Climate policy meets national development contexts: Insights from Kenya and Mozambique

Despite the growth in work linking climate change and national level development agendas, there has been limited attention to their political economy. These processes mediate the winners, losers and potential trade-offs between different goals, and the political and institutional factors which enable or inhibit integration across different policy areas. This paper applies a political economy analysis to case studies on low carbon energy in Kenya and carbon forestry in Mozambique. In examining the intersection of climate and development policy, we demonstrate the critical importance of politics, power and interests when climate-motivated initiatives encounter wider and more complex national policy contexts, which strongly influence the prospects of achieving integrated climate policy and development goals in practice. We advance the following arguments: First, understanding both the informal nature and historical embeddedness of decision making around key issue areas and resource sectors of relevance to climate change policy is vital to engaging actually existing politics; why actors hold the positions they do and how they make decisions in practice. Second, we need to understand and engage with the interests, power relations and policy networks that will shape the prospects of realising climate policy goals; acting as barriers in some cases and as vehicles for change in others. Third, by looking at the ways in which common global drivers have very different impacts upon climate change policy once refracted through national levels institutions and policy processes, it is easier to understand the potential and limits of translating global policy into local practice. And fourth, climate change and development outcomes, and the associated trade-offs, look very different depending on how they are framed, who frames them and in which actor coalitions. Understanding these can inform the levers of change and power to be navigated, and with whom to engage in order to address climate change and development goals.     

Global climate policy: will cities lead the way?

While the Conference of the Parties wrangle at an international scale with climate policy, a quiet set of policies and measures is being implemented at a local scale by municipalities across the globe. This study examines the motivation municipalities have for undertaking policies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, when the theory of free-riding would predict that local administrations should find it difficult to unilaterally reduce their emissions for the benefit of the global climate. Through interviews with officials and/or staff in 23 municipalities in the United States enacting climate policy, data are gathered that suggest local government abatement policies are primarily a top–down decision based on what officials or staff members believe to be “good business” or rational policy choices. They are primarily driven by the potential for realised or perceived cost savings and co-benefits rather than by public pressure. Economic data from some dozen municipal projects are analyzed, finding, while municipalities lack sophisticated accounting techniques, some justification for the often-disputed claim that at least initial reductions in emissions can be made at cost savings. In the United States, with the lack of national abatement policies, it is municipalities that are leading the way in beginning to implement mitigation strategies, even if only for initial reductions.     

US public opinion on climate change issues: implications for consensus-building and policymaking

While the Conference of the Parties wrangle at an international scale with climate policy, a quiet set of policies and measures is being implemented at a local scale by municipalities across the globe. This study examines the motivation municipalities have for undertaking policies to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, when the theory of free-ridingwould predict that local administrations should find it difficult to unilaterally reduce their emissions for the benefit of the global climate. Through interviews with officials and/or staff in 23 municipalities in the United States enacting climate policy, data are gathered that suggest local government abatement policies are primarily a top—down decision based on what officials or staff members believe to be “good business” or rational policy choices. They are primarily driven by the potential for realised or perceived cost savings and co-benefits rather than by public pressure. Economic data from some dozen municipal projects are analyzed, finding, while municipalities lack sophisticated accounting techniques, some justification for the often-disputed claim that at least initial reductions in emissions can be made at cost savings. In the United States, with the lack of national abatement policies, it is municipalities that are leading the way in beginning to implement mitigation strategies, even if only for initial reductions.     

Editorial

Despite the increasing interest in climate change policy in the US, little systematic research has been conducted on the willingness of individuals to change their behaviour to mitigate the problem. Understanding behavioural change is critical if federal and local governments intend to implement programmes requiring actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change. This understudied aspect of climate change policy is addressed by quantitatively examining the degree to which residents living in the US are willing to alter their behaviour to mitigate climate change impacts, and by identifying the major factors contributing to this willingness. Based on a national survey, the reported willingness of individuals to alter behaviours is explained, using the components of risk, individual stress, capacity and ecological values. The findings indicate that specific personal traits and contextual characteristics trigger a significantly greater willingness to change longstanding behavioural patterns. These insights into the factors motivating behavioural change can provide guidance to decision makers at both federal and local levels on how best to implement climate change policies.     

National ownership in the implementation of global climate policy in Uganda

Abstract

This article explores the history, from a developing country perspective, of how external interventions to implement global policies on the Climate Convention and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) have been integrated into national development policy frameworks in the period 1990–2005. The main question asked is to what extent external interventions have formed part of a country-driven approach in Uganda. The conflicting national and global priorities concerning the need for adaptation to the impacts of climate change versus the need for global mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) are explored first. Against this background, Uganda's policy response to climate change is reviewed. National climate policies are found not to exist, and the implementation of global policies is not integrated into national policy frameworks, partly due to conflicting national and global priorities. Given limited national awareness and the fact that climate policy is marginal compared to other national interests in Uganda, the experiences with donor support for the implementation of global climate policy nationally are analysed. This article demonstrates that neither national policies nor national management of donor support have secured a country-driven approach to external interventions in Uganda.     

《巴厘行动计划》以来适应气候变化谈判进展及未来需求分析

回顾了《巴厘行动计划》以来形成的与适应气候变化议题相关的国际决议及谈判进展,分析了这些决议对推动发展中国家适应气候变化进程的可能作用和面临的障碍,综述了发展中国家和发达国家对“2015气候协议”的利益诉求和建议。作者认为：《巴厘行动计划》以来,《联合国气候变化框架公约》下适应气候变化方面的谈判取得了较明显的进展,建立了适应委员会、国家适应计划进程和应对损失与危害的国际机制等;资金、技术研发、推广和使用、政策法规、机构设置与能力、信息等是提高发展中国家适应气候变化的限制因素;资金、技术转让和能力建设仍是“2015气候协议”谈判的重点和难点。针对非洲集团和小岛屿国家联盟全球适应目标和应对气候变化造成的损失与危害的补偿的提议,作者建议加强科学研究,开发评估方法和工具,探讨气候自然变率和人类活动导致的气候变化影响的归因;同时建议中国进一步加强适应气候变化的南南合作。     

Adapting and coping with climate change in temperate forests

A growing body of research documents how individuals respond to local impacts of global climate change and a range of policy efforts aim to help individuals reduce their exposure and improve their livelihoods despite these stressors. Yet there is still limited understanding of how to determine whether and how adaptation is occurring. Through qualitative analysis of focus group interviews, I evaluated individual behavioral responses to local forest stressors that can arguably be linked to global climate change among landowners in the Upper Midwest, USA. I found that landowner responses were planned as well as autonomous, more proactive than reactive, incremental rather than transformational, and aimed at being resilient to change and transitioning to new conditions, rather than resisting change alone. Many of the landowners’ responses can be considered forms of adaptation, rather than coping, because they were aimed at moderating and avoiding harm on long time horizons in anticipation of change. These findings stand in contrast to the short-term, reactive, and incremental responses that current socio-psychological theories of adaptation suggest are more typical at the individual level. This study contributes to scientific understanding of how to evaluate behavioral adaptation to climate change and differentiate it from coping, which is necessary for developing conceptually rigorous analytical frameworks to guide research and policy.     

The effectiveness of communicative tools in addressing barriers to municipal climate change adaptation: lessons from the Netherlands

Little research has been done on the effectiveness of communicative tools for climate change adaptation. Filling this knowledge gap is relevant, as many national governments rely on communicative tools to raise the awareness and understanding of climate impacts, and to stimulate adaptation action by local governments. To address this knowledge gap, this study focuses on the effectiveness of communicative tools in addressing key municipal barriers to climate change adaptation, by conducting a large N-size empirical study in the Netherlands. This study explores the effectiveness of these tools in theory, by checking whether their goals match the perceived barriers to municipal climate change adaptation, and the effectiveness in practice by analysing whether they are used and perceived as useful. Document analyses have clarified the assumptions underlying the tools. By conducting semi-structured interviews with 84 municipalities the key barriers to climate change adaptation and the use and usefulness of the tools in practice were analysed. The research revealed that the key barriers experienced by municipalities are a lack of urgency, a lack of knowledge of risks and measures, and limited capacity, the first being the primary one. Communicative tools, while being effective in theory, are not sufficiently effective in practice in addressing the key barriers. Municipalities that are not experiencing a sense of urgency to take on adaptation planning are not likely to be activated by the tools. Advanced municipalities need more sophisticated tools. This article concludes with some suggestions to improve the effectiveness of communicative tools.

Key policy insights

• Although effective in theory in addressing key barriers to municipal adaptation planning, the effectiveness in practice of communicative tools is limited.

• To increase their effectiveness in practice, municipalities’ awareness of the existence of the communicative tools needs to be raised.

• Advanced municipalities need more sophisticated tools that are context-specific and address a wide range of climate risks.

• The effectiveness of communicative tools can be improved by embedding them in a wider mix of policy instruments.

     

The scale and drivers of carbon footprints in households,cities and regions across India

The carbon footprint (CF) has emerged as an important yardstick to understand the total contribution of countries, sectors and individuals to climate change. In contrast to conventional emissions accounting which captures only territorial or local production activities, the CF includes the emissions imposed by consumption across global supply chains for goods and services. Recent interest has grown in the application of CF assessment for municipalities owing to their large contribution to global carbon emissions and the limited coverage of existing data to monitor their climate pledges. By linking household-level consumer surveys to a global supply chain database, spatially-explicit CF assessment is possible at a district and household scale. To date, such technique has exposed otherwise unforeseen differences in consumer carbon footprints in developed countries. Within this study we calculate and compare the household carbon footprints 623 districts in India, based on micro consumption data from 203,313 households and explain their variation by economic, cultural and demographic factors. We show the eradication of extreme poverty does not conflict with ambitious climate change mitigation in India. However, our analysis suggests CF reduction policies within India need to target high-expenditure households which are responsible for nearly seven times the carbon emissions than low-expenditure households (living on $1.9 consumption a day). These vast disparities between the carbon footprint of citizens in India highlights the need to differentiate individual responsibilities for climate change in national and global climate policy.     

Climate policy at the local level: Insights from California

Local governments in the United States have been hotbeds of climate change activity. Recently, states have sought to incorporate these primarily voluntary actions into broader climate change mitigation programs. Using the example of California, a national leader in U.S. climate policy, this article examines the scope for effectiveness of local climate action and assesses factors related to adoption of local climate policies. The analysis draws on two original surveys of city and county governments, designed to learn about adoption of comprehensive policy tools (emission inventories and climate action plans) and programs in specific areas (energy, water, land use, transportation). Adoption rates are fairly high and growing; by mid 2010 roughly 70% of all jurisdictions were already engaged or planning to engage in comprehensive climate actions, up from roughly 50% in 2008. The adoption of specific programs varies with the degree of local government authority in different sectors, and is generally higher for programs targeting municipal facilities and operations than those targeting residents and businesses. Population size, household income, and strong support from local leaders and the public are all associated with higher rates of adoption, particularly for comprehensive actions. Partisan attitudes are more important for comprehensive actions than for programs in specific areas such as energy efficiency and renewable energy, mirroring the findings of state and national public opinion surveys, which find broader support for actions like clean energy than for explicit climate change-oriented actions. Qualitative analysis reveals additional keys to success, including partnering with other local governments and private organizations and leveraging cost savings and other potential co-benefits of action. As states move to incorporate local actions into broader plans, mandates will also play an increasing role in setting a floor for local efforts.     

The crucial role of policy surveillance in international climate policy

An extensive literature shows that information-creating mechanisms enhance the transparency of and can support participation and compliance in international agreements. This paper draws from game theory, international relations, and legal scholarship to make the case for how transparency through policy surveillance can facilitate more effective international climate change policy architecture. I draw lessons from policy surveillance in multilateral economic, environmental, and national security contexts to inform a critical evaluation of the historic practice of monitoring and reporting under the global climate regime. This assessment focuses on how surveillance produces evidence to inform policy design, enables comparisons of mitigation effort, and illustrates the adequacy of the global effort in climate agreements. I also describe how the institution of policy surveillance can facilitate a variety of climate policy architectures. This evaluation of policy surveillance suggests that transparency is necessary for global climate policy architecture.     

Systemic vulnerabilities of the global urban-industrial network to hazards

Cities in the USA engage in action on climate change, even as the federal government remains resistant to comprehensive climate policy. While experts generally agree that local level adaptation and mitigation policies are critical to avoiding the worst climate impacts, the degree to which cities communicate climate change issues to their constituents has yet to be fully explored. In this article, we evaluate how US cities communicate climate change-related issues, problems, and policies. We use a computer-assisted approach to evaluate climate change efforts by cities by examining the full text of press releases of 82 large cities in the USA. We first identify who discusses climate change, finding that many large cities in the USA address climate change in their public communication. Second, we examine the content of these discussions. Many cities discuss weather-related concerns in conjunction with broad collaborative efforts to address global warming, while city-based policy discussions focus more on energy and transportation efforts. Third, we evaluate the local factors associated with these discussions. We find that the city’s climate vulnerability is particularly influential in shaping the level and timing of climatic communication.     

《联合国气候变化框架公约》适应谈判历程回顾与展望

减缓和适应是应对气候变化的互补性策略,但在《联合国气候变化框架公约》（简称《公约》）的谈判中,适应在很长一段时期都处于减缓的从属地位。《公约》20多年的适应谈判进程可划为早期缓慢发展、科学和技术讨论、适应与减缓并重、增强适应行动和全面适应行动5个阶段,呈现出由无到有、重要性不断增强的特点。这一特点反映了全球对气候变化影响和适应重要性认识的不断深入及适应气候变化挑战的不断增强。未来适应谈判将聚焦于如何通过《公约》现有机制增强行动及如何增加适应资金以满足发展中国家的适应需求。     

Institutional adaptation to climate change: Flood responses at the municipal level in Norway

The article examines the role institutions play in climate adaptation in Norway. Using examples from two municipalities in the context of institutional responses to floods, we find, first, that the institutional framework for flood management in Norway gives weak incentives for proactive local flood management. Second, when strong local political and economic interests coincide with national level willingness to pay and provide support, measures are often carried out rapidly at the expense of weaker environmental interests. Third, we find that new perspectives on flood management are more apparent at the national than the municipal level, as new perspectives are filtered by local power structures. The findings have important implications for vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in terms of policy options and the local level as the optimal level for adaptation.     

From burden-sharing to opportunity-sharing: unlocking the climate negotiations

In conventional thinking on climate negotiations, traditional fossil fuel-based economic growth is coupled with carbon emissions, thus mitigation has been regarded as a burden on economic growth. The scarcity within the global emission budget and the interpretation of climate change as ‘global public goods’ have led climate change negotiations into a burden-sharing deadlock. However, some recent economics studies suggest that mitigation could actually promote local economic growth opportunities; consequently increasing the incentives for unilateral mitigation actions. This article highlights the implications for the strategies of unlocking the climate negotiations deadlock. Following an explanation of how climate change negotiations have led to a burden-sharing game and have become a deadlock, some new ways of thinking (based on the emerging literature) are used to suggest how mitigation could promote local economic growth.Policy relevanceOne policy implication is the need to change the current mindset in global climate change negotiations. The current framing of burden-sharing can be abandoned in favour of opportunity-sharing. This more positive approach will stimulate progress on climate action. Therefore, green growth should be situated at the heart of post-2020 climate change regime. A new two-track architecture is proposed for achieving the transformation as a combined top-down and bottom-up approach. A lower legally binding target based on equity principles of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) could form a more politically realistic and inclusive basis for participation. To complement this, a green growth club would promote a higher voluntary global ambition and accelerate mitigation.     

Scaling up zero-deforestation initiatives through public-private partnerships: A look inside post-conflict Colombia

The rise of public and private zero-deforestation commitments is opening a new collaborative space in global forest governance. Governments seeking to reduce national greenhouse gas emissions by protecting and restoring forests are partnering with companies motivated to eliminate deforestation from supply chains. The proliferation of zero-deforestation initiatives is creating opportunities for policy synergies and scaling up impacts, but has led to a more complex regulatory landscape. Drawing on policy analysis and expert interviews, we explore public-private policy interactions in Colombia as a case study for tropical forested nations with interest in aligning climate, forest, and development goals. We consider how zero-deforestation priorities are set on the national agenda and scaled up through public-private partnerships. We identify zero-deforestation initiatives in three overlapping governance domains—domestic public policy, REDD+, sustainable supply chain initiatives—and highlight ten multi-stakeholder pledges that have catalyzed supporting initiatives at multiple scales. Emerging from decades of armed conflict, Colombia is pursuing a peace building model based on low-emissions rural development. The peace deal provided a focusing event for zero-deforestation that converged with political momentum and institutional capacity to open a policy window. A government pledge to eliminate deforestation in the Colombian Amazon by 2020 set the national agenda and stimulated international REDD+ cooperation. Lessons from Colombia show that governments provide important directionality among the proliferation of zero-deforestation initiatives. Public pledges and the orchestration of actors through public-private partnerships allow governments to scale up efforts by aligning transnational activities with national priorities. The case of Colombia serves as a potential zero-deforestation model for other nations, but challenges around equitable land tenure, illegality, and enforcement must be overcome for multi-stakeholder initiatives to produce long-term change.     

Implementing a knowledge system: Lessons from the global stewardship of climate services

Knowledge systems are mechanisms that can drive climate adaptation through the pursuits of enhancing resource sharing, collaboration, and learning, while at the same time helping to develop trust and credibility among individuals and intuitions. While these goals are widely discussed, less is known about the activities and strategies that knowledge systems undertake to achieve these goals. We analyze the Global Framework of Climate Services (GFCS) as a knowledge system organized around the translation of weather and climate information for decision-making. The GFCS brings together the World Meteorological Organization, national meteorological and hydrological services, and some of the world’s largest multilateral scientific, humanitarian, and development organizations. Our analysis draws on key informant interviews, focus groups conducted in African countries, and an online survey of GFCS participants. We describe the main activities pursued by the GFCS that shaped the vision of climate services, built capacity in national climate adaptation, and created connections among diverse actors and organizations worldwide. We show how these activities generated tensions about the purpose of the GFCS and how influence among the knowledge system was distributed. Based on our results, we illustrate new ways to conceptualize the strategies of knowledge systems, which we describe as (1) theorizing the norms of practice and mechanisms of change, (2) legitimizing actors, and (3) managing knowledge. These strategies identify pathways for, and pitfalls to, a knowledge system’s pursuit of its goals, providing guidance to managers of knowledge systems and an analytical framework to evaluate their impacts.     

Accelerating the sustainability transition: Exploring synergies between adaptation and mitigation in British Columbian communities

While the focus of government climate change policy in many regions is on mitigation, research shows that integrated approaches, focusing equally on mitigation and adaptation, seen in the context of more general sustainability goals, may ultimately yield more productive outcomes. Since 2008, the province of British Columbia has mandated that local governments be carbon neutral in their own operations and has used a suite of policies, outreach and incentive tools to enable them to do so. The Meeting the Climate Change Challenge project explored eleven leading communities in B.C. to empirically examine how climate change policies and innovations are being framed and considered at the local scale.In this paper, we examine the synergies and trade-offs between adaptation, mitigation, and sustainability. Our findings suggest that, among leading communities, pursuing an integrated sustainability strategy (rather than a narrow focus on climate change) has the potential to yield benefits for both adaptation and mitigation in the majority of cases. The findings suggest that communities leading on climate innovation in the province have moved beyond a siloed approach in considering mitigation and adaptation. These findings have implications on integrated decision making at the municipal scale and multi-level governance, identifying both the challenges and the benefits inherent in pursuing multiple priorities simultaneously.     

Impact of a climate network: The role of intermediaries in local level climate action

Local governments have set highly ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets on a strategic level, in some cases influenced by intermediary networks. Yet, the quantitative impacts of climate strategies or the sharing of best practices on emissions still remain largely unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the impact of an intermediary network on municipal greenhouse gas emissions. This was done through an econometric analysis of the emissions of municipalities that are members of the Finnish Hinku (Towards Carbon Neutral Municipalities) network, and through comprehensive qualitative interviews conducted in 40 of those municipalities. Our quantitative results show that Hinku network membership has successfully led to the lowering of greenhouse gas emission levels in participating municipalities. The qualitative interviews suggest that this is due to systematic local level climate work, enhanced by network membership. The network functions as an intermediary in two ways: by providing expertise and enabling peer-support. In addition, it has also succeeded in legitimising local level climate action. Ambitious local level climate action can also affect the ambition of national climate policy, which in turn may reflect on the amount resources allocated to local climate action.