Introduction

This chapter examines how urban residents in Jinja, Nanjing and Sheffield understand and narrate their experiences of ‘climate and the ways it might change’ (Brace and Geoghegan, 2010: 3). Scholars have highlighted a gulf between expert and lay knowledges of climate change, in particular the contrast between the abstract spatialities and timeframes of global geoscience, and local, grounded experiences of living with a changing climate. This suggests a vital role for social science in understanding the kinds of environmental knowledge that is privileged and valued by ordinary citizens, in particular how ‘big’ environmental concerns and everyday ‘small’ environments are connected (Phoenix et al, 2017). Bickerstaff and Walker (2001) argue that public understandings of global environmental change inevitably involve judgement, interpretation and ‘sense-making’, modes of perception that are inextricably tied to the local context. When asking people across diverse geographical and cultural contexts about the impact of climate change on their lives, it is important to take into account how the idea of climate – and thus of climate change – may be differently conceptualized (Sheridan, 2012; Eguavoen, 2013; Hulme, 2017).

Across Jinja, Nanjing and Sheffield, our data reveals how residents similarly conflate climate change, weather and more visible, local environmental problems. However, their explanatory narratives differ in their treatment of climate change as remote in space and time or immediate and locally rooted, and this affects the extent to which people perceive climate change has a direct impact on their lives. We also explore generational perceptions of environmental change in the context of (de)industrialization of the urban landscape, contrasting the experience of the former ‘Steel City’ of Sheffield with narratives of urbanization and environmental decline in Jinja and Nanjing.