Simulative governance: on the collaborative narrative of civil society participation in the CDM stakeholder framework

The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is often cited as an exemplar of new, hybrid forms of global environmental governance operating at the public–private interface. Practically, enacting this arrangement involves a wide range of non-state actors. This broad involvement is here assumed to mark a shift towards more polycentric and networked modes of governance in which agents collaborate as ‘stakeholders’ in the process of consensual rule-setting and implementation. Using post-political critique, the depoliticising effects of the stakeholder framework on civil society actors are interrogated, using formal and informal participation opportunities to raise concerns regarding specific CDM projects. The analysis suggests that the CDM’s collaborative narrative of stakeholding structurally fails to stimulate public (re)engagement and is, instead, a prime example of simulative governance that struggles to achieve the simultaneity of two incompatibilities: the participatory revolution and the post-political turn.     

Governance via persuasion: environmental NGOs and the social licence to operate

The ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO) concept is increasingly associated with environmental activism in nations with prominent resource extractive industries. Environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) deploy it as a campaigning strategy to contest corporate activity, in particular, the environmental sustainability of existing or planned commercial projects. Drawing on two prominent Australian ENGO campaigns – against Seafish Tasmania’s Abel Tasman vessel and Tassal’s proposed fish farm operations on Tasmania’s east coast – the SLO strategy is assessed in the context of the governance literature, arguing that it constitutes ‘governance via persuasion’, a mode that incorporates appeals to normative values. Australian SLO campaigns are primarily directed at the state, promoting opportunities for ENGOs to shape reviews and revisions to environmental regulation alongside governmental and corporate actors. SLO campaigns are therefore a contemporary expression of environmental strategies seeking regulatory change in contrast to ENGO-led private governance initiatives that often bypass the state.     

Sincerity as Strategy: Green Movements and the Problem of Reconciling Deliberative and Instrumental Action

ABSTRACT

Social movements seek to influence views on environmental issues and put pressure on policy-makers in a range of related areas. But alongside their specific goals, they also often strive to create space for genuine deliberation about the need for societal transformation. This ‘dual orientation’ places them theoretically between social movement studies’ focus on strategic considerations and the ‘sincere’ (truthful) communication envisioned by democratic theorists to be a condition for ‘authentic’ deliberation, in which actors genuinely seek to understand each other’s views. Engaging with both fields of theory, a framework is developed for separating actions that are strategic, sincere and employ sincerity as strategy. Actors choose sincerity as a strategy when they practice truthful reasoning as a means to advance their interests in the public sphere. As illustrated by green movements, the concept captures how activists may handle three risks in public discourse: commercialization, politicization and idealization.     

States,coalitions, and the legalization of the global climate regime: negotiations on the post-2020 architecture

Why do some states and state coalitions, acting within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), support harder legalization of the global climate regime? In order to explain why, the effects of four causal factors are considered: climate vulnerability, the emission intensity of the national economy, a state’s power position, and socialization into climate norms. To identify the legalization positions of UNFCCC actors, an original content analysis is conducted of all the submission and meeting statements made at the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform during the years 2012–2015. Subsequently, a qualitative comparative analysis is carried out to find out which combinations of the causal factors offer a sufficient explanation for the analyzed outcome, leading to the identification of two causal pathways that lead states to endorse harder legalization of the climate regime.     

Bourdieu,environmental NGOs,and Australian climate politics

Environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Australia have struggled to generate and sustain public concern about climate change. If debates about climate policy can be viewed as sites of contestation between competing actors, Australia’s environmental NGOs have found it difficult to compete against countervailing forces that have sought to shape public attitudes to climate action and the contours of policy responses. While to a significant degree this reflects the power of those forces and the sentiments of the government of the day, there is also a case to be made that some of Australia’s most prominent environmental NGOs have appeared wedded to strategies inconsistent with building or sustaining public support for action or guiding policy responses. How have Australia’s largest environmental NGOs engaged climate politics, and why has this engagement taken that form? Pierre Bourdieu’s political sociology provides unique insight for coming to terms with the multifaceted nature of the constraints, opportunities, and drivers of political action, from the context of climate politics to the forces behind Australian NGOs’ engagement with that politics, and the limits of that engagement. Bourdieu’s work also suggests possible avenues for more effective forms of political communication on climate change in the Australian context.     

The importance of compatible beliefs for effective climate policy integration

ABSTRACT

European climate policy faced increasing constraints during the economic and Eurozone crises (2008–2014). The European Commission subsequently refocused policymaking toward integrating climate objectives into other policy areas such as energy and the 2014–2020 European Union (EU) budget. The conditions for successful climate policy integration (CPI) are analyzed, focusing on the compatibility of key actors’ beliefs. In renewable energy policy, CPI was successful as long as the co-benefits and related policy-core beliefs of energy security, rural economic development and climate action coexisted harmoniously. Once conflict among these policy-core beliefs emerged during the biofuels controversy, CPI was weakened as actors with competing economy-focused beliefs controlled the decision-making process. The case of EU budget climate mainstreaming illustrates how actors can add climate objectives into legislation despite meaningful discussion being ‘crowded out’ by other priorities. The findings highlight the importance of low conflict between departments, compatible beliefs and policy priorities for successful CPI.     

The idea(s) of ‘valuing nature’: insights from the UK’s ecosystem services framework

The variety of ideas about ways nature is ‘valued’ in public policymaking are investigated. A theoretical ideational approach is combined with empirical analysis of the UK’s ecosystem services framework. Several types of ideas are identified, and how they interact is examined: ideas about nature itself; about the role that different research on the value of nature can or should play in decision-making; and about how policy decisions are made. In particular, the ways these ideas appear in academic debates, especially in ecological economics and philosophy, are confronted with how ideas appear in the policy practice of employing a ‘valuing nature’ concept. This reveals political dynamics sometimes missed by both advocates and critics of the concept of ecosystem services, such as the importance of promoting organisations and their agendas and activities, persuading different actors to change positions, and institutional commitments and sunk costs.     

Unpacking the objectives and assumptions underpinning European aquaculture

Increasing demand for seafood and the lack of growth of capture fisheries have boosted aquaculture growth worldwide. However, European aquaculture has been stagnating over the past decade, and European public authorities have been developing policies and strategies in efforts to reverse this. Aquaculture discourses in the European Union, based on 34 policy, planning, and strategy documents, are examined and a discourse analysis conducted following Bacchi’s WPR (What is the Problem Represented to be?) approach. How the problems in these discourses are represented, the tensions among main objectives, and the implicit assumptions are unveiled, and discussed employing a Polanyian theoretical framework. Taking these assumptions for granted leads to a disembedded understanding of aquaculture, and facilitates the privatization of aquatic space and resources. The analysis contributes to the literature establishing the link between the expansion of aquaculture and the enclosure of aquatic resources and enriches environmental and political debates on European aquaculture.     

From conflict to resilience? Explaining recent changes in climate security discourse and practice

The recent rise of resilience thinking in climate security discourse and practice is examined and explained. Using the paradigmatic case of the United Kingdom, practitioners’ understandings of resilience are considered to show how these actors use a resilience lens to rearticulate earlier storylines of climate conflict in terms of complexity, decentralisation, and empowerment. Practitioners in the climate security field tend to reinterpret resilience in line with their established routines. As a result, climate resilience storylines and practices turn out to be much more diverse and messy than is suggested in the conceptual literature. Building on these findings, the recent success of resilience thinking in climate security discourse is explained. Climate resilience – not despite but due to its messiness – is able to bring together a wide range of actors, traditionally standing at opposite ends of the climate security debate. Through resilience storylines, climate security discourse becomes something to which a wide range of actors, ranging from security to the development field, can relate.     

Is renewable energy still green? Shaping Australia’s renewable energy enterprise in an age of ecological modernisation

ABSTRACT

Renewable energy (RE) illustrates well the logic of ecological modernisation (EM). This logic has successfully transformed RE from a fringe idea owned by largely environmental actors to a mainstream one embraced by a broader constituency. This mainstream embrace inevitably (re)shapes the renewables enterprise. Not all renewables actors today are driven by environmental goals. Instead, key actors, particularly in corporate or community domains, nurture competing norms and aspirations. How the renewables project is envisaged and the goals it is directed to serve can thus differ considerably. Understanding these differences is important since transformations in the energy domain will not only impact climate protection but shape social futures in significant ways. The analysis proceeds in two interrelated steps: first, empirically – conducting an exploration of some of the main projects and actors in the contemporary Australian RE space; and second, theoretically – considering these empirical developments through an EM lens.     

What’s missing from Ostrom? Combining design principles with the theory of sociocultural viability

Since 1990, Elinor Ostrom’s design principles for common property resource (CPR) institutions have been highly influential, offering a counter to pessimistic arguments about resource users’ prospects of cooperating to manage CPRs sustainably. However, the theoretical underpinnings of Ostrom’s theory have been criticised: as unfairly negative towards macro-level interventions; as utilising an overly narrow conceptualisation of rationality; and under appreciative of the role of power. These criticisms are examined using insights drawn from the theory of sociocultural viability (cultural theory, for short), a theory of plural rationality related to context. Utilising the case of Faroese whaling, the research aim is to assess the extent that cultural theory ameliorates criticisms laid at Ostrom’s design principles. It finds that Ostrom’s research trajectory was reaching the limits of methodological individualism’s ability to grasp rational behaviour and suggests the design principles may in effect be integrated with cultural theory.     

Voluntary instruments for ambitious objectives? The experience of the EU Covenant of Mayors

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, innovative governance architectures have been progressively promoted across European Union (EU) environmental and climate policies with the purpose of improving the effectiveness of intervention through better cross-sectoral policy integration and increased involvement of sub-state and non-governmental actors in the policy process. By combining the theoretical insights of polycentric governance and the concept of usage, the case of the Covenant of Mayors (CoM) is analysed to uncover the extent to which this voluntary programme has empowered local authorities within the EU strategy for sustainable energy by encouraging coordination and learning. This illustrates how a range of policy variables determined the dynamics of the programme’s implementation in Italy and the United Kingdom.     

Drivers of political parties’ climate policy preferences: lessons from Denmark and Ireland

ABSTRACT

Political parties are important actors in domestic climate politics. What drives variation in parties’ climate policy preferences? To contribute to a growing literature on the party politics of climate change, we focus on the roles of public opinion, party competition, and parties’ traditional policy preferences in shaping parties’ climate policy preferences in Denmark and Ireland. In case studies that draw on in-depth interviews with policy practitioners, we show how parties respond to public opinion, accommodate issue-owners, and are powerfully constrained and enabled by their existing preferences. These mechanisms also help to explain different responses on climate policy across the left-right spectrum. Competition between mainstream parties is particularly powerful, but can constrain as much as it enables ‘greener’ climate policy preferences. While climate change may be a distinctive problem, the party politics of climate change features similar incentives and constraints as other domains.     

Using ecological modernisation theory to account for the evolution of the zero-carbon homes agenda in England

Despite early successes, the ‘zero-carbon homes’ agenda in England is being wound down. Ecological modernisation theory, which focuses on the way in which political, economic, and social forces interact with one other in the provision of environmental goods and services, is used to explain this. Existing literature on zero-carbon homes is fragmented, with scholars focusing on a range of social, economic, or political explanations. Ecological modernisation theory reconciles these various strands to produce a nuanced explanation for this agenda’s evolution. An ambitious but poorly defined legislative approach placed a burden on house-builders to meet compliance costs associated with zero-carbon, but framing sustainability economistically also led to considerable uncertainty. The 2008 financial crisis, the politicisation of housing, and the election of a government with a deregulatory mandate influenced the resilience of the policy agenda as private-sector actors exploited the uncertainty and political will in order to evade their policy burdens.     

De-Europeanising or disengaging? EU environmental policy and Brexit

ABSTRACT

The European Union (EU) has had a profound effect upon its members’ environmental policy. Even in the United Kingdom (UK), the EU’s most recalcitrant member state (historically labeled the ‘Dirty man of Europe’), environmental policy has been Europeanised. As the UK moves to the EU’s exit door it is timely to assess the utility of Europeanisation for understanding policy dynamics in the UK. Drawing upon interviews and extensive engagement with stakeholders, this article analyses the potential impact of Brexit upon environmental policy and politics. The analytical toolkit offered by de-Europeanisation is developed to identify the factors that drive and inhibit de-Europeanisation processes, thereby providing insights that may be applicable in other settings. Disengagement and policy stagnation are presented as more likely environmental outcomes of Brexit, with capacity emerging as a central explanatory variable.     

The territorialization of transnational sustainability governance: production,power and globalization in Iceland’s fisheries

To contribute to the literature on transnational sustainability governance hybrids, a new fisheries certification program in Iceland that was originally developed as an alternative to the non-governmental Marine Stewardship Council is examined. While this new program appears on the surface to constitute a purely nationalistic reaction against external non-state authority, the new governance institution is also non-governmental and incorporates international norms and institutions. To explain this new governance hybrid, Robert Cox’s International Political Economy approach to production and power is engaged. This approach theorizes the co-constitution of the social forces of production, state–society complexes and global governance. It is argued that the Icelandic case is not entirely localized or unique; it is part of a broader movement in which social forces of production respond to new market-oriented transnational sustainability governance institutions by developing territorially embedded but transnationally legitimate alternatives.     

Fifty Shades of Green? Political differences between elites,members and supporters of Europe Ecologie Les Verts

In recent years, many political parties have created new forms of affiliation and have justified the blurring of membership boundaries with claims that sympathisers would be more representative of the electorate and less radical. Such claims are based on ‘popular wisdom’ inspired by John May’s ‘special law of curvilinearity’, which states that activists hold more extreme views than voters and elites. When this expectation has been tested, results have been at best inconclusive; but testing has so far never used a single survey to compare different groups. Using an online survey of Europe Ecologie Les Verts party members and their extended networks (affiliated supporters, lapsed members, sympathisers), relationships between ideological differences and degree of investment in party activities and decision-making are analysed. The results, contradicting May’s special law along all ideological dimensions other than intra-party democracy, can be explained if May’s narrowly instrumental assumptions about preference formation are rejected.     

The politics of curtailment: multi-level governance and solar photovoltaic power generation in China

The rise of China’s photovoltaic (PV) industry, and the concomitant curtailment problem, provides an opportunity to reconsider China’s industrial governance. It is argued here that the curtailment is intertwined with the multi-level character of China’s energy governance. Borrowing the insights of multi-level governance (MLG), we identify the relevant stakeholders situated at different levels and clarify their positions and considerations concerning the solar PV industry. MLG analysis reveals that curtailment in China’s solar PV industry was primarily the result of uncoordinated development at different levels – sub-provincial, provincial, national, and international. China’s response to the curtailment problem is then examined, considering whether such policy adjustments will contribute to greater societal participation, changes in development ideas, an improved coordination mechanism, or alternative institutional arrangements.     

Extractivism and the rights of nature: governmentality, ‘convenient communities’ and epistemic pacts in Ecuador

Ecuador’s recently adopted conflict resolution techniques have aggravated the always tense encounters between Amazonian indigenous communities, oil companies and the state. The state’s governmentality project portrays these socio-environmental conflicts as mere technical–managerial issues while societal coalitions re-politicize them through territorial defense struggles. The Cofán Dureno case highlights how the self-proclaimed ‘Citizen’s Revolution’ government seeks to redefine socio-natural relationships and territorial identities, devising ‘communities of convenience’. These correspond to the state’s own images, political structure and ideology, promoting ‘community participation’ to facilitate oil extraction. Ecuador’s constitutionally recognized Rights of Nature (paradoxically installed by the same government) are analyzed with a focus on their potential for resisting socio-environmental injustice. The internationally celebrated inclusion of these rights in the Constitution was advocated by nonindigenous intellectual activists but influenced and supported by the indigenous movement. Beyond legal implications, these rights might foster an epistemic pact between indigenous and nonindigenous society to defend territories from extractive industries.     

Who shapes local climate policy? Unpicking governance arrangements in English and German cities

A new framework for analysing subnational policymaking is applied to climate governance in the ‘twin towns’ of Newcastle upon Tyne and Gelsenkirchen. Low levels of resource interdependence between central and local government in England mean that Newcastle Council has to rely heavily on other horizontal actors to achieve its climate objectives. In contrast, Gelsenkirchen Council receives substantial support from higher tiers of government, which gives it greater control over policymaking within the locality. Greater independence between tiers of government can make it more difficult for subnational bodies to adopt the kind of ambitious policies that may be necessary to combat wicked and/or significant policy challenges such as climate change. Instead, interdependent ‘joint-decision’ systems, which facilitate mutual support across tiers of government, may be better equipped to ensure that subnational public bodies have the capacity to act appropriately.