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.     

Governing the termination problem in solar radiation management

ABSTRACT

Technologies for Solar Radiation Management (SRM) could limit global warming by manipulating the Earth’s radiation balance. A major objection to SRM is the termination problem: the catastrophic consequences that are likely to result from its sudden discontinuation. The termination problem limits the reversibility of policy choices and poses the risk of inadvertent or enforced program collapse. It is often considered a major impediment to the governability of SRM. In a first attempt to systematically engage with the question of institutional design for resolving the termination problem, the scenarios in which the termination problem arises as well as their respective drivers are identified. Scenarios and drivers are then used to derive institutional solutions in the form of excludable benefits, scientific oversight and phase-out mechanisms. While other objections to SRM may remain valid, it is concluded that the termination problem raises fewer challenges for international governance than is usually assumed.     

The green state and industrial decarbonisation

ABSTRACT

The large share of carbon emitted by energy-intensive industries in the extraction and processing of basic materials must be limited to decarbonise society and the economy. Ways in which the state can govern industrial decarbonisation and contributes to green state theory are explored by addressing a largely ignored issue: the green state’s industrial relations and its role in industrial governance. With insights from a Swedish case study, the tension between the state’s economic imperative and ecological concerns in greening industry are shown to persist. However, as the energy-intensive industry’s previously privileged position in the economy is weakening, industry is opened to decarbonisation strategies. While the case exposes a number of governance challenges, it also suggests potential areas where the state can pursue decarbonisation in energy-intensive industry and points the way to an active role of the green state in governing industrial decarbonisation and greening industry.     

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.     

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.     

Environmental,climate and social leadership of small enterprises: Fairphone’s step-by-step approach

ABSTRACT

Achieving sustainable consumption and production requires a break with current practices in many sectors, including the smartphone sector. Leaders are central actors in catalysing such change by developing, implementing and promoting innovative ideas, products and practices. Not only large but also small enterprises can aspire to assume leadership for sustainability. This contribution explores the environmental, climate and social leadership of the social enterprise Fairphone that seeks to start a movement towards a more sustainable smartphone sector. Endowed with barely any structural power, it relies on other leadership types, especially entrepreneurial leadership, which is based on dialogue, persuasion and coalition-building. Small enterprises can be leaders, but pursuing a goal such as transforming the smartphone sector takes a step-by-step approach targeting different follower groups from suppliers, competitors and consumers to end-of-life processors and policymakers. Those different follower groups are susceptible to different (combinations of) leadership types.     

Sleepwalking into lock-in? Avoiding wrongs to future people in the governance of solar radiation management research

ABSTRACT

Arguments are advanced for two ways in which we can avoid the reckless endangerment of future people in the governance of solar radiation management (SRM) research, which could happen through lock-in to SRM deployment from research. SRM research is at an early stage, one at which the mechanisms of lock-in could start to operate. However, lock-in fit to endanger future people could be slowed or stopped through targeted governance. Governance of SRM research that does not include provisions to detect, slow, or stop lock-in fails the test of an intergenerationally adequate precautionary principle, and research governed without these provisions cannot itself be justified as a precaution against the impacts of climate change.     

Cities as leaders in EU multilevel climate governance: embedded upscaling of local experiments in Europe

ABSTRACT

The success of local climate governance in Europe depends not only on leading cities but also on the dynamics between leaders, followers, and laggards. Upscaling local experiments helps to close the gap between these actors. This process is driven by the increasing embeddedness of cities and their networks in EU multilevel governance. Embedded upscaling combines horizontal upscaling between leading cities with vertical upscaling between leaders and followers that is mediated by higher levels of government, and hierarchical upscaling that even reaches the laggards. Various types of upscaling, their combinations, and their impacts are analyzed. Networks have become denser and networking has intensified. City networks and their member cities have become embedded in national and EU governance, lost authority and depend more and more on regional, national, and European authorities.     

Environmental decision-making: the influence of policy information

ABSTRACT

The success of technological development depends on citizens’ social acceptance, whereas several challenges related to the understanding of citizens’ reactions to renewable energy and its policies are identifiable. Most importantly, the gap between general attitudes towards the environment and specific voting behaviour regarding environment-friendly policy proposals calls for an explanation of how a policy’s design causes citizens who might otherwise support environmental measures to express opposition in direct democratic votes. Therefore, how policy design and policy information impact opinion formation is investigated. Salient aspects are identified, and the different types of information or qualifications that may cause opposition are considered. This new approach reveals that citizens, in environmental decision-making, do indeed consider policy design and policy information, which they regard as conditions for support, and that the type of policy information matters since citizens do not consider all of the policy details when they make decisions.     

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.     

Climate engineering and human rights

ABSTRACT

In this Forum, three scholars discuss how climate engineering will pose novel human rights challenges, and may well force reconsideration of how human rights are applied as a guide to action. Following a short introduction, the first section introduces three competing approaches to human rights, arguing views which emphasize fairness or attempt to maximize satisfaction are more promising than one viewing human rights as inviolable ‘side-constraints’. The second section draws lessons from climate migration that are relevant for climate engineering in terms of incorporating a human rights approach to duties, rights, and participation. The final section compares the ‘needs-based’ and ‘rights-based’ approaches to humanitarian work in the face of climate change and climate engineering, raising concerns for duty-bearers and right-holders. The Forum’s conclusion draws together points of overlap and suggests a path forward for policy and research on this topic.     

Follow the leader? Conceptualising the relationship between leaders and followers in polycentric climate governance

ABSTRACT

Existing scholarship on climate governance has not sufficiently considered the relationship between climate leaders/pioneers and followers. Because of the global commons nature of climate change, unilateral leadership or pioneership by one or a small number of actors will be insufficient to combat climate change effectively. The need to take seriously the relationship between leaders and followers is all the greater in the wake of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which emphasises diffuse, bottom–up action. The relationship between leaders and followers in polycentric climate governance is unpacked in this contribution. What types of actors can be climate followers? Through what pathways can followership emerge and how can we capture the essential characteristics of leader–follower relationships? What conditions facilitate (or hinder) followership? The utility of the approach is illustrated using cases of EU climate leadership and (non-) followership of other actors.     

The oil and gas sector: from climate laggard to climate leader?

ABSTRACT

The oil and gas industry has traditionally been reticent to engage with the issues surrounding climate change, typically being cast as a laggard. Yet, over recent years, the sector has begun taking on a more active role in climate governance, doing so in a variety of capacities – as initiators, catalysts and participants in industry-led or multi-stakeholder efforts. The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative is reviewed, as a case study to illustrate emerging climate leadership within the global oil and gas industry. In 2015, its members committed to a two-degree pathway. The paucity of research on the nascent role of oil and gas firms in climate governance is addressed.     

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.     

Negotiating energy democracy in practice: governance processes in community energy projects

There is a growing ‘energy democracy’ (ED) movement which regards the transition to renewable energy as an opportunity for socio-economic transformation, as well as technological innovation. The literature on ED tends to associate greater democratic control of energy systems with increased community control over the means of energy generation and distribution. Nonetheless, this literature often assumes rather than demonstrates that the forms of governance it promotes are more democratic than the status quo. This analysis contributes to the emerging field of ED by assessing the complex and varied ways in which communities in Scotland practise energy governance. By focusing on three key governance processes (decision-making, accountability and dispute resolution), the importance of local contexts for the establishment and negotiation of democratic practices is demonstrated. This local specificity, however, also raises further questions regarding the universal applicability of the ED concept.     

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.     

Globalization’s limits to the environmental state? Integrating telecoupling into global environmental governance

Globalization entails increased interdependence and interconnectivities among distal regions and social-ecological systems. This global interregional connectedness – telecoupling – gives rise to specific sustainability challenges, which require new governance solutions. Moving beyond ‘scaling-up’ governance to address global environmental problems, and exploring the implications of telecoupling for state-led environmental governance, ways the state can effectively address telecoupled environmental issues both within and beyond national borders are addressed, drawing on the example of soy trade between Brazil and Germany. This builds on recent contributions to the literature on governance of interregional ecological challenges to elaborate potential policy and governance options, ranging from classical bilateral, multilateral, and international agreements, to information-based, economic, and hybrid governance modes. While telecoupled environmental problems create governance challenges related to scale, knowledge gaps, coordination, and state capacity, the state has an important role to play. To explore this further, interdisciplinary inquiry is required that includes but moves beyond 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.     

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.     

Social representations of governance for change towards sustainability: perspectives of sustainability advocates

There is a substantial body of literature on public understandings of large-scale ‘environmental’ phenomena such as climate change and resource degradation. At the same time, political science and economics analyse the governance arrangements to deal with such issues. These realms of research rarely meet: there has been little research into people’s understandings of the governance of environmental change. This study adds a psychological perspective to governance research by investigating social representations of governance that promotes societal change towards sustainability, and related practices. It examines data from qualitative interviews with sustainability-interested people in seven European countries (n = 105). The analysis identified building blocks of representations suitable as an analytical framework for future research on governance representations. The diversity of their content reflected a range of pathways to societal change. Representations often seemed to have a creative function as a guiding vision for individuals’ own practices, but their wider transformative potential was constrained.