Environmental policy innovations in China: a critical analysis from a low-carbon city

The Chinese state is squarely ‘back’ in the business of environmental governance with an increasing number of policy innovations or experiments to resolve environmental issues. These have been mostly enacted through the ‘experimentation under hierarchy’ framework, undergirded by compensation-for-performance incentive structures for local agents. Based on on-site ethnography in local China, a critical analysis is presented of low-carbon city policy experiments – one of the most prominent environmental policies introduced in the past decade. Using lessons from the agency theory, it is hypothesized that outcomes of these policy innovations are contingent on different policy dimensions. Although a number of positive outcomes have been achieved in output-oriented dimensions, the fundamental difficulty of specifying all aspects of complex, multidimensional work tasks involved in low-carbon city development has frequently led to policy unmaking. The findings raise important questions about China’s tendency to rely excessively on compensation-for-performance structures to promote environmental policies.     

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.     

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.     

Reinventing the bicycle: how calculative practices shape urban environmental governance

The concept of sustainability transitions has become increasingly prominent in academic and policy discourses during recent decades, but the importance of the link between knowledge-producing epistemic practices and urban governance has been underappreciated in this discourse. Based on a case study of cycling in Copenhagen between 1900 and 2015, and drawing upon a governmentality-inspired analytical framework, this research demonstrates that transformative governance may be initiated by epistemic practices that render urban systems visible in other ways. Urban cycling has been reconstructed over time in Copenhagen as a traffic safety ‘problem’, a component of the experiential and liveable city, and a health-producing (and hence economically valuable) regional transport mode. The research findings emphasise that epistemic practices can provide a powerful stimulus for creating changes in urban governance. The results also provide support for initiatives to broaden the terms of academic debate on sustainability transitions.     

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.     

Creative and disruptive elements in Norway´s climate policy mix: the small-state perspective

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship has argued that effective and credible national climate policy mixes should encompass measures that promote new low-carbon technologies alongside those instruments aimed at constraining and phasing out support for existing polluting industries. The creative and disruptive policy measures in Norway´s climate policy mix are analysed by focusing on both national and international climate mitigation efforts. Norway´s climate policy mix at home has been more ambitious in the transport sector with a growing electric vehicle market than in the energy sector where niche support and disruptive policies have remained weak. Abroad, Norway has been increasingly active in supporting new low-carbon technologies and disrupting the fossil-fuel industry, especially coal. This is explained by the consensus-seeking and oil and gas dominated small-state social-investment political economy in Norway, combined with a forward-looking foreign policy based on norm-setting and multilateralism.     

Moral reasoning in adaptation to climate change

Moral foundations theory argues that moral reasoning is widely observed and fundamental to the legitimacy of relevant governance and policy interventions. A new analytical framework to examine and test how moral reasoning underpins and legitimizes governance and practice on adaptation to climate change risks is proposed. It develops a typology of eight categories of vulnerability-based and system-based moral reasoning that pertain to the dilemmas around adaptation and examines the prevalence of these moral categories in public discourse about specific adaptation issues. The framework is tested using data on climate change impact, adaptation, and societal responsibility, drawn from 14 focus groups comprising 148 participants across the UK. Participants consistently use moral reasoning to explain their views on climate adaptation; these include both vulnerability-based and system-based framings. These findings explain public responses to adaptation options and governance, and have implications for the direction of adaptation policy, including understanding which types of reasoning support politically legitimate interventions.     

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.     

The impact of economic factors and governance on greenhouse gas emission

Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - Governance is a basic factor explaining the poor economic, social and environmental performance of many developing countries. Since good governance...     

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.     

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.     

Conceptualizing energy democracy

‘Energy democracy’ epitomizes hopes in energy transformation, but remains under-defined, a political buzzword rather than a real concept. After presenting its activist roots and mapping its usage, ‘energy democracy’ is positioned in relation to similar normatively derived concepts: environmental, climate, and energy justice, and environmental democracy. Drawing on insights from political theory and political sociology, it is shown what is democratic in energy democracy. Referencing the question of experts and democratic publics in complex technological areas, the paper explains why it is desirable for energy governance to be more democratic. To show what is unique in ‘energy democracy’ beyond increased participation in energy policy, the prosumer is introduced as the ideal-typical citizen, highlighting the importance of the energy transition, the agency of material structures and a new emergent governmentality. ‘Energy democracy’ is conceptualized as an analytical and decision-making tool, defined along three dimensions: popular sovereignty, participatory governance and civic ownership, and operationalized with relevant indicators.     

The rapid reproducers paradox: population control and individual procreative rights

This article argues that population policies need to be evaluated from macro and micro perspectives and to consider individual rights. Ecological arguments that are stringent conditions of liberal democracy are assessed against a moral standard. The moral standard is applied to a series of reasons for limiting procreative rights in the cause of sustainability. The focus is directly on legally enforced antinatalist measures and not on indirect policies with incentives and disincentives. The explicit assumption is that population policy violates the fairness to individuals for societal gain and that population policies are incompatible with stringent conditions of liberal democracy. The author identifies the individual-societal tradeoff as the "rapid reproducers paradox." The perfect sustainable population level is either not possible or is a repugnant alternative. 12 ecological arguments are presented, and none are found compatible with notions of a liberal democracy. Three alternative antinatalist options are the acceptance of less rigid and still coercive policies, amendments to the conception of liberal democracy, or loss of hope and choice of noncoercive solutions to sustainability, none of which is found viable. If voluntary abstinence and distributive solutions fail, then frugal demand options and technological supply options both will be necessary.     

Back-pedaling or continuing quietly? Assessing the impact of ICLEI membership termination on cities’ sustainability actions

Over the past decade, cities have emerged as leaders in sustainability and climate protection in the United States. ICLEI, a voluntary network of local governments, played an important role driving this trend. After years of steady growth, ICLEI became a target of political opposition and its membership dropped significantly from 2010 to 2012. This begs the question of whether cities’ termination of their ICLEI affiliation diminishes their implementation of sustainability actions. Two surveys administered in 2010 and 2014 provide data on cities’ implementation of an array of sustainability actions. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) method, the impact of ICLEI termination on local governments’ administrative and policy commitments to sustainability is assessed. The results suggest that ending ICLEI membership does not significantly impact local sustainability actions, and also indicate that the durability of policy actions may be only loosely linked to the policies that justify them.     

Metagovernance and policy forum outputs in Swiss environmental politics

Policy forums are lightly institutionalized and stable forms of governance networks that include administrative authorities, interest groups, and scientists. They are said to produce different types of outputs, from simple actor coordination to position papers and implementation documents, but their productivity has also been questioned. Metagovernance strategies can improve the capability of policy forums to produce outputs. To determine how different metagovernance strategies influence the capability of forums to produce joint position papers, 29 policy forums in the Swiss environmental sector are compared through a qualitative comparative analysis. Results indicate that metagovernance strategies such as state actors as forum members or majority decision rules need to be combined with small forum size or low actor heterogeneity. Furthermore, forum foundation by the state complicates the production of position papers.     

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.     

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.     

Environmental innovation strategies: When and why NGOs go beyond public regulations

The concept of environmental innovation strategies (EIS) is introduced and discussed. The notion refers to the conduct by which non-governmental organisations (NGOs) act as policy entrepreneurs seeking to address environmental issues by going beyond the provisions of public regulations. Environmental innovation is understood as the product of a process of social interactions between heterogeneous types of actors, including NGOs. Three social mechanisms are introduced in order to capture the conditions enabling and motivating NGOs to pursue EIS, as well as the politics through which EIS are produced. These mechanisms are then discussed in the light of two in-depth case studies in Indonesia and Switzerland. The findings highlight the institutional frustration and mix of concerns that push NGOs to engage in EIS, as well as the non-spontaneous nature of environmental innovations. Innovation represents, in the end, a game of power that should be analysed as such.     

Depoliticizing adaptation: a critical analysis of EU climate adaptation policy

The ways in which climate adaptation is understood in the European Union is examined via three key policy documents: the Strategy on adaptation and the Green and White Papers that preceded it. Drawing on Poststructuralist Discourse Theory, light is shed on the implicit values and assumptions that underpin this recent policy initiative. The findings demonstrate a tension between the declared ambition to act on adaptation and implicit suggestions that nothing really has to change, and the challenge can be addressed by market and technological innovations, and by mainstreaming adaptation into existing sectoral policies. The policy discourse effectively serves to depoliticize choices societies make in response to climate change, presenting adaptation as a non-political issue. Insight into European adaptation discourse enables deeper understanding of recent policy developments and opens up possible entry points for critique.     

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.