Have we given up too much? On yielding climate representation to experts

Our representations of climate are changing, and with them the ways we claim to know our local climates, and live according to them. Amidst this destabilising change in natural and social orders, scientific representations of climate are emerging as dominant. In this perspective piece I start from post-normal science and offer two arguments against completely yielding climate representation to experts, illustrated by my experiences in northeast Bangladesh. Descriptively, abandoning non-scientific representations and knowledge of climate results in a smaller and more fragile knowledge base for adaptation. Normatively, it is our common enterprise to rediscover the places we inhabit; it is not the responsibility of the expert community alone to reinterpret our places under a changing climate. Looking at the co-existence of modern and pre-modern representations of climate in Bangladesh, I suggest that post-normal science approaches may help bridge these different representations, with equal attention to their quality for adaptation, and the values and meanings underpinning them.