Can national policy blockages accelerate the development of polycentric governance? Evidence from climate change policy in the United Kingdom

Many factors can conspire to limit the scope for policy development at the national level. In this paper, we consider whether blockages in national policy processes − resulting for example from austerity or small state political philosophies − might be overcome by the development of more polycentric governance arrangements. Drawing on evidence from three stakeholder workshops and fifteen interviews, we address this question by exploring the United Kingdom’s recent retrenchment in the area of climate change policy, and the ways in which its policy community have responded. We identify two broad strategies based on polycentric principles: ‘working with gatekeepers’ to unlock political capital and ‘collaborate to innovate’ to develop policy outputs. We then empirically examine the advantages that these actions bring, analysing coordination across overlapping sites of authority, such as those associated with international regimes, devolved administrations and civic and private initiatives that operate in conjunction with, and sometimes independently of, the state. Despite constraining political and economic factors, which are by no means unique to the UK, we find that a polycentric climate policy network can create opportunities for overcoming central government blockages. However, we also argue that the ambiguous role of the state in empowering but also in constraining such a network will determine whether a polycentric approach to climate policy and governance is genuinely additional and innovative, or whether it is merely a temporary ‘sticking plaster’ for the retreat of the state and policy retrenchment during austere times.     

Will climate change impact on wind power development in the UK?

Partly in response to concerns about anthropogenic climate change, renewable energy production is growing rapidly in the United Kingdom (UK). The wind power industry takes advantage of the country having some of the highest mean wind speeds in Europe. Future climate change, however, has the potential to alter the characteristics of the UK wind climate. Small changes in mean wind speed could produce much greater changes in wind energy output as the power generated is related to the cube of wind speed. This paper aims to use a simple method to provide insight into projected future UK wind climate and how this might differ from current patterns. A discussion of the scale of the projected impacts on the wind energy industry follows.     

Can CDM finance energy access in Least Developed Countries? Evidence from Tanzania

Policy documents and academic literature suggest that Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) finance could complement traditional ‘energy access’ (EA) funding in developing countries, including the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Yet these propositions have not been empirically tested. This study helps fill this gap by examining constraints to CDM project passage through five stages of an idealized project development cycle (PDC) in Tanzania, and their implications for the ability of the CDM to contribute to financing energy access in LDCs. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews and documentary material were analysed using an analytical framework developed for systematic investigation of constraints. Institutional constraints such as the under-performance of Tanzania's Designated National Authority were the most often mentioned obstacles for project development. Yet non-institutional constraints such as limited energy sector mitigation potential, indigenous skill shortages, and low carbon market prices also hinder project development. Institutional constraints buttress, rather than supersede, pre-existing non-institutional constraints, and together they prevent energy projects from completing the PDC and accessing CDM finance. The number and severity of constraints suggest that the situation is unlikely to change rapidly, and that the CDM sustains and exacerbates existing global inequalities. Since traditional energy access funding is insufficient to address these inequalities, new funding and policy mechanisms are required.

Policy relevance

The CDM fails to fill the EA financing gap in Tanzania. This is also true for other LDCs where comparable project development challenges prevail. The CDM therefore appears to sustain uneven development patterns overlooking those most in need. Claims about its potential to enhance EA are misplaced, and the situation is unlikely to change rapidly. CDM and carbon market projects more widely will have limited ability to help financing EA in LDCs, even if the institutional setting within which they are implemented were reformed in the future. Yet traditional energy funding will be inadequate on its own. The debate over extending the CDM post-2017, when the second Kyoto Protocol commitment period expires, should be informed by honest appraisal of its merits and defects. Policy makers should revisit lessons provided by this article and wider research to help ensure that new EA mechanisms are not hampered by constraints and can benefit those most in need.     

China’s national carbon emissions trading scheme: lessons from the pilot emission trading schemes,academic literature,and known policy details

Upon completion, China’s national emissions trading scheme (C-ETS) will be the largest carbon market in the world. Recent research has evaluated China’s seven pilot ETSs launched from 2013 on, and academic literature on design aspects of the C-ETS abounds. Yet little is known about the specific details of the upcoming C-ETS. This article combines currently understood details of China’s national carbon market with lessons learned in the pilot schemes as well as from the academic literature. Our review follows the taxonomy of Emissions Trading in Practice: A Handbook on Design and Implementation (Partnership for Market Readiness & International Carbon Action Partnership. (2016). Retrieved from www.worldbank.org): The 10 categories are: scope, cap, distribution of allowances, use of offsets, temporal flexibility, price predictability, compliance and oversight, stakeholder engagement and capacity building, linking, implementation and improvements.

Key policy insights

• Accurate emissions data is paramount for both design and implementation, and its availability dictates the scope of the C-ETS.

• The stakeholder consultative process is critical for effective design, and China is able to build on its extensive experience through the pilot ETSs.

• Current policies and positions on intensity targets and Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) credits constrain the market design of the C-ETS.

• Most critical is the nature of the cap. The currently discussed rate-based cap with ex post adjustment is risky. Instead, an absolute, mass-based emissions cap coupled with the conditional use of permits would allow China to maintain flexibility in the carbon market while ensuring a limit on CO₂ emissions.

     

Short-term distributional consequences of climate change impacts on the power sector: who gains and who loses?

Climate change tends to negatively affect the power sector, inter alia, by causing cooling problems in power plants and impairing the water supply required for hydropower generation. In the future, when global warming is expected to increase, autonomous adaptation to climate change via international electricity markets inducing reallocations of power generation may not be sufficient to prevent supply disruptions anymore. Furthermore, the consequent changes of supply patterns and electricity prices might cause an undesirable redistribution of wealth both between individual power suppliers and between suppliers and consumers. This study ascertains changes in European power supply patterns and electricity prices caused by on-going global warming as well as the associated redistribution of wealth for different climate change scenarios. The focus of the analysis is on short-term effects. Our results confirm that autonomous adaptation in the power sector should be complemented by planned public adaptation in order to preserve energy security and to prevent undesired distributional effects.     

Anti-corruption and corporate environmental responsibility: Evidence from China’s anti-corruption campaign

Taking advantage of China’s vigorous anti-corruption campaign implemented in 2013, this study examines the impact of anti-corruption activities on the corporate environmental responsibility (CER) performance of listed Chinese enterprises from 2010 to 2016. The empirical analysis employs a Difference-in-Differences design to identify the causal effect by using the anti-corruption campaign as an exogenous policy shock. Results indicate that China’s unprecedented anti-corruption campaign launched in 2013 significantly improves the CER performance of high-corruption enterprises. Such an effect is most evident for state-owned enterprises, especially local government-owned ones and those in pollution-intensive industries. These results remain after a series of robustness tests. The mechanism results suggest that the promotion effects of the anti-corruption campaign on CER performance can be achieved through environmental regulations, corporate rent-seeking, and innovation behaviors. Moreover, anti-corruption improves the profitability of enterprises, but the effect is significantly offset by increased CER activities.     

Climate change and the water–energy–food nexus: insights from policy and practice in Tanzania

The threat of climate change is emerging at a time of rapid growth for many economies in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Dominant narratives comprising ambitious development plans are common and often based around sectors with strong inter-dependencies that are highly exposed to climate variability. Using document analysis and key informant interviews, this article examines how climate change is addressed in policy, how it is being mainstreamed into water, energy and agriculture sector policies and the extent to which cross-sectoral linkages enable coordinated action. These questions are addressed through a case study of Tanzania, highlighting broader lessons for other developing countries, particularly those in SSA facing similar challenges. The article finds that, while the agriculture and water sectors are increasingly integrating climate change into policies and plans in Tanzania, practical coordination on adaptation remains relatively superficial. Publication of the Tanzania National Adaptation Plan of Action (NAPA) in 2007 marked a step change in the integration of climate change in sectoral policies and plans; however, it may have reinforced a sectoral approach to climate change. Examining the policies for coherence highlights overlaps and complementarities which lend themselves to a coordinated approach. Institutional constraints (particularly structures and resources) restrict opportunities for inter-sectoral action and thus collaboration is confined to ad hoc projects with mixed success to date. The results highlight the need for institutional frameworks that recognize and address these constraints to enable development goals to be pursued in a more sustainable and climate-resilient manner.

KEY POLICY INSIGHTS

• The NAPA has been successful at encouraging climate change mainstreaming into sectoral policies in Tanzania; however, the cross-sectoral collaboration crucial to implementing adaptation strategies remains limited due to institutional challenges such as power imbalances, budget constraints and an ingrained sectoral approach.

• Collaboration between nexus sectors in Tanzania is largely through ad hoc projects with limited progress on establishing deeper connections to enable collaboration as a process. Regular cross-sectoral planning meetings and consistent annual budgets could provide a platform to enhance cross-sectoral coordination.

• Plans to develop hydropower and agriculture are prevalent across sub-Saharan Africa. Insights from Tanzania highlight the importance of institutional and policy frameworks that enable cross-sectoral coordination.

     

Institutions in conflict? the climate change flexibility mechanisms and the multinational trading system

In an attempt to combat climate change on a global scale, the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted in conjunction with a wide range of policies both at national and international level. In particular, flexibility mechanisms-emissions trading system, joint implementation (JI) and clean development mechanism (CDM)-were incorporated in the Protocol to fulfil the commitment of the Parties by utilising a market system. Under the flexibility mechanisms, an artificial market is created in which the emission allowances or emission reduction units are traded. Not surprisingly, such measures might result in significant impacts on the trade of both goods and services, presumably creating the most complex and dynamic interaction with the Multilateral Trading System (MTS) which is overseen by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). If the implementation of flexibility mechanisms is identified as inconsistent with the requirements of the MTS, enforcement of such policies may prove difficult due to constraints imposed by GATT/WTO provisions.The purpose of this article is to scrutinise potential incompatibility between the implementation of flexibility mechanisms and GATT/WTO provisions. The rules governing the implementation of flexibility mechanisms have yet to be decided due to the divergent views of States regarding the design of the mechanisms. Thus, the analysis of the interaction will be undertaken based on hypothetical scenarios of each mechanism to account for all possible consequences of their implementation. Such an analysis will facilitate detection of any potential conflicts between the implementation of flexibility mechanisms and the trade regimes in advance, thus encompassing the potential incompatibility in designing the mechanisms and helping achieve increasingly effective implementation of flexibility mechanisms.     

Technology transfer under the CDM: Materializing the myth in the Japanese context?

The paper investigates the role that the clean development mechanism (CDM) could play in enhancing the effectiveness of north–south technology transfer. This is done by first exploring the issue of technology transfer in the context of existing north–south experiences to bring out the basis for the poor and unsatisfactory performance. This is followed by bringing out the intrinsic relevance of appropriate technology transfer for combating the global climate change issue.The paper then analyses the potential for such an appropriate and sustainable transfer, as well as effective diffusion and deployment of technologies under the CDM. Various aspects of the evolving design of the CDM are investigated to analyze the potential for overcoming the historical barriers across the north–south divide.Any potential for technology transfer under the CDM would need to be supported by an effective framework in the developed countries as well as a conducive environment in developing countries. In searching for such a cooperative and complementary model, the paper analyses the current Dutch strategy to bringforth certain salient features that could be applicable for other countries.Finally, a Japanese model for technology transfer is developed which can build upon domestic strengths as adopt applicable features of the Dutch strategy in order to capitalize any latent potential under the CDM. This is done by first investigating the effectiveness of the existing Japanese technology transfer framework and then extending recommendations for adapting it to reflect the shifting resource flow paradigms under the climate change regime.     

White Knights: will wind and solar come to the rescue of a looming capacity gap from nuclear phase-out or slow CCS start-up?

In the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident, countries like Germany and Japan have planned a phase-out of nuclear generation. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology has yet to become a commercially viable technology with little prospect of doing so without strong climate policy to spur development. The possibility of using renewable power generation from wind and solar as a non-emitting alternative to replace a nuclear phase-out or failure to deploy CCS technology is investigated using scenarios from EMF27 and the POLES model. A strong carbon price appears necessary to have significant penetration of renewables regardless of alternative generation technologies available, but especially if nuclear or CCS are absent from the energy supply system. The feasibility of replacing nuclear generation appears possible at realistic costs (evaluated as total abatement costs and final user prices to households); however for ambitious climate policies, such as a 450 ppm target, CCS could represent a critical technology that renewables will not be able to fully replace without unbearable economic costs.     

Building authority and legitimacy in transnational climate change governance: Evidence from the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force

Transnational climate change initiatives have increased in number and relevance within the global climate change regime. Despite being largely welcomed, there are concerns about their ability to deliver ambitious climate action and about their democratic legitimacy. This paper disentangles the nature of both authority and legitimacy of a specific form of transnational networks, transgovernmental networks of subnational governments. It then investigates how a major transgovernmental initiative focusing on tropical forests, the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force, attempts to command authority and to build and maintain its legitimacy. The paper illustrates the particular challenges faced by initiatives formed primarily by jurisdictions from the Global South. Three major trade-offs related to authority and legitimacy dimensions are identified: first, the difficulty of balancing the need for increased representation with performance on ambitious climate goals; second, the need to deliver effectiveness while ensuring transparency of governance processes; and third, the limited ability to leverage formal authority of members to deliver climate action in local jurisdictions, while depending on external funds from the Global North.     

Seawalls or social recovery? The role of policy networks and design in disaster recovery

This mixed-methods study examines the case of 30 advisory committees across 25 municipalities in Miyagi and Iwate Prefectures in northeast Japan after the 3/11 triple disasters. Drawing on synthetic control experiments, social network analysis, and case studies, we test whether the design of these committees’ policies or the traits of these committee networks improved the recovery trajectories of municipalities. We find that communities highly connected to this network of advisory committees saw better economic recovery than expected, especially when researchers, hyper-connected individuals, or plans for community centers were involved, controlling for disaster damage, infrastructure quality, social vulnerability, governance capacity, emergency services, and social capital. Our results bring with them a number of concrete policy recommendations for disaster managers, local residents, and decision makers.     

Climate,conflict, and social stability: what does the evidence say?

Are violent conflict and socio-political stability associated with changes in climatological variables? We examine 50 rigorous quantitative studies on this question and find consistent support for a causal association between climatological changes and various conflict outcomes, at spatial scales ranging from individual buildings to the entire globe and at temporal scales ranging from an anomalous hour to an anomalous millennium. Multiple mechanisms that could explain this association have been proposed and are sometimes supported by findings, but the literature is currently unable to decisively exclude any proposed pathway. Several mechanisms likely contribute to the outcomes that we observe.     

Unravelling the United Kingdom’s climate policy consensus: The power of ideas,discourse and institutions

As climate change policies and governance initiatives struggle to produce the transformational social changes required, the search for stand out case studies continues. Many have pointed to the period between 2005 and 2008 in the United Kingdom as a promising example of national level innovation. With strong cross-party consensus and a first-of-its-kind legislation the UK established itself as a climate policy leader. However, early warning signs suggest that this institutionalised position is far from secure. Through a novel application of discursive institutionalism this article presents a detailed analysis of the role of ideas in unravelling this ambition under the Conservative-Liberal coalition administration (2010–2015). Discursive interactions among policymakers and other political actors were dominated by ideas about governmental responsibility and economic austerity, establishing an atmosphere of climate policy scepticism and restraint. By situating this conspicuous and influential process of bricolage within its institutional context the importance of how policymakers think and communicate about climate change is made apparent. The power of ideas to influence policy is further demonstrated through their cognitive and normative persuasiveness, by imposing over and excluding alternatives and in their institutional positioning. It can be concluded that despite innovative legislation, institution building and strategic coordination of different types of governance actors the ideational foundations of ambitious climate change politics in the UK have been undermined.     

Piecemeal or combined? Assessing greenhouse gas mitigation spillovers in US forest and agriculture policy portfolios

ABSTRACT

Forest and agricultural sector response to comprehensive climate policy is well represented in the literature. Less analysis has been devoted to piecemeal solutions. We use the Forest and Agriculture Sector Optimization Model with Greenhouse Gases (FASOMGHG) to project the individual and combined effect of three existing U.S. Department of Agriculture programmes with potential to increase greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation. We find that a combined policy scenario may achieve greater mitigation than individual constituent programmes, suggesting the possibility of complementary spillover effects in some periods. Mitigation varies over time, however, and some periods experience net emissions as markets and management practices respond to initial policy shocks. The regional distribution of GHG mitigation also varies between policy scenario. Differences in the magnitude and imputed cost of mitigation under each scenario, generating negative values for some programmes and time periods, reinforces the need to evaluate portfolio design to cost-effectively achieve near-term GHG mitigation.

Key policy insights

• Increased near-term GHG mitigation in the forest and agriculture sectors in the US may be possible by expanding or refocusing the emphasis of existing programmes.

• Implementing several such forest and agricultural programmes simultaneously may lead to greater GHG mitigation than when implemented separately, indicating the possibility of positive spillover effects.

• Programmes targeted to agricultural management may hold outsized potential to achieve near-term GHG mitigation; Policies aimed at influencing land use conversion appear to be more vulnerable to reversion and subject to larger inter-annual swings.

• The staged implementation of programmes could also be useful, helping to encourage increased mitigation (or the retention of already achieved mitigation) over time as markets re-equilibrate to initial shocks.

• Though the particular scenarios assessed here are unique to the US, our findings may be applicable to other locations outside the US where land management is influenced by individual market actors and there is competition between forest and agricultural land uses.

     

Landscape for change? International climate policy and energy transitions: evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

What is the role of the climate regime in facilitating rapid decarbonization of the world’s energy systems? We examine how core assumptions concerning the roles of the nation state, carbon markets and finance and technology in international climate policy are being challenged by the realities of how transitions in the energy systems are unfolding. Drawing on the critical region of sub-Saharan Africa, we examine the potential for international climate policy to foster new trajectories towards decarbonization.

Policy relevance

The international regime for climate policy has been in place for some twenty years. Despite significant changes in the landscape of energy systems and drivers of global GHG emissions over this time, the core principles and tools remain relatively stable – national governments, carbon markets, project-based climate finance and the transfer of technological hardware. Given the diversity of actors and drivers and the limited direct reach and influence of international climate policy, however, there is an urgent need to consider how the climate regime can best support the embryonic transitions that are slowly taking form around the world. To do this effectively requires a more nuanced understanding of the role of the state in governing these transitions beyond the notion of a cohesive state serving as rule-enforcer and transition manager. It also requires a broader view of technology, not just as hardware that is transferred, but as a set of practices and networks of expertise and enabling actors. Likewise, though markets have an important role to play as vehicles for achieving broader ends, they are not an end in themselves. Finally on finance, while acknowledging the important role of climate aid, often as a multiplier or facilitator of more ambitious private flows, it is critical to differentiate between the types of finance required for different transitions, many of which will not be counted under, or directed by, the climate regime. In sum, the (low-) carbon economy is being built in ways and in numerous sites that the climate regime needs to be cognizant of and engage with productively, and this may require fundamental reconsideration of the building blocks of the international climate regime.     

Increased Precipitation in the Norwegian Arctic: True or False?

Results from the WMO Solid Precipitation MeasurementIntercomparison and parallel precipitationmeasurements from Svalbard are used to evaluate andadjust models for estimating true precipitation underArctic conditions. The conclusion is that trueprecipitation in the Arctic may be estimatedreasonably well when the wind speed at gauge height isless than 7 m/s. It is possible to give good estimatesof true annual and seasonal precipitation at Svalbard,as only a small part of the precipitation is fallingat wind speeds above 7 m/s. For rough calculations,the correction factors for liquid precipitation isestimated to be 1.15 and for solid precipitation1.85.The developed correction models are used to estimateamounts and trends of true precipitation for two sitesin the Norwegian Arctic. In Ny-Ålesund the trueannual precipitation is more than 50% higher than themeasured amount. As the aerodynamic effects leading toprecipitation undercatch are dependent onprecipitation type and temperature, the observed andprojected increase in the air temperature in theArctic would also affect the measured precipitation,even if the true precipitation was unchanged. Sincethe mid 1960s the temperature at Svalbard Airport hasincreased by 0.5 °C per decade, resulting in areduced fraction of annual precipitation falling assnow. In the same period, the measured precipitationhas increased by 2.9% per decade and the `true' by1.7% per decade. Estimates are made of the fictitiousprecipitation increase that would result from ageneral temperature increase of 2, 4 and 6 °C. The increase in the measured annual precipitationwould be 6, 10 and 13%, respectively. The expectedfictitious precipitation increase is thus of the samemagnitude as the real precipitation increase whichaccording to recent GCM projections may be expected inNorthern Europe as a result of a doubling of theatmospheric CO₂ content.     

A science–policy interface in the global south: the politics of carbon sinks and science in Brazil

The IPCC and other global environmental assessment processes stress the need for national scientific participation to ensure decision makers’ trust in the associated scientific conclusions and political agendas. The underpinning assumption is that the relationship between scientists and decision makers at the national level is characterized by trust and interpretive synergy. Drawing on ethnographic research in Brazil, this article challenges that assumption through a case study of the policy uptake of divergent scientific interpretations as to whether or not the Amazon is a net carbon sink. It shows that the carbon sink issue became a site for struggles between important Brazilian scientists and decision-makers with central authority over the definition of the country’s official position in international climate negotiations. In a geopolitically charged scientific controversy involving scientific evidence bearing on the Kyoto Protocol, Brazilian decision makers studied revealed critical distance from national scientists advancing evidence that the Amazon is a net carbon sink. As such, the decision-makers’ interpretations were at odds also with dominant framings in the Brazilian media and closer to those of American scientists involved in carbon cycle research in the Amazon. Seeking to explain this disconnect, the paper discusses the divergent policy preferences of key scientists and decision-makers involved, and the correlations of these preferences with interpretations of the available scientific evidence. It identifies the continued impact of a national political tradition of limited participation in decision making and suggests that this tradition—while increasingly challenged by countervailing democratizing trends—is reinforced by key Brazilian decision makers’ constructions of science as a medium through which rich countries maintain political advantage. Reflecting this, key Brazilian decision-makers justified rejecting national scientists’ interpretations of the Amazon as a significant overall carbon sink by suggesting that the scientists’ scientific training and associated foreign interactions bias them in favor of foreign interests, compromising their ability to accurately identify national interests. The paper situates its analysis in terms of theories of the science–policy interface and argues for greater attention to the role of culturally and politically laden understandings of science and the role of science in policy and geopolitics.