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Abstract
North and South Carolina have experienced considerable land-use change, urban sprawl and environmental management challenges within the past 30 years that have amplified and interacted with growing impacts from climate variability and change. However, with strong conservative majorities in the legislatures of both states, political tension around the issue of climate change has intensified, increasing the need for sensitive and deliberate climate change response strategies that mainstream action into salient areas of public concern. With data from online questionnaires and interviews with over 100 leaders within the Carolinas, this research explores a number of context-specific socio-ecological factors that influence climate change response activities and the mainstreaming process. Additionally, this study highlights how a key component of mainstreaming climate response action in the Carolinas involves the careful use of public communication frames. As such, mainstreamed climate change response within this region of the USA is often aligned publicly with other relevant areas of concern, not referenced or communicated as climate change response. Focusing on the process of mainstreaming provides a salient opportunity to bridge literatures around the concepts of mainstreaming and communication framing while analysing pathways by which climate change response activities are initiated, developed and enacted.
Acknowledgements
This study was part of a larger research project (Lackstrom et al. Citation2012) funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office (NA060AR4310007) and conducted by the Carolinas Integrated Sciences and Assessments (CISA), one of 11 US RISA programs. The authors wish to thank the decision makers who participated in this study for their time and insights as well as the invaluable support provided by research team members Ashley Brosius, Sam Ferguson, Dylan Foster, Chris Rappold, Daniel Thompkins, Erin Weeks, and Henrik Westerkam.