To downplay their own responsibilities, politicians around the world are deflecting attention from the role of climate change in local disasters, by overemphasizing local vulnerabilities or disaster as unavoidable.
This was claimed by researcher Thomas Tanner from SOAS University of London, during an open seminar on vulnerability, risk, and climate action on 29 January 2026, hoste by the Centre for Climate Change (CRED) at the Sustainability Hubb on NMBU. Tanner presented his latest research on how vulnerability can be strategically used to delay or deny climate action.
The seminar attracted a diverse group of students and researchers, who partook in the following discussions on how climate risk and vulnerability are framed in policy, media, and public debates.
Two Ways of Framing Risk and Vulnerability
Tanner unpacked two approaches that can influence narratives about risk and vulnerability which can be mobilized politically to weaken climate action.
The first approach places strong emphasis on local vulnerability and social factors, while downplaying or denying the climate hazard that drives risk. This framing can be used to argue that disasters are primarily caused by local governance failures, land-use practices, or individual choices, thereby undermining the need for ambitious climate mitigation policies. Tanner illustrated this approach with examples from the California wildfires in 2025 and the Australian bushfires in 2020, where political actors and commentators in some cases highlighted local land management or policy failures to deflect attention from the role of climate change.
The second approach does the opposite: it focuses narrowly on the climate hazard itself, while neglecting vulnerability, inequality, and structural factors. This framing can be used to question the need for climate adaptation and social policy responses by presenting climate risks as universal and unavoidable. Here, Tanner referred to the 2022 floods in Pakistan and the food crisis in Madagascar in 2021, where discussions in some contexts have strongly emphasized climate change as the primary cause, without sufficiently addressing the political, economic, and social conditions that shape who is most affected.
Discourse, Power, and Climate Politics
Tanner’s claims resonated with several participants, who recognized similar patterns in other contexts, leading to a broader discussion on how discourses and narratives shape climate and environmental politics. Participants reflected on how the framing of risk and vulnerability influences political priorities, responsibility, and legitimacy in climate governance. The seminar highlighted the importance of critically examining how knowledge about climate and society is produced, communicated, and used in political processes.
A Space for Critical and Interdisciplinary Dialogue
The seminar is part of CRED’s broader effort to create open and interdisciplinary spaces for critical reflection on climate change, justice, and sustainability. By bringing together students and researchers across disciplines, CRED aims to deepen understanding of the social, political, and ethical dimensions of the climate crisis.