No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Re-politicizing climate governance research
Abstract
In this chapter we examine a tendency within some aspects of climate governance research to prioritize universalistic theorizations of trends in climate governance and, correspondingly, to underemphasize how more localized and often adversarial political processes crucially shape the dynamics and outcomes produced by different forms of climate governance in different contexts. We begin by making the case that elements of climate governance research are developing an apolitical character, then discuss some drivers of this trend, including: pressures on academics to avoid contentious political debates in order to maintain dialogue with decision-makers; intellectual pragmatism fostering an inclination to explore reformist rather than radical transformations in climate governance; and academic conventions concerning the relative value of theoretically and empirically oriented research. We conclude by exploring some methodological approaches that might enable and encourage climate governance research to chart a productive course between theoretical advancement and more active engagement with the day-to-day political realities faced by public and private actors involved in governing aspects of climate change. © Karin Bäckstrand and Eva Lövbrand 2015. All rights reserved.
... Rather, the analysis suggests that more emphasis must be placed on the processes by which such governance could be brought about, and how reforms can be steered through national political systems, in ways that engage electorates and develop a mandate for further action. In other words, researchers must address the 'politics gap' identified by Ian Bailey and Piers Revill (2015). Below, these issues are discussed with reference to a specific example: the case of climate governance, and its implementation in the United Kingdom. ...
The scientific case for co-ordinated global governance of the climate system is firmly established, but how does this fit with a politician’s mandate as a democratically elected representative? What role do national politicians think they can and should play in climate governance? This paper tests these questions empirically, using data from interviews with 23 Members of the UK Parliament, and a focus group of civil society advocates, conducted between 2016 and 2018. A global goal to limit climate change has been agreed through the 2015 Paris Agreement. Yet while the Agreement sets a clear goal, the means to achieve it remain firmly at the level of the nation-state, with each country assuming responsibility for its own national plan. Thus national administrations, run by elected politicians, have a crucial role to play. This study shows that, while Members of the UK Parliament have an understanding of the challenges posed by climate change and wider changes to earth systems, few have yet been able to operationalise this understanding into meaningful responses at the national level. The study highlights two, linked, reasons for this. First, politicians’ ability to act – their agency – is limited by the practicalities and procedures of everyday politics, and by the norms and cultures of their working life. Second, UK politicians feel little pressure from their electors to act on climate change, and have to work to justify why action on climate change carries democratic legitimacy. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this research, in the light of the recent high-profile climate protests and declarations of a ‘climate emergency’. It argues that politicians, working with other stakeholders, need support in order to articulate the scale and significance of global climate governance, and craft responses which build democratic support for further action.
The significant rise in the release of greenhouse gases, primarily CO2, CH4, and N2O, over some time due to human activities, including agriculture, is intensifying climate change. This poses a threat to ecosystems and livelihood security, which has garnered global attention toward the role of agroforestry (AF). The primary cause of the rise in carbon dioxide concentration is the burning of fossil fuels. A research study discovered a positive correlation between CO2 concentration and temperature. As CO2 levels continue to climb, they will trap more heat, leading to elevated temperatures. To maintain a balanced heat budget, it is crucial to stabilize CO2 concentration. AF emerges as a viable approach to achieve this, as it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, storing it in biomass and soil. The Kyoto Protocol’s recommended sustainable land use strategy is essential to reducing the effects of climate change. AF shows promise in carbon sequestration within biomass and the utilization of diverse resources. Additionally, it aids in curbing greenhouse gas emissions, supporting livelihoods, and offering partial solutions for conserving biodiversity. AF has the potential to enhance the resilience of smallholder farmers, contributing to poverty reduction and boosting productivity on their farms. Presently, AF stands as a relevant and effective land use system for improving agricultural crop yields. With so many benefits, AF can be seen as a comprehensive response to environmental changes because of its capacity to provide a variety of ecosystem services. It combats soil erosion, enhances water infiltration, and mitigates the adverse effects of extreme weather events. Moreover, AF practices diversify income sources for farmers, increasing their resilience against climate-induced crop failure or livestock loss. Tree-derived products can also serve as energy sources. Furthermore, increased tree coverage offers mitigation benefits by acting as a carbon sink on land.
In climate change, as in other areas, recent years have produced a 'Cambrian explosion' of transnational institutions, standards, financing arrangements, and programs. As a result, climate governance has become complex, fragmented, and decentralized, operating without central coordination. Most studies of climate governance focus on interstate institutions. In contrast, I map a different realm of climate change governance: the diverse array of transnational schemes. I analyze this emerging system in terms of two theoretical frameworks developed to describe, explain, and evaluate complex governance arrangements- regime complex theory and polycentric governance theory-revealing fruitful avenues for positive and normative research. I conclude by arguing that the benefits of institutional complexity could be increased, and the costs reduced, through nonhierarchical 'orchestration' of climate change governance, in which international organizations or other appropriate authorities support and steer transnational schemes that further global public interests.
The green economy is a highly complex construct in terms of its attempts to integrate economic, environmental, and social concerns, the wide range of actors involved, its material outcomes, and the forms of governance needed to regulate processes of economic greening. As such, it poses new empirical and theoretical challenges for social science research on socioenvironmental futures. This paper has two main aims. The first is to survey the emergent features and functional domains of the green economy. The second is to consider theoretical tools that might be used to analyse the drivers and processes shaping the green economy. Focusing on literature on sociotechnical transitions, ecological modernisation, the 'green' cultural economy, and postpolitical governance, we argue that understanding the functional and spatial heterogeneity of the green economy necessitates a multitheoretical approach. We then explore how combining branches of research on socioenvironmental governance can lead to theoretically and ontologically richer insights into the drivers, practices, and power relations within the green economy. In so doing, we respond to calls for socioeconomic research on environmental change which is neither just empirical nor bound to one theoretical outlook to the detriment of understanding the complexity of socioenvironmental governance and human-nature relations.
Starting from the diagnosis of a profound reconfiguration since the second half of the 1980s of the normative foundations of contemporary eco-political discourses, the theory of post-ecologist politics has conceptualised eco-politics in advanced modern consumer societies as the politics of unsustainability. How the politics of unsustainability is organised and executed in practical terms is explored and the theory of post-ecologist politics is extended to suggest that, in the wake of a modernisation-induced post-democratic turn, democratic values and the innovative modes of decentralised, participatory government which, up to the present, are widely hailed as the key towards a genuinely legitimate, effective and efficient environmental policy are metamorphosing into tools for managing the condition of sustained ecological and social unsustainability. Analysis of this governance of unsustainability reveals a new twist in the notoriously difficult relationship between democracy and ecology.
This article interrogates the relationship between two apparently disjointed themes: the consensual presentation and mainstreaming of the global problem of climate change on the one hand and the debate in political theory/philosophy that centers around the emergence and consolidation of a post-political and post-democratic condition on the other. The argument advanced in this article attempts to tease out this apparently paradoxical condition. On the one hand, the climate is seemingly politicized as never before and has been propelled high on the policy agenda. On the other hand, a number of increasingly influential political philosophers insist on how the post-politicization (or de-politicization) of the public sphere (in parallel and intertwined with processes of neoliberalization) have been key markers of the political process over the past few decades. We proceed in four steps. First, we briefly outline the basic contours of the argument and its premises. Second, we explore the ways in which the present climate conundrum is predominantly staged through the mobilization of particular apocalyptic imaginaries. Third, we argue that this specific (re-)presentation of climate change and its associated policies is sustained by decidedly populist gestures. Finally, we discuss how this particular choreographing of climate change is one of the arenas through which a post-political frame and post-democratic political configuration have been mediated.
It is widely accepted that transboundary pollution problems require international co-operation for their solution, because many countries suffer the effects of such degradation and no country is unilaterally capable of managing the issue. While most environmental issues share these characteristics, which inhibit their resolution internationally, these issues are really little different from other global issues involving ‘common property resources’ — for example, trade and security. In all of these matters, national leaders are usually averse to serious co-operative efforts because of their doubts about reciprocity and verification, as well as common political antipathies among states.1 While these problems appear to reflect some mutual interests — all countries are affected by environmental degradation and a unified response is universally preferable to a patchwork of disjointed efforts — enduring and profound differences of interest impede co-operation. Differences about who pays, states’ unwillingness to forego short-term economic welfare and other distributional disagreements typically inhibit the formation of strong collective arrangements. Environmental issues are little different from the type of zero-sum bargaining efforts with which students of international relations are so familiar. Further, many less developed countries (LDCs) view efforts by the developed world to promote environmental protection as duplicitous efforts to retard economic growth in the Third World.2 In short, mutual interests are actually quite weak, and countries are often reluctant to co-operate unless they are certain that the protection costs will be equally distributed.
This article seeks to answer why North—South climate negotiations have gone on for decades without producing any substantial results. To address this question, we revisit and seek to integrate insights from several disparate theories, including structuralism (new and old), world systems theory, rational choice institutionalism, and social constructivism. We argue that the lack of convergence on climate grew almost inevitably from our starkly unequal world, which has created and perpetuated highly divergent ways of thinking (worldviews and causal beliefs) and promoted particularistic notions of fairness (principled beliefs). We attempt to integrate structural insights about global inequality with the micro-motives of rational choice institutionalism. The structuralist insight that ‘unchecked inequality undermines cooperation’ suggests climate negotiations must be broadened to include a range of seemingly unrelated development issues such as trade, investment, debt, and intellectual property rights agreements. We conclude by reviewing the work of some ‘norm entrepreneurs’ bringing justice issues into climate negotiations and explore how these insights might influence ‘burden sharing’ discussions in the post-Kyoto world, where development is constrained by climate change.
Climate change is widely acknowledged as a key business risk. Companies around the globe are taking action to mitigate their carbon emissions, develop climate-friendly products and services, and prepare for the negative impacts of climate change for their operations. Financial investors, on their part, are becoming more concerned about business responses to climate change and begin to demand concrete risk management strategies. In this context an increasing number of private initiatives are seeking to change business behaviour in a more sustainable direction. Key instruments used are governance by disclosure. This paper explores the agency of nonstate actors in manufacturing climate change into a key business risk, a development that enabled the use of disclosure-based governance mechanisms in global climate politics.
With this paper we present an analysis of sixty transnational governance initiatives and assess the implications for our understanding of the roles of public and private actors, the legitimacy of governance ‘beyond’ the state, and the North–South dimensions of governing climate change. In the first part of the paper we examine the notion of transnational governance and its applicability in the climate change arena, reflecting on the history and emergence of transnational governance initiatives in this issue area and key areas of debate. In the second part of the paper we present the findings from the database and its analysis. Focusing on three core issues, the roles of public and private actors in governing transnationally, the functions that such initiatives perform, and the ways in which accountability for governing global environmental issues might be achieved, we suggest that significant distinctions are emerging in the universe of transnational climate governance which may have considerable implications for the governing of global environmental issues. In conclusion, we reflect on these findings and the subsequent consequences for the governance of climate change. Keywords: climate change, governance, transnational, private authority, public, legitimacy
In this article we examine the emergence and implications of transnational climate-change governance. We argue that although the study of transnational relations has recently been renewed alongside a burgeoning interest in issues of global governance, the nature of transnational governance has to date received less attention. We contend that transnational governance occurs when networks operating in the transnational political sphere authoritatively steer constituents toward public goals. In order to stimulate a more systematic study of the diversity and significance of this phenomenon, the article develops a typology based on the actors involved and their authority-public, private, or hybrid-and the primary governance functions performed in order to steer network constituents-information-sharing, capacity building and implementation, or rule-setting. A comparative discussion of transnational governance networks for climate change illustrates each category and the value of the typology in assessing the multiple mechanisms through which transnational governance occurs. In conclusion, we suggest that our typology provides a useful starting point for future research and reflect on the implications for the study of global affairs. (c) 2009 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This article provides a first step towards a better theoretical and empirical knowledge of the emerging arena of transnational
climate governance. The need for such a re-conceptualization emerges from the increasing relevance of non-state and transnational
approaches towards climate change mitigation at a time when the intergovernmental negotiation process has to overcome substantial
stalemate and the international arena becomes increasingly fragmented. Based on a brief discussion of the increasing trend
towards transnationalization and functional segmentation of the global climate governance arena, we argue that a remapping
of climate governance is necessary and needs to take into account different spheres of authority beyond the public and international.
Hence, we provide a brief analysis of how the public/private divide has been conceptualized in Political Science and International
Relations. Subsequently, we analyse the emerging transnational climate governance arena. Analytically, we distinguish between
different manifestations of transnational climate governance on a continuum ranging from delegated and shared public–private
authority to fully non-state and private responses to the climate problem. We suggest that our remapping exercise presented
in this article can be a useful starting point for future research on the role and relevance of transnational approaches to
the global climate crisis.
Introduction: Diverse Economies as a Performative Ontological ProjectBecoming Different Academic SubjectsThe Ethics of ThinkingNew Academic Practices and PerformancesConclusion
References
In April 2010, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced the deferral of his flagship climate-change policy, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, after it twice failed to gain the support of the Australian Senate. The decision contributed to the curtailment of Rudd's premiership and confirmed climate change as one of the most toxic issues in Australian politics. Although deficits in policy design and structural obstacles caused by Australia's carbon-intensive economy were major obstacles for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, it could have passed into legislation had more effective political strategies been used to counter political opposition. A policy network framework is used to explore these political obstacles and how alternative political strategies may help to counter political obstacles to and public concern about new climate policies. In conclusion, the wider merits of policy network and political strategy approaches for the analysis of national climate politics are considered.
More and more international organisations are starting to incorporate climate protection as an important policy goal. Strikingly, most institutions only rephrase existing activities in the terms of climate protection instead of changing them, although there are tensions and contradictions between short-term economic and long-term environmental goals. The aim of this article is to explore the logic of climate mainstreaming and explain the paradoxical result of such a consistent inconsistency. It employs a poststructuralist approach that combines elements of governmentality and discourse theory. Analysing discourses of the WTO, IMF, World Bank and OECD, it argues that the global governmentality of climate protection is built on four discursive pillars — globalism, scientism, an ethics of growth and efficiency — that make climate protection function as an empty signifier; that is, they make it possible to integrate climate protection into the global hegemonic order without changing the basic social structures of the world economy. International organisations can claim to be in favour of climate protection and stick to business as usual at the same time. This claim is backed up by an interpretive discourse analysis of 31 texts of the respective organisations.
This paper analyses the development of a new policy instrument as an innovation process in governance. Using the innovation journey concept to track the process in which ‘emissions trading’ emerges as a novel configuration in environmental governance shows how the policy instrument develops dynamics of its own, partly independently of policy problems and goals. These dynamics cut across governance domains, from air pollution policy in the USA to climate policy in the European Union. Interactions across science, policy development and the governance domains in which the instrument is applied prove to be critical for the transition between phases: from options to first developments; to experiments with a prototype; further diffusion; and, finally, the formation of a transnational policy regime. Key factors are openings in existing governance structures, establishment of linkages with contexts of implementation and the generation of momentum through the ‘carbon industry’ as an emerging service economy. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.
Drawing on Flyvbjerg’s (2001) call for the development of phronetic social science, this paper argues that much current research into pro-environmental behaviour (PEB) is misguided, and even potentially dangerous. After outlining Flyvbjerg’s argument, it reviews existing work on PEB and argues that, to date, it has predominantly sought after the Aristotelian intellectual virtues of either episteme or techne, and has neglected phronesis which Aristotle himself saw as most important. It then explores the ways in which aspects of a phronetic approach are being developed in cultural geography and environmental sociology, before offering a brief empirical case study of a PEB-change initiative to illustrate what a phronetic approach to research might look like. It concludes by calling for an improved and more reflexive dialogue between PEB researchers regarding the purpose and approach of their work, both in order to improve the relevance and impact of their research, and in order to help individuals and communities understand and confront the significant environmental challenges they currently face.
The past two decades have seen a wholesale rethinking and reworking of public policy, and have provided geographers with a major opportunity to enter and help shape the policy debate. Yet, disappointingly, the impact of geography on the policy realm has been limited. Increasingly, it seems, other social, political and environmental scientists, and even media pundits, shape public perception and government policy in areas where we as geographers could – indeed should – be having much greater influence. In this article I examine the reasons for this state of affairs. The fundamental problem, I argue, is that for a variety of reasons much contemporary social and economic geography research renders it of little practical relevance for policy, in some cases of little social relevance at all. The more significant reasons for this lack of relevance to, and influence on, the policy realm include: the effects on the subject of the postmodern and cultural ‘turns’; the consequential emphasis on ‘sexy’ philosophical, linguistic and theoretical issues rather than on practical social research; the retreat from detailed, rigorous empirical work; the intellectual bias against policy studies; and the lack of political commitment. The article makes a plea for a new ‘policy turn’ in the discipline, and concludes with some tentative suggestions for how we might move towards a ‘geography of public policy’.
This paper critically but sympathetically examines eco-localisation as a response to ‘peak oil’ and to reduce the emission of CO2 to avoid dangerous climate change. Rather than seeing the politics of climate change and peak oil as in some way ‘post-political’, the paper argues that protagonists of localised economies are developing radical new conceptions of livelihood and economy that directly cut against the logic of growth-based capitalist economic strategies and elite conceptualisations of economic development. Building on development theory, the paper develops a conceptualisation of ‘immanent’ and ‘intentional’ localisation, with the former a simple move by businesses of economic activities that have high transport costs closer to their markets. Advocates of intentional localisation are working more pro actively at grassroots level to develop local solutions to peak oil and climate change based on developing less resource-intensive yet enjoyable and fulfilling livelihoods in more localised economies. In discussing the contested nature of localisation, the paper engages with critiques of eco-localisation from neoliberal advocates and from the left, before concluding that localisation should be seen more as a different calculation of where economic activities would be located, which aims to reduce oil consumption and CO2 emissions, rather than a call for autarky. The paper concludes by arguing that analyses of the scale of economic networks need to pay more attention of the materiality of oil consumption and CO2 emissions, and that scales cannot be seen as socially constructed.
The global response to climate change has reached a critical juncture. Since the 1992 signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the nations of the world have attempted to address climate change through large-scale multilateral treaty-making. These efforts have been heroic, but disappointing. As evidence for the quickening pace of climate change mounts, the treaty-making process has sputtered, and many are now skeptical about the prospect of an effective global response. Yet global treaty-making is not the only way that climate change can be addressed or, indeed, is being addressed. In the last decade myriad initiatives have emerged across the globe independently from, or only loosely connected to, the "official" UN-sponsored negotiations and treaties. In the face of stalemate in the formal negotiations, the world is experimenting with alternate means of responding to climate change. Climate Governance at the Crossroads chronicles these innovations--how cities, provinces and states, citizen groups, and corporations around the globe are addressing the causes and symptoms of global warming. The center of gravity in the global response to climate change is shifting from the multilateral treaty-making process to the diverse activities found beyond the negotiating halls. These innovations are pushing the envelope of climate action and demonstrating what is possible, and they provide hope that the world will respond effectively to the climate crisis. In introducing climate governance "experiments" and examining the development and functioning of this new world of climate policy-making, this book provides an exciting new perspective on the politics of climate change and the means to understand and influence how the global response to climate change will unfold in the coming years.
Global summits - such as the 2002 Johannesburg Summit and the 2009 Copenhagen COP15 - can be seen as theatrical techniques of environmental governmentality. Summits such as these, which do not produce new international agreements or strengthen environmental regimes, are commonly regarded as failures. However, they can also be viewed as moments of political theatre, performative enactments of legitimacy and authority, and sites for the communication of particular examples of responsible conduct. This political theatre is not a distraction from the real business of governing the global environment, but rather it is a primary technique of government at a distance. Summits function as 'exemplary centres' for a global audience, although their mobilisation of particular stages, scripts, casts and audiences remains open to subversion and conflict. The symbolic, theatrical and performative dimensions of summitry are rarely theorised, but their implications are profound, not only for responses to the ecological crisis, but for the nature and character of global politics and the potential for resistance and dissent.
In the extensive literature on international environmental co-operation, trust is usually treated in terms of compliance and verification mechanisms, on the assumption that there will always be incentives for parties to international agreements to cheat or to 'free ride'. Indeed the establishment of adequate assurances that such behaviour will be detected and punished is frequently the sine qua non of agreement in the first place. Technical and legal compliance mechanisms have developed rapidly in environmental treaty-making over the last two decades. The climate regime is no exception and its provisions in this regard are briefly described and analysed. However, it will be argued that the development of trust amongst the parties goes well beyond formal compliance and depends upon the institutionalised relationships, often amongst officials and technical experts that have grown up, since the negotiations for a climate treaty commenced in the late 1980s.
A partir del análisis de problemas ambientales específicos, se plantea la necesidad de que la Unión Europea defina y ponga en acción una política ambiental conjunta.
apply a similar questioning rubric in their book, Governing Climate Change: who is governing
- Newell Bulkeley
Bulkeley and Newell (2010) apply a similar questioning rubric in their book, Governing Climate Change:
who is governing, on whose behalf, and with what effects?
- H Bulkeley
- A Jordan
Bulkeley, H. and A. Jordan (2012), Transnational environmental governance: new findings and emerging
research agendas, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 30(4), 557-570.
- A Jordan
- D Huitema
Jordan, A. and D. Huitema (2014), Innovations in climate policy: conclusions and new directions, Environmental
Politics, 23(5), 906-925.