral part of culture and that recognizes the symbiotic
relationship humans establish with their surroundings in not only physical but also social and reli-
gious terms. It argues that even though the global discourse on climate change represents humanity
as a homogeneous community it glosses over a variety of cultural understandings of the relation
between nature, climate and society that often are shaped by a local rather a global perspective.
As Greschke points out, “Despite being regarded as a serious problem for all humans in present
and future times, climate change is not directly perceptible. Knowledge about the causes and
effects of global warming has to be mediated and can only become socially relevant at particular
sites if it connects to life experiences and culture-specific patterns of interpreting the environment”
(Greschke, 2015, p. 123). In other words, even though climate change research provides compelling
evidence that climate change constitutes one of the modern world’s most critical questions and even
though many climate researchers are driven by a moral commitment to put their work at the service
of society, they must acknowledge that science is only one of many ways of generating climate knowl-
edge and that there does not exist a single truth about climate change.

Methods and materials

The paper draws on ethnographic data from a research project I conducted between 2011 and 2017
in a rural community in Peru’s southern highlands where I have done extended fieldwork since 1986
and where I personally know many of the adult population. Employing anthropological field
methods the research documented how people experience, perceive and communicate climate
 ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 3

change through formal and informal interviews, household surveys and participatory observation in
the community. During the six-year period I interviewed in- and out-going community authorities,
participated in a variety of community events, conducted a household survey on issues related to
climate change and engaged in focused conversations with a selected number of community mem-
bers about their climate perceptions and future vision of the community. While the interviews and
the survey specifically addressed the issue of climate change, the conversations, which I conducted in
Spanish, were loosely framed around problems related to weather, rain, water, crops, and health and
the way the villagers’ memory of previous years of dramatic environmental change shapes their per-
ception of current climatic change. The paper is structured in four sections. The first presents the
national and regional context for the study including an introduction to Peru’s current water law
and the environmental crisis it addresses. The second introduces the concept of communication
and discusses how a cultural approach to communicative practices can contribute to an understand-
ing of how people in regions that are vulnerable to climate change create an awareness of its impacts
and consequences. The third section reviews three case studies that engage the vocabulary of climate
change and global warming in different ways to explain ongoing environmental change in the com-
munity. It also examines how these readings and interpretations of climate change perpetuates old
and create new tensions in the community. The fourth section compares the different kinds of cli-
mate awareness conveyed by three case studies and discusses their implications for the community’s
effort to adapt to climate change while the conclusion sums up the paper’s findings and their impor-
tance for future research on climate change communication.

Climate awareness in Peru

Peru is one the world’s most climate change vulnerable countries. It contains more than 70 percent of
all tropical glaciers that are melting at an alarming speed (Carey et al., 2017; Gagné, Rasmussen, &
Orlove, 2014; Vuille et al., 2008). As the fresh water supply of many of the country’s rural commu-
nities and major cities relies on the glaciers’ melt water, they suffer from a growing water shortage
(Bradley, Vuille, Diaz, & Vergara, 2006; Coudrain, Francou, & Kundzewicz, 2005; Lynch, 2012). To
improve the management of Peru’s scarce water supplies, the government has passed a new water
law that encourages cooperation between the country’s water stakeholders and introduces a national
water culture teaching people to become responsible water users (ANA, 2010; Roa-García, Urteaga-
Crovetto, & Bustamante-Zenteno, 2015). A critical element in the government’s policy to prepare
Peru for its environmental crisis is to inform the population about global climate change and the
consequences it is having for their future lives; a task not only the government and its institutions
but also the Catholic Church and a range of NGOs are undertaking. The message these organizations
convey to rural and urban communities is that climate change constitutes a serious threat to the
country’s future generations and that the only way people can adapt to its effects is to strengthen
their communities’ resilience by changing their lifestyle and taking better care of Peru’s water
resources (Paerregaard, Stensrud, & Andersen, 2016). Implicit in this narrative is the claim that cli-
mate change is a local and not a global phenomenon and that Peru’s environmental degradation is
caused by human agency in Peru rather than elsewhere.
Ethnographic studies of Peru’s rural communities show that the country’s poorest and most vul-
nerable population sector is very much aware of the effects that global warming has for their lives
(Jurt, Burga, Vicuna, Huggel, & Orlove, 2015). But rather than attributing the cause of climate
change to others the interviewees of the studies say that glacier melt, raising temperatures, irregular
precipitation, unpredictable weather conditions, water scarcity and other forms of climatic change
are the result of their own activities by which they refer to their community’s lack of a proper garbage
and sewage service and their own use of insecticides and chemical fertilizer in the fields; burning of
trees to clean the fields and of fireworks to celebrate community fiestas; and consumption of bottled
water, soft drinks, perfumes and other commercial products (Paerregaard, 2018b). Few of the inter-
viewees, on the other hand, point to external agents such as the traffic and the industrial pollution in
4 K. PAERREGAARD

Peru’s cities, the country’s rapid growing tourism, or carbon emissions in the Global North as the
cause of the environmental change they are experiencing. Seemingly, the climate perception of
Peru’s rural communities and their proposal to mitigate climate change by reducing their carbon
emissions and moderating their newly acquired modern lifestyle resonate with the call the country’s
new water law makes to its citizens to change their water consumption habits and adopt a more
responsible water culture (Paerregaard, 2013b). Nevertheless, many communities resist the state’s
attempt to charge tax on their water use. Even though they acknowledge their own contribution
to Peru’s glacier retreat and even though they ask the state for help to alleviate their water crisis,
the communities question its authority to tax water (Paerregaard, 2019). They believe the melt
water they use to irrigate their fields is the property of the mountain deities who require offering
gifts in return for releasing it (Paerregaard, 2013c, 2018a; Stensrud, 2016).
The water law’s implementation and the attempt to make water a taxable good are complicated by
the state’s biased role in Peru’s century long rural conflicts between its indigenous communities and
the haciendas (Boelens, 2015). Rather than supporting the former against the latter’s grabbing of
communal land, Peru’s shifting governments have defended the interests of the country’s big land-
owners who represent the country’s Spanish heritage and belong to its ruling classes. Recent years’
economic and political development has undermined the power and privileges of the haciendas and
transformed the country’s class and ethnic structures but the mistrust of the state is still widespread
on the countryside. The antagonism between Peru’s political institutions and its rural population is
reproduced within many communities that view their own authorities as incompetent and corrupt
even when these are appointed by their own members. Peru’s social and cultural divides also con-
strain the relation between the state’s personnel (engineers, doctors, teachers and other skilled
workers) and the rural communities where they work. Framed as an encounter between a modern,
science-based professional and a backward, ignorant peasant their communication is both hierarch-
ical and distant, which cripples the state’s possibilities of conveying important messages such as the
inevitable consequences of climate change.

Communicating climate change

In a society fashioned by communication technologies, communication is understood as an act of
transmitting and disseminating information, ideas and knowledge in written, oral, visual, and
other forms. Yet, communicative practice is at the heart of all societies whether modern or pre-mod-
ern and constitutes an essential means to not only establish contact and pass information but also to
exchange viewpoints, share experiences and engage in dialogues. Communication is therefore of a
defining feature of human culture and a critical means to forge social relations, generate signs
and symbols, and create imaginaries and identities. Borrowing from Clifford Geertz, who defines
humans as “an animal suspended in the webs of significance he himself has spun” (Geertz, 1973,
p. 5), communication can be understood as a semiotic property that humans mobilize to create
these webs and that allows them to interpret, express and revise the significance they represent.
But in his discussion of how to apply semiotics and hermeneutics to cultural and communication
studies, Geertz also reminds us that these must resist “subjectivism” and “cabbalism” and be
grounded in the real world and address “the public world of common life.” Geertz brings this
point home in his analysis of how humans in their effort to create and express meaning develop sym-
bolic and ritual acts that not only make culture public but also transform communication into a per-
formative activity. He asserts that “Culture is public because meaning is” (Geertz, 1973, p. 12).
Arguably, Geertz could as well have said: “Meaning is public because communication is.”
James Carey borrows from Geertz’ semiotic reading of meaning, culture and communication to
develop his theory on communication (Carey, 1992) which views communication as a ritual that pro-
duces participation and feelings of belonging and that creates community identities. Carey argues that
communication is “directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the mainten-
ance of society in time; not an act of imparting information but the representation of shared beliefs”
 ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 5

(Carey, 1992, p. 18). In other words, to communicate is not only to inform and alter attitude; it is to
confirm and represent social order. Moreover, rather than looking at communication as an act of
spreading information it can be construed as an act of performance. Or as Carey puts it: “Under a ritual
view, then, news is not information but drama” (Carey, 1992, p. 21). He continues: “Communication is
not some pure phenomenon we can discover, there is no such thing as communication to be revealed”
(Carey, 1992, p. 31). Rather than a one-way transmission of information and knowledge communi-
cation is a cultural process through which people create, share and reaffirm communities and societies.
Geertz’ and Carey’s theories are important for our understanding of how climate knowledge is
disseminated and how climate awareness is created because they highlight the relation between
the issue being communicated and the way it is perceived and reworked by the receivers. More
specifically, they bring to the forefront the process through which people appropriate and interpret
political discourse and public communication and adopt their logos in ritual and symbolic practice,
internalize their jargon in popular rhetoric, and ascribe their glossary new meaning in everyday con-
versations. Geertz’ and Carey’ suggestion to study communication as a cultural practice and an act of
public performance is particularly relevant when examining how the content of politically charged
questions such as environmental and climatic change are transformed and contested as they spread
in a global-national-local context. As Susanne Moser points out in her review of climate change com-
munication, anthropogenic climate change poses new challenges to the communication of urgent
public issues compared with, for instance, environmental or health problems (Moser, 2010).
Among the traits of climate change that make it difficult to engage with, Moser mentions its invisi-
bility, its distant impact in time and space, and the insulation of modern humans from their environ-
ment (Moser, 2010). Moser also lists a fourth trait of climate change that disrupts conventional
communicative practice: people’s disbelief that humans could in fact alter the global climate.
The latent skepticism against climate change Moser refers to is linked not only to her third point,
i.e. humans’ insulation from the environment in modern society, but also to a topic Gideon Calder
addresses in his discussion of climate change’s ethical and normative implications. Reviewing the
growing body of anthropological scholarship on local perceptions of climate change, Calder finds
that this research presents us “with different worldviews based on different understandings of nature,
culture, the universe and justice,” which again “shape our different normative stances on our respon-
sibilities to tackle climate change” (Calder, 2015, p. 526). Calder’s call to review the normative con-
cept of climate change resonates with recent anthropological literature on post-humanism (Blaser,
2016; Kirksey & Helmreich, 2010; Kohn, 2013) that proposes to study humans’ engagement in its
habitat as a meshwork of relations in which nature and culture mutually shape each other (Ingold,
2012) and employ the concept of “multinaturalism” to explore the multiple ways humans and non-
humans cohabit the world (Latour, 2011). These contributions that draw on studies of not only indi-
genous cultures but also Western societies point to the need to revise the idea of the environment as a
domain external to human life that informs the global discourse on climate change. Just as people’s
perceptions of nature and climate vary, they interpret the cause of climate change differently and
disagree on how to deal with it. Interrogating people’s moral ideas of how environmental justice
and climate accountability are achieved and examining the multiple notions of nature and culture
that shape them are therefore critical tasks for climate change communicators, who must ask them-
selves the following questions: Should the communication take a normative position and discuss cli-
mate change as a matter-of-fact issue based on only scientific data? Or should it present climate
change as a cultural phenomenon that needs to be addressed politically as well as ethically and
that should be acknowledged as an issue in dispute? To phrase the dilemma in more simple
terms: should we communicate uni- or bi-directionally and, if we do the latter, how do we engage
in a dialogical relation with the affected communities which is both instructive in terms of informing
them about our scholarly knowledge about climate change and respectful in terms of recognizing
that they have their own view of its cause and effect?
Viewing climate change research as a post-normal enterprise, as Krauss and von Storch cited in
this article’s opening propose, implies to recognize climate change as a field of inquiry that requires
6 K. PAERREGAARD

“extended knowledge basis” and gives preference to the second question raised above when commu-
nicating its results. Krauss’ and von Storch’s approach has been followed by ethnographic studies of
climate perceptions that emphasize the imperative of engaging voices outside the scholarly commu-
nity in the dissemination of its results and examining their ethical interpretation of climate change.
Thus Christine Jurt and colleagues (Jurt et al., 2015) draw our attention to the “us-them” divide that
emerges from such readings of climate change and the symbolic boundaries people affected by its
consequences create to identify victims and villains. Comparing mountain dwellers in the Alps
and the Andes, they found that while the former attribute climate change to tourists and other
foreigners, the latter ascribe it to their own activities. But even though mountain dwellers in the
Alps and the Andes distribute blame and guilt differently, which arguably is related to the two popu-
lations’ different characteristics of vulnerability and level of resilience to changing weather events and
climate change, they both divide the world in two categories: “good” and “bad,” and place themselves in
either one or the other. Jurt and colleagues explain: “In our context, the emic view of establishing,
maintaining and representing symbolic boundaries – not necessarily based on ethnic criteria – for dis-
tinguishing one’s own group from others is important” (Jurt et al., 2015, p. 512), which means that the
focus on their study is on the symbols people create to mark the difference between themselves and
others. On the basis of their research, Jurt and colleagues conclude that people use their moral under-
standing of climate change and the identification of guilt, blame, loss and harm it entails as hallmarks
to create community identity and distinguish themselves from others. In a broader perspective they
suggest that such “boundaries can be traced to decide whether someone is or is not affected by a par-
ticular harm, or has contributed to causing that harm” (Jurt et al., 2015, p. 513).

Results: climate boundaries in the Peruvian Andes

The findings of Jurt and colleagues are relevant for this study because they show that unlike the Alps
where mountain dwellers point at tourism as the sinner of climate change, in the Andes people
ascribe it to their own contamination. Incited by the state and NGOs working in the rural commu-
nities, who blame rural communities for unsustainable agricultural practices and, in general, litter-
ing, this leads Andean people to think that the response to climate change should be local. The study
of Jurt and colleagues also indicates that Andean people believe that non-humans forces should be
involved in climate change adaptation and climate communication as they play a key role in the
communities’ climate awareness and concepts of environmental justice (Postigo, 2014). These
insights suggest that underlying the climate perception of Andean people is not only the sense of
guilt and loss that external organizations promoting sustainable development and environmental
protection generate but also a notion of nature as inhabited by non-human powers which the com-
munities believe control humans’ interaction with their physical surroundings (Scoville-Simonds,
2018). By the same token, they remind scholars as well as professionals and NGOs working in moun-
tain regions such as the Andes that people have not only a material but also spiritual relationship
with mountains, glaciers and water (Allison, 2015). Jurt and colleagues’ study echoes the following
three case studies that illuminate how climate change is verbalized, imagined and communicated in a
rural community, how the blame and harm of climate change are determined and distributed among
its members, and how the message of the future effects of climate change divide them and create dis-
cord. Before discussing the three cases, however, a short presentation of the community is warranted.
Tapay is situated at the bottom of the Colca Valley in Peru’s southern highlands (Paerregaard,
1997) (Figure 1). As the rainy season only lasts three months, agriculture – the main livelihood of
the community – requires irrigation that is supplied by melt water from the snowcaps of nearby
mountains. Water always has been a scarce resource in Tapay but raising temperatures and irregular
precipitation have worsened the community’s water shortage and reduced its irrigation capacity. A
complex infrastructure of water canals and reservoirs transports the melt water down to the fields,
where it is distributed among the villagers. The canals and the reservoirs are maintained and man-
aged collectively by the water users who take their turn as regidor (water allocator) (Figure 2). Apart
 ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 7

Figure 1. The community of Tapay.

from allocating water during the dry season, the regidor is responsible for conducting an offering to
Mount Seprigina, Tapay’s principal water source and spiritual protector (Figure 3); organizing yaqar
aspiy, i.e. the annual cleaning of the community’s canal and reservoirs; and sponsoring the fiesta that
follows the work, which includes serving food, chicha (corn beer) and alcohol (Paerregaard, 1994a).
As other public events in Tapay, honoring of Mount Sepregina and celebrating yaqar aspiy are
molded by not only the community’s Catholic heritage but also its Andean past that involves

Figure 2. Regidor allocating water to owner of a field in Tapay.

8 K. PAERREGAARD

Figure 3. Offering to mount Sepirigina.

offerings to the mountains that people believe control the water flow (Paerregaard, 2013a). A small
group of evangelists who have turned their back to the community’s Catholic-Andean traditions,
however, refuse to take part in this practice, which their consider pagan and sinful (Paerregaard,
1994b).
Outmigration has drained Tapay of its able-bodied population for many years and today the
bulk of the villagers are return migrants of whom two-third are middle-aged men (INEI,
2017). Their communication with the outside world relies on two sources. On the one hand,
the villagers stay in contact with and visit their relatives in Peru’s cities who also return to
Tapay during its annual fiestas. Most migrants, however, take little interest in the village’s daily
affairs and its environmental problems. On the other hand, the scores of national and inter-
national tourists who visit Tapay on a daily basis and the public and private organizations that
work in the community provide the villagers with a flow of information and knowledge regarding
national issues and global questions such as climate change. The majority of the tourists are young
backpackers who are concerned for the worlds’ climatic problems and who subscribe to the global
discourse on climate change and employ terms such as “global warming,” “contamination” and
“climate change.” Through their interaction with visiting tourists the villagers have adopted
this vocabulary and even though they attribute it a different meaning, it has become an important
means to communicate environmental issues in Tapay and to request and negotiate support from
the state institutions and NGOs that operate in the region. Modern means of communication such
as television, radio and mobile phones (internet service is still not available in Tapay) also facili-
tate the villagers’ access to information about national and global news. Moreover, the presence of
a mining company that recently started to exploit gold in the community have increased Tapay’s
interest in climatic issues and stirred up the concern for its shrinking water resources. But while
many villagers initially resisted the mine because of the environmental danger it represents, a
growing number of male villagers who work in the mine are now supporting it. Climate com-
munication in Tapay therefore engages a host of agents including the mountain deities that the
villagers believe control the water and the national and global actors that disseminate the message
about climate change’s inevitable consequences.
 ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 9

Three case studies

The following case studies illustrate how the perception of climate change and the way it is commu-
nicated have become a matrix of division among the villagers. As former regidores, the men pre-
sented in the three cases all have had a first hand experience of Tapay’s water growing water
shortage and the frictions it creates. Nonetheless, their interpretations of its cause and answers to
its problems vary, which I suggest is related to their different livelihoods, migration histories and reli-
gious world-views. And while their view on climate change is biased by their gender and age, the
three cases reflect Tapay’s current demographic profile of pre-dominantly males above forty. The
first case is a villager who migrated to Lima, Peru’s capital, as a young man and returned to
Tapay with his wife after they married and established a family. The second is a man who left the
community before he had come of age and who recently has returned to spend his retirement in
Tapay. By contrast, the third is a male villager who has lived in the community all his life and
who converted to Protestantism when he was young.
Mauricio, 58, has lived most of his life in Tapay except for the seven years he spent with his wife in
Lima while they were young and their children were small. Today they live in Tapay making an
income by cultivating the land and lodging tourists in their small hostel. A few years ago, Mauricio
served a one-year term as regidor, which demands good knowledge of Tapay’s irrigation practice and
good skills in managing social conflicts. Currently, he is head of Tapay’s drinking water committee
that takes care of the community’s water infrastructure and charges the monthly fee the villagers pay
for their water consumption. Mauricio’s community work has given him a firsthand insight into
Tapay’s water crisis, which he finds has gone from bad to worse. He says: “Water has always been
scarce but in recent years there isn’t enough to plant all our fields and many have abandoned
them all together and gone to other places.” Drawing on his own experience Mauricio states:
“The regidor fills the reservoirs at night and allocate water to the fields during the day as always
but now the reservoirs are not full anymore in the morning so there isn’t enough water for every-
body.” Yet when asked whether Tapay’s growing water scarcity is related to climate change Mauricio
claims that unlike the tourists he talks with who are worried about global warming, the villagers have
known it for a long time. He says: “Things are difficult now but they’ll change again. My grand-
mother told me that when she was young there was a drought that lasted several years. It reached
a point when the Colca river dried up. The only water available came from the springs.” Mauricio
also recalls that Tapay suffered from a terrible plague when he was a child and that the mice ate
the harvest that year. He explains: “The climate is cyclical. After some years with drought, plagues
and other misfortunes, there’ll be rain and good harvest again.” Meanwhile, Mauricio thinks the vil-
lagers must continue to make offerings to Mount Seprigina that he believes still has the power to
punish them. He recounts: “Some years ago the regidor didn’t make the trip to the summit of Sepri-
gina to make the offering and even though he hired a shaman to do it, his wife fell ill and died the
following week.” Mauricio recognizes that Tapay suffers from a severe water scarcity but sees no con-
nection between environmental change in the community and climate change in other parts of the
world. Rather he believes Tapay’s environment and the community’s wellbeing in general are con-
tingent on the villagers’ continuous offerings to Mount Seprigina.
Godofredo, 67, spent his childhood in Tapay before leaving the community at the age of 14. As
many other young villagers, he migrated to Peru’s cities to study and find work. After marrying a
woman from Cusco, he settled in Arequipa, Peru’s second city. To provide for the family, he worked
in different parts of Peru including the jungle where he lived for a number of years. From time to
time he visited Tapay to look after his mother and take care of the family’s properties. When God-
ofredo retired in 2004, he and his wife decided to return to Tapay where they have constructed a
small tourist hostel. To supplement his pension and the income the hostel yields Godofredo culti-
vates the land he has inherited and keeps a few animals. He says: “We live a nice and quiet life
here and we have all we need.” A few years ago, Godofredo was appointed regidor but rather
than carry out the task himself as Mauricio did, he paid someone to do it, which saved him time
10 K. PAERREGAARD

to prepare the offering ritual to Mount Seprigina and organizing the yaqar aspiy fiesta. “Allocating
water only gives you problems while the ritual and the fiesta yield respect and prestige” Godofredo
asserts. He explains: “More and more migrants come back to visit Tapay during these activities. They
have become a moment to reunite with the family and forget the trouble people go through in the
city.” The growing number of participants in the ritual customs and public events associated with
Tapay’s water management is, however, also a reason for concern. To provide food and beer for
the many participants turned out as a costly affair, which Godofredo sees as a sign that Tapay has
become a place for migrants to escape city life. He asserts: “Everybody talks about climate change
but it’s not a big problem here. There is less water now than before but there are also less people.
Most families with children are in Lima and other places and only old people live here now.”
Thus in Godofredo’s eyes, climate change represents no real threat to Tapay. He points out:
“Only a small group of villagers plant their fields today. Most have other incomes. Of course we
need drinking water for our hostel but that is not a problem.” He substantiates his climate skepticism
by referring to other changes that currently are transforming Tapay and impacting its environment.
Godofredo says: “Everybody talk about climate change but there are so many things going on these
days. Now there’s a gold mine in Tapay. I really don’t know whether it is the climate or the mine that
cause water scarcity.” To Godofredo, Tapay’s climate awareness emerges from the villagers’ contact
and communication with Mount Seprigina, the community’s migrants as well as the gold mine.
Florencio, 55, has spent most of his life in Tapay except for a couple of months when he worked in
Arequipa as a young man. His wife is also from Tapay and together they have five children who all
have grown of age and now live in Lima. In the late 1980s Florencio came under influence of Tapay’s
small but strong evangelist community and following his father’s example he converted to Protes-
tantism. Some years later Florencio was elected as mayor of Tapay, the highest authority in the com-
munity and an office associated with much prestige. As mayor, however, Florencio was also expected
to participate in the villagers’ drinking parties, which is one of the many Andean habits he com-
mitted himself to eradicate when he converted to Protestantism. One year into his term Florencio
therefore relapsed into Catholicism only to reconvert to Protestantism after he had completed his
three-year term as mayor. When Florencio was appointed regidor some years later he once again
faced the difficulties of occupying a public office as evangelists in a Catholic-Andean community
but this time he decided to stay loyal to his faith and refrained from paying tribute to Mount Sepri-
gina. He also refused to serve alcohol at the yaqar aspiy fiesta where his wife only offered the visiting
migrants food. Florencio’s neglect of Tapay’s ritual traditions caused disturbance among not only
visiting migrants but also Tapay’s Catholic majority who feared his defiance of Mount Seprigina
would provoke its anger and cause sickness in the community. But Florencio finds these worries
groundless. He says, “I don’t believe in these traditions and I don’t fear the mountain. And by the
way, there’s less water now than before even though other regidores have made the offering.” Still,
Florencio shares the concern of other villagers that the climate is changing and that the growing
water scarcity jeopardizes their subsistence. Moreover, he agrees that the gold mine will make the
situation worse. Yet, rather than opposing it Florencio is one of the many villagers who has taken
job in the mine. He argues: “The mine is here, so why not get the best out of it? They pay me
well and give me good working hours.” As to environmental change, Florencio thinks that the villa-
gers have to adapt to the new situation and find new ways of making a living. He says: “There are no
children or young people anymore, only families with two persons and we don’t have many needs.”
Like Godofredo, Florencio views migration as a strategy to adapt to climate change but unlike both
Maurico and Godofredo, he does not recognize the mountains’ contribution to Tapay’s climate
awareness and environmental communication.

Discussion: distributing the loss and blame of climate change

The three case studies represent not only different life experiences but also conflicting perceptions of
environmental change. Mauricio articulates the voice of a villager who is familiar with urban life and
 ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 11

has regular contact with the many tourists who visit Tapay. At the same time, he is one of the few
migrants who have chosen to return to the community while young rather than creating a life in the
city. Moreover, Mauricio firmly believes in Tapay’s Catholic-Andean customs including the offering
ritual to Mount Seprigina and although he is familiar with the modern world, he does not share the
global concern for climate change, which he thinks is cyclical and therefore temporary. Godofredo,
on the other hand, has spent most of his life outside Tapay and he only returned recently to enjoy his
retirement in the community. He has read and heard a great deal about climate change but finds no
reason to worry about its impact in Tapay and the water scarcity it causes. As agriculture merely
supplements his income that primarily comes from tourism and his retirement savings, Godofredo
only has few fields to irrigate. Still, Godofredo affirmed his respect for the mountain by conducting
the offering ritual and sponsoring the yaqar aspiy fiesta when he was a regidor. And even though he
acknowledges that the gold mine contributes to Tapay’s environmental problems, Godofredo has
chosen not to take part in the community’s protests, which he finds aimless. By contrast, Florencio,
who never has migrated, openly defies Tapay’s Catholic-Andean traditions. As an evangelist, his goal
is to spread Protestantism in Tapay and use Tapay’s public offices as a platform to fight the commu-
nity’s Catholic-Andean practices and alcohol consumption, which he regards sinful. But rather than
gaining the trust of other villagers, Florencio has become estranged from the community that fears
his disrespect for Mount Seprigina will bring misfortune on Tapay and deepen its water crisis. Flor-
encio was also one of the first villagers to take work in the gold mine, which he sees as not only a
cause of environmental concern but also an opportunity to create alternative incomes and generate
economic growth in Tapay. To Florencio, Tapay’s deteriorating environment – whether caused by
global warming or the gold mine – is a reality you must adapt to.
The case studies indicate that climate change is an issue of great concern in Tapay. But they also
reveal that the three men all believe climate change is a local rather than a global phenomenon –
even though they disagree on what exactly causes it and what the community should do to mitigate
it or alleviate its impact. These variations in the men’s climate awareness can be attributed to their
different migration experiences and world-views and their perception of the environment as an integral
part of a broader transformation process in Tapay that encompasses economic, social and cultural
change as well. They also suggest that in the Andes climate communication is informed by not only
the state and the NGOs operating in the region but also other national and global actors such as
migrants and tourists as well as local agents such as the mountain deities. Moreover, just as the climate
messages conveyed by the three cases account for the cause and effect and the local and global linkages
of climate change in different terms, their readings of both its loss and harm and its sinners and victims
vary. While Mauricio interprets climate change as a cyclical misfortune that recurrently befalls Tapay
and that only can be alleviated by paying tribute to Mount Seprigina, Godofredo recognizes it as an
irreversible and self-inflicted phenomenon that the community must adapt to by migrating and
appeasing the human as well non-human powers it depends on. By contrast, Florencio worries little
about climate change that he views as part of a broader process of change which generates gain rather
than loss and therefore has no victims and which reveals the pointlessness of Tapay’s offering rituals.
Climate change affects everybody in Tapay but rather than uniting the community it deepens
existing conflicts and creates new divides. On the one hand, Tapay’s shrinking water supply is adding
fuel to its religious strife. Thus, opposite the Catholic-Andean majority who believe that the answer
to the community’s water shortage and other environmental problems is to pay more tributes to
Mount Seprigina, the evangelists claim the offerings are no longer paying off. Climate change also
exposes the tension between villagers and migrants. Unlike the former, who live off the land and
therefore depend on the water supply, the latter only visit Tapay during the fiestas. And except
for their recent concern for the mining company and the threat it represents to Tapay’s water supply,
they pay little attention to the village’s environmental problems (Paerregaard, 2017). On the other
hand, by affirming Tapay’s perception of climate change as a phenomenon produced locally the
rhetoric of global warming that the public and private organizations and international tourists
have introduced in the community has contributed to the villagers’ sense of guilt and self-blame.
12 K. PAERREGAARD

Rather than creating an alternative understanding of climate change’s cause and effect and the glo-
bal/local context in which it unfolds, the global discourse on climate change has provided the villa-
gers with a black box to identify local sinners and losers and create new discord in the community. In
other words, the communication of climate change deepens instead of shortening the distance
between the global sinners in the North and the global victims in the South leaving the latter
more divided to prepare for the future.

Conclusion
Climate change research is a post-normal science that must not only engage a broad range of scho-
larly traditions and methods but also listen to the voices that are affected by climate change in the real
world. Employing an anthropological approach this article has examined the social and cultural
complexity that molds climate perceptions in the Peruvian Andes and the multiple means by
which climate change is communicated in its rural communities. It shows that rather than a one-
way line of information flow from the scientific community through state and private organizations
to the public, climate communication is a diverse and complex enterprise embedded in a web of
social relations and cultural interactions that transform its message and ascribe it new meanings.
The paper also demonstrates that even though climate change is a global phenomenon, people
experience it locally often as part of other processes of change. Understanding the subtle ways
environmental change intersects with economic interests, political agendas, social conflicts, cultural
identities, and religious practices is therefore critical for climate communication. Climate communi-
cation also needs to review the notion of environment underlying the global discourse on climate
change that neglects indigenous perceptions and other vernacular readings of the culture-nature
nexus. Finally, climate change communicators must recognize that there is not one but many truths
about climate change and that climate communication is a dialogical relation based on the mutual
interests of its experts and its users in providing as well as receiving knowledge.
The paper concludes that even though climate change is a contested issue that creates divisions
and frictions in many places, this should not be used as a pretext for not interfering. Indeed, contact
with the outside world can help creating a new awareness of environmental change. At the same
time, however, climate communication touches upon problems of importance not only to people’s
physical lives but also to their social and cultural identities. The framing and conveyance of climate
communication is therefore critical to both its reception and its perception. Climate communication
is further challenged by the mono-logical and hierarchical relation that often shapes the
state’s and non-governmental organizations’ contact and interaction with vulnerable populations
in the Global South. To straddle the many and sometimes conflicting climate views that come into
play not only between professional workers and scholars and the communities they work in but also
amongst the communities’ own members, the former need to pay more attention to the methods,
approaches and attitudes they employ and display when they communicate the inevitable conse-
quences of climate change to the latter. The message they convey, of course, is essential: the commu-
nities must prepare for the initiatives that are required to adapt to climate change and, if necessary,
stand up against mining companies and other intruders that threaten their water supply and
environment, but the way it is conveyed is equally important. We can only make our knowledge
and data relevant to others by recognizing their viewpoints and acknowledging our own limitations.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
This work was supported by The Swedish Research Council.
 ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 13

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