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.     

Omega-3 nutraceuticals,climate change and threats to the environment: The cases of Antarctic krill and Calanus finmarchicus

The nutraceutical market for EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) is promoting fishing for Euphasia superba (Antarctic krill) in the Southern Ocean and Calanus finmarchicus in Norwegian waters. This industry argues that these species are underexploited, but they are essential in their ecosystems, and climate change is altering their geographical distribution. In this perspective, we advocate the cessation of fishing for these species to produce nutraceuticals with EPA and DHA. We argue that this is possible because, contrary to what this industry promotes, the benefits of these fatty acids only seem significant to specific population groups, and not for the general population. Next, we explain that this is desirable because there is evidence that these fisheries may interact with the impact of climate change. Greener sources of EPA and DHA are already available on the market, and their reasonable use would ease pressure on the Arctic and Antarctic ecosystems.     

Freebies,freedom and fundamental change: resistance to neoliberal environmentalism in large “green” corporations

Despite the professed concern of many governments, businesses and individuals – and the recent publication of another alarming report from the IPCC – inaction on climate change remains a significant concern. For many, the problem is rooted in a neoliberal account of social change. Neoliberal environmentalism is the dominant approach to environmental issues but it is often blamed for the continuing failure of climate change policy in general and behaviour change initiatives in particular. This paper explores the dynamics of this dominant discourse through an examination of environmentalism in the large “green” corporation. Specifically, it uses discourse analysis to investigate so-called “climate champion” schemes and considers examples of resistance to the dominant neoliberal discourse. The paper finds that many of the champions did resist the basic components of neoliberal environmentalism. They challenged the principles of self-interest, self-rule and incremental change, and they talked about the possibility of enforced action. However, this resistance was limited in a number of different ways. The paper suggests that the workplace does play a role in restricting resistance but that there are more fundamental issues that need to be addressed if we hope to pursue an alternative approach to environmental problems such as climate change.     

Climate change induced eutrophication of cold-water lake in an ecologically fragile nature reserve

Aquatic ecosystem sustainability around the globe is facing crucial challenges because of increasing anthropogenic and natural disturbances. In this study, the Tianchi Lake, a typical cold-water lake and a UNESCO/MAB(Man and Biosphere) nature reserve located in high latitude and elevation with the relatively low intensity of human activity was chosen as a system to examine the linkages between climate change and eutrophication. As a part of the UNESCO Bogda Man and Biosphere Reserve, Tianchi Lake has been well preserved for prevention from human intervention, but why has it been infected with eutrophication recent years? Our results show that climate change played a significant role in the eutrophication in the Tianchi Lake. Increased temperature, changed precipitation pattern and wind-induced hydrodynamic fluctuations in the summer season were suggested to make a major contribution to the accelerated eutrophication. The results also showed that the local temperature and precipitation changes were closely linked to the large-scale atmospheric circulation, which opens the door for the method to be applied in other regions without local climatic information. This study suggests that there is an urgent need to take into consideration of climate change adaptation into the conservation and management of cold-water lakes globally.     

Landscape visualisation and climate change: the potential for influencing perceptions and behaviour

The urgent need to mitigate and adapt to climate change is becoming more widely understood in scientific and policy circles, but public awareness lags behind. The potential of visual communication to accelerate social learning and motivate implementation of the substantial policy, technological, and life-style changes needed, has begun to be recognised. In particular, realistic landscape visualisations may offer special advantages in rapidly advancing peoples’ awareness of climate change and possibly affecting behaviour and policy, by bringing certain possible consequences of climate change home to people in a compelling manner. However, few such applications are yet in use, the theoretical basis for the effectiveness of visualisations in this role has not been clearly established, and there are ethical concerns elicited by adopting a persuasive approach which deliberately engages the emotions with visual imagery. These questions and policy implications are discussed in the context of a theoretical framework on the effects of landscape visualisation on a spectrum of responses to climate change information, drawing in part on evidence from other applications of landscape visualisation. The author concludes that the persuasive use of visualisations, together with other approaches, may be effective, is justified, and could be vital in helping communicate climate change effectively, given ethical standards based on disclosure, drama, and defensibility.     

The relationship between adaptation and mitigation in managing climate change risks: a regional response from North Central Victoria,Australia

This two-part paper considers the complementarity between adaptation and mitigation in managing the risks associated with the enhanced greenhouse effect. Part one reviews the application of risk management methods to climate change assessments. Formal investigations of the enhanced greenhouse effect have produced three generations of risk assessment. The first led to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), First Assessment Report and subsequent drafting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The second investigated the impacts of unmitigated climate change in the Second and Third IPCC Assessment Reports. The third generation, currently underway, is investigating how risk management options can be prioritised and implemented. Mitigation and adaptation have two main areas of complementarity. Firstly, they each manage different components of future climate-related risk. Mitigation reduces the number and magnitude of potential climate hazards, reducing the most severe changes first. Adaptation increases the ability to cope with climate hazards by reducing system sensitivity or by reducing the consequent level of harm. Secondly, they manage risks at different extremes of the potential range of future climate change. Adaptation works best with changes of lesser magnitude at the lower end of the potential range. Where there is sufficient adaptive capacity, adaptation improves the ability of a system to cope with increasingly larger changes over time. By moving from uncontrolled emissions towards stabilisation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mitigation limits the upper part of the range. Different activities have various blends of adaptive and mitigative capacity. In some cases, high sensitivity and low adaptive capacity may lead to large residual climate risks; in other cases, a large adaptive capacity may mean that residual risks are small or non-existent. Mitigative and adaptive capacity do not share the same scale: adaptive capacity is expressed locally, whereas mitigative capacity is different for each activity and location but needs to be aggregated at the global scale to properly assess its potential benefits in reducing climate hazards. This can be seen as a demand for mitigation, which can be exercised at the local scale through exercising mitigative capacity. Part two of the paper deals with the situation where regional bodies aim to maximise the benefits of managing climate risks by integrating adaptation and mitigation measures at their various scales of operation. In north central Victoria, Australia, adaptation and mitigation are being jointly managed by a greenhouse consortium and a catchment management authority. Several related studies investigating large-scale revegetation are used to show how climate change impacts and sequestration measures affect soil, salt and carbon fluxes in the landscape. These studies show that trade-offs between these interactions will have to be carefully managed to maximise their relative benefits. The paper concludes that when managing climate change risks, there are many instances where adaptation and mitigation can be integrated at the operational level. However, significant gaps between our understanding of the benefits of adaptation and mitigation between local and global scales remain. Some of these may be addressed by matching demands for mitigation (for activities and locations where adaptive capacity will be exceeded) with the ability to supply that demand through localised mitigative capacity by means of globally integrated mechanisms.     

A decision inventory approach for improving decision support for climate change impact assessment and adaptation

Assessing and adapting to the impacts of climate change requires balancing social, economic, and environmental factors in the context of an ever-expanding range of objectives, uncertainties, and management options. The term decision support describes a diverse class of resources designed to help manage this complexity and assist decision makers in understanding impacts and evaluating management options. Most climate-related decision support resources implicitly assume that decision making is primarily limited by the quantity and quality of available information. However, a wide variety of evidence suggests that institutional, political, and communication processes are also integral to organizational decision making. Decision support resources designed to address these processes are underrepresented in existing tools. These persistent biases in the design and delivery of decision support may undermine efforts to move decision support from research to practice. The development of new approaches to decision support that consider a wider range of relevant issues is limited by the lack of information about the characteristics, context, and alternatives associated with climate-related decisions. We propose a new approach called a decision assessment and decision inventory that will provide systematic information describing the relevant attributes of climate-related decisions. This information can be used to improve the design of decision support resources, as well as to prioritize research and development investments. Application of this approach will help provide more effective decision support based on a balanced foundation of analytical tools, environmental data, and relevant information about decisions and decision makers.     

Defining response capacity to enhance climate change policy

Climate change adaptation and mitigation decisions made by governments are usually taken in different policy domains. At the individual level however, adaptation and mitigation activities are undertaken together as part of the management of risk and resources. We propose that a useful starting point to develop a national climate policy is to understand what societal response might mean in practice. First we frame the set of responses at the national policy level as a trade off between investment in the development and diffusion of new technology, and investment in encouraging and enabling society to change its behaviour and or adopt the new technology. We argue that these are the pertinent trade-offs, rather than those usually posited between climate change mitigation and adaptation. The preference for a policy response that focuses more on technological innovation rather than one that focuses on changing social behaviour will be influenced by the capacity of different societies to change their greenhouse gas emissions; by perceived vulnerability to climate impacts; and by capacity to modify social behaviour and physical environment. Starting with this complete vision of response options should enable policy makers to re-evaluate the risk environment and the set of response options available to them. From here, policy makers should consider who is responsible for making climate response decisions and when actions should be taken. Institutional arrangements dictate social and political acceptability of different policies, they structure worldviews, and they determine the provision of resources for investment in technological innovation and social change. The importance of focussing on the timing of the response is emphasised to maximise the potential for adjustments through social learning and institutional change at different policy scales. We argue that the ability to respond to climate change is both enabled and constrained by social and technological conditions. The ability of society to respond to climate change and the need for technological change for both decarbonisation and for dealing with surprise in general, are central to concepts of sustainable development.     

大气中甲磺酸粒子的来源及其对环境的影响

讨论了大气中甲磺酸粒子的来源,分析了甲磺酸粒子的自然循环及其对酸雨形成和气候变化的影响。     

No-policy greenhouse gas emission scenarios: revisiting IPCC 1992

A new set of no-policy global greenhouse gas (GHG) emission scenarios was developed using the atmospheric stabilization framework, the same modeling tool that was used to generate the IS92 emission scenarios for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Revised assumptions about population and economic growth, combined with updated information on changes in renewable energy supply, the efficiency of energy generation and other factors resulted in changes in GHG emission profiles over the next century, which led to an increase in the estimated global average temperature change as compared to the IS92 scenarios. Model results indicate that the largest increase in emissions, which led to a temperature increase of about 3.4°C by 2100 (relative to 1990), can be expected when a rapid increase in the GNP per capita levels of the non-OECD countries is combined with a low availability of solar/wind and biomass energy resources and slow energy efficiency improvements. The smallest increase in emissions and temperature by 2100 (about 2.5°C) occurred when a relatively slow increase in the GNP per capita in the non-OECD countries was combined with a high availability of renewable energy resources and rapid energy efficiency improvements.