Climate pioneership and leadership in structurally disadvantaged maritime port cities

ABSTRACT

Innovative climate governance in small-to-medium-sized structurally disadvantaged cities (SDCs) are assessed. Considering their deeply ingrained severe economic and social problems it would be reasonable to assume that SDCs act primarily as climate laggards or at best as followers. However, novel empirical findings show that SDCs are capable of acting as climate pioneers. Different types and styles of climate leadership and pioneership and how they operate within multi-level and polycentric governance structures are identified and assessed. SDCs seem relatively readily willing to adopt transformational climate pioneership styles to create ‘green’ jobs, for example, in the offshore wind energy sector and with the aim of improving their poor external image. However, in order to sustain transformational climate pioneership they often have to rely on support from ‘higher’ levels of governance. For SDCs, there is a tension between learning from each other’s best practice and fierce economic competition in climate innovation.     

Assessing President Obama’s climate change record

ABSTRACT

President Obama’s climate change record is assessed by looking at his success in translating policy goals into policy outputs (laws or regulatory action) during his time in office. Obama’s campaign speeches are examined to identify specific promises to take action on climate change before proceeding to examine whether, how and with what success he managed to act upon these pledges. Obama is shown to have set out a multi-pronged approach to deal with climate change in his campaign speeches and succeeded in translating many of his goals into policy outputs. This finding contributes to debates about Obama’s ‘green’ credentials.     

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.     

De facto governance: how authoritative assessments construct climate engineering as an object of governance

ABSTRACT

Analyses of climate engineering (CE) governance have accelerated in the last decade. A key claim is that CE remains a largely ungoverned space, with shared norms, institutional arrangements, and formal rules to regulate CE not yet present. In contrast, here it is argued that de facto governance of CE is underway, discernible in an ordering of this nascent field of inquiry by unacknowledged sources of steering. One key source of de facto governance is analyzed: high-level ‘authoritative assessments’ of CE. The focus is on how these assessments are constructing CE as an object of governance through demarcating and categorizing this emerging field of inquiry, and how this contributes to normalizing and institutionalizing CE research (and CE research communities). Scrutinizing the distinct nature and political implications of de facto governance, particularly of novel and speculative technological trajectories not yet subject to formal steering, remains a key task for governance scholars.     

The Czech Republic’s approach to the EU 2030 climate and energy framework

ABSTRACT

The East-West divide within the EU over climate policy has been frequently discussed. There is a tendency in the literature to focus on Poland and ignore the other countries in the central and eastern European region. Here it is argued that the institutionalised cooperation between the four countries in the Visegrad Group (the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) provides a crucial component for an understanding of how the participating countries approach EU climate negotiations. Here it is suggested that the group is important as a bargaining coalition but also as a reference point for the development of shared ‘Visegrad’ norms in the field. This is based on a case study of the Czech Republic’s approach to the 2014 negotiations on the 2030 climate and energy framework and the country’s cooperation with the other Visegrad countries on the issue.     

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.     

Leadership and lesson-drawing in the European Union’s multilevel climate governance system

ABSTRACT

The important role that climate leaders and leadership play at different levels of the European Union (EU) multilevel governance system is exemplified. Initially, climate leader states set the pace with ambitious policy measures that were adopted largely on an ad hoc basis. Since the mid-1980s, the EU has developed a multilevel climate governance system that has facilitated leadership and lesson-drawing at all governance levels including the local level. The EU has become a global climate policy leader by example although it had been set up as a ‘leaderless Europe’. The resulting ‘leadership without leader’ paradox cannot be sufficiently explained merely by reference to top-level EU climate policies. Local-level climate innovations and lesson-drawing have increasingly been encouraged by the EU’s multilevel climate governance system which has become more polycentric. The recognition of economic co-benefits of climate policy measures has helped to further the EU’s climate leadership role.     

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.     

Mobilizing environmental sentiment through the media

ABSTRACT

Recent research into the best ways to mobilize people to act on climate change suggests that careful, and relatively positive, emotional framing is critical. However, environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) need to not only mobilize publics, but also attract media coverage. If the media prefers negativity or is skeptical of ENGOs’ emotive appeals, are ENGOs’ emotional frames damaging their ability to gain media attention? Quantitative sentiment analysis is used to identify emotional framing in a targeted case study of 350.org’s public press releases and their subsequent media coverage. The results suggest that appropriate emotional frames for mobilization are not necessarily detrimental to gaining media attention, and that ENGO press releases influence media coverage, when they are used. Several concrete suggestions emerge for how ENGOs might use press releases more effectively, if they seek to influence the media’s emotional tone on climate change.     

Fast,cheap, and imperfect? US public opinion about solar geoengineering

ABSTRACT

Solar geoengineering, which seeks to cool the planet by reflecting a small fraction of sunlight back into space, has drawn the attention of scientists and policymakers as climate change remains unabated. Unlike mitigation, solar geoengineering could quickly and cheaply lower global temperatures. It is also imperfect. Its environmental impacts remain unpredictable, and its low cost and immediate effects may result in ‘moral hazard,’ potentially crowding out costly mitigation efforts. There is little understanding about how the public will respond to such tradeoffs. To address this, a 1000-subject nationally representative poll focused on solar geoengineering was conducted as part of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) of the US electorate in October–November 2016. The importance that individuals place on solar geoengineering’s speed and cost predicts their support for it, but there is little to no relationship between their concerns about its shortcomings and support for its research and use. Acquiescence bias appears to be an important factor for attitudes around solar geoengineering and moral hazard.     

Responsibility,capacity, greenness or vulnerability? What explains the levels of climate aid provided by bilateral donors?

At the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Summit, donors pledged to ‘jointly mobilize’ $100 billion/year for climate finance by 2020. The Copenhagen Accord and other agreements do not specify who should provide how much of this collective target beyond the general principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR&RC), according to which the more responsible a country is for climate change and/or the more capable of paying, the more climate finance it should provide. Two additional burden-sharing mechanisms may explain how much climate finance donors provide: willingness to pay or ‘greenness’ and self-interest. These mechanisms are tested to determine which best explains current patterns in climate finance commitments by analysing bilateral climate aid. There is evidence for capability—richer countries provide more climate aid. In contrast, responsibility, greenness or self-interest do not induce more climate aid commitments. Better understanding the drivers of climate aid helps to mobilize more climate finance, and advances understanding of (sectoral) aid allocation.     

The European Council,the Council and the Member States: changing environmental leadership dynamics in the European Union

ABSTRACT

The leadership dynamics between the European Council, the Council and the Member States in European Union (EU) environmental policy since the 1970s are analysed. The puzzle is that, although the EU was set up as a ‘leaderless Europe’, it is widely seen as an environmental leader, albeit sometimes as a one-eyed leader amongst the blind. While differentiating between leadership types, it is argued that the European Council has the largest structural, the Council the most significant entrepreneurial, and the Member States the most important cognitive and exemplary leadership capacities. Most day-to-day environmental policy measures are negotiated by the Environment Council (in collaboration with the European Parliament). The European Council’s increased interest in high politics climate change issues is largely due to the EU’s global leadership ambitions. Member States have traditionally formed environmental leadership alliances on an ad hoc basis although this may be changing.     

Geoengineering and sustainability

ABSTRACT

Geoengineering is regarded by advocates as a creative and responsible technological option in the face of a climate emergency. Critics often see it as a hubristic attempt to play God, with disastrous consequences for the planet and humanity. These antipodal perspectives are represented by the ideal types of Prometheans and Gaians. Prometheans and Gaians typically talk past each other. The geoengineering debate can be made more fruitful by well articulating their respective positions and subsequently situating them in the discourse of sustainability. A sustainability orientation does not answer the troubling question whether geoengineering should be developed and deployed. But it can foster a ‘fusion of horizons’ between Prometheans and Gaians, providing common ground in an otherwise polarized debate and making a more productive dialogue possible.     

Renegotiating nature in the Anthropocene: Australia’s environment movement in a time of crisis

The Anthropocene raises two interrelated problems for the Australian environment movement. The first concerns the movement’s normative and political relationship to non-human nature: climate change in particular is forcing an urgent reconsideration of how nature is to be understood and managed. The second problem concerns the implications of full recognition of the rights of First Peoples for environmental justice. These issues may lead to crises of identity, legitimacy, and effectiveness for the Australian movement. The normative bases upon which Australian environmentalists may draw in order to ‘protect nature’ in the Anthropocene are discussed. Setting aside the simple emancipatory ambition of preservationist environmentalism and the Australian movement’s earlier Romantic protectionism, a new pragmatic, pluralistic environmental politics – based on precaution, the avoidance of pain and suffering, and protection of the most vulnerable – is suggested.     

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.     

The transformative power of commoning and alternative food networks

ABSTRACT

A commoning framework offers a critical lens to fully appreciate the scope and impact of alternative food networks (AFNs). Fieldwork from an AFN in southern China is drawn upon to show how commoning enacts changes in how members contextualise and anchor their social relations to one another with regards to sourcing food as a commons. A commoning framework gives a fuller picture of how the constitutive effects of AFNs reside not in their introduction of a new uniformity but in their navigation of the multiplicity of the social through its proposition and co-construction of a new ‘cognitive praxis’.     

Defending dissensus: participatory governance and the politics of water measurement in Montana’s Yellowstone River Basin

The role of a particular aspect of collaboration, dissensus, in stimulating critical reconsideration of ‘prior appropriation’, a historically hegemonic condition related to water rights in the western United States, is examined via a collaborative planning effort in Montana. Consensual support for a water-use measuring proposal was undermined by strong libertarian resistance to governmental regulation, and an unwavering embrace of the status quo. However, based on insights from scholars engaged in the ‘post-political’ dimensions of contemporary forms of rule – dissensus – understood as the manifestation of consensus-forestalling disagreement articulated between oppositional voices – is revealed as a condition to be actively nurtured, rather than purged. This case reveals how dissensus can open discursive spaces for hegemony-disrupting modes of inquiry, alternative perspectives, and innovative possibilities, even among sanctioned participant voices operating within otherwise established, depoliticized governing arenas. The study thus deepens our understanding of the complex political dynamics of participatory water planning.     

Climate pushers or symbolic leaders? The limits to corporate climate leadership by food retailers

ABSTRACT

Corporate climate leadership and its relationship with state regulations are discussed. First, a typology defining corporate climate leadership is introduced and distinguished from the other strategic behaviours corporations may adopt in response to climate change. A conceptual framework to explore the mechanisms enabling corporate climate leadership within a given policy system is then presented. This framework is applied to two big Swiss food retailers, considered as typical of corporate climate leaders, firms that showed an early interest in climate protection, as a result of ecological values, third actors’ lobbying and particular market incentives. Most importantly, the two companies were set in motion by a regulatory framework that featured stringent policy goals associated with flexible instruments and economic sanctions. The importance of these findings for understanding the role of corporate leadership in polycentric climate governance is discussed.     

Taming the Climate? Corpus analysis of politicians’ speech on climate change

The politics of climate change is much discussed, but there has been little investigation into how politicians themselves understand or articulate the issue. Corpus analysis, a method developed within linguistics, is used to investigate how UK politicians talk about climate change, using the example of the 2008 Climate Change Bill. Corpus techniques, including keyword analysis, collocation and semantic tagging, are used, alongside critical reading of the text. The analysis shows that politicians frame climate change as an economic and technical issue, and neglect discussion of the human and social dimensions. They are selective in their use of scientific evidence, with little mention of abrupt or irreversible change. In doing so, they attempt to ‘tame’ climate change, rather than confronting difficult realities. While this strategy has the benefit of political acceptability, it does not allow for discussion of the full political and social implications of climate change, and precludes more radical responses.