World views and climate change: Synthesising lessons in adapting to climate change from the stories people tell

“A world view is a coherent collection of concepts and theorems that must allow us to construct a global image of the world, and in this way to understand as many elements of our experience as possible” (Vidal 2008). As such the concept of a worldview is important in trying to understand how people orient themselves to the world they live in and how they need to act within it. Worldviews have been identified as important determinants of people’s understandings of and responses to risk (Douglas and Wildavsky 1982, Palmer 1996, Dake 1991) and can also be used to explain interactions people have with their environment. Importantly from the perspective of this paper, worldviews can also be used to explain people’s understanding of and responses to climate change (O'Connor, Bard and Fisher 1999, Weber 2010, Wolf and Moser 2011).