Diffusion of global climate policy: National depoliticization,local repoliticization in Turkey

Although climate policy diffusion is widely studied, we know comparatively little about how these global policies and the norms that surround them are used by various political actors seeking to advance their own agendas. In this article, we focus on how global climate norms are diffused differently at national and local scales and used to repoliticize or depoliticize climate change. We focus on the case of Turkey, which carries the stark contrast of showing willingness to achieve global climate goals in the international arena but less so in domestic politics and actions. The article employs a novel methodological approach, using topic modeling and network analyses on a range of climate change–related policy documents, and interviews with high-level officers, conducted at the three jurisdictional levels in Turkey. The findings reveal that although global climate policy is diffused to both national and local governments, it is used in different ways at these levels. The national government uses climate policy diffusion to depoliticize climate change by creating ad hoc climate coalitions and limiting local climate actions to seeking external climate-related funds. Meanwhile, the metropolitan municipalities replicate nationally adopted climate goals, whereas the district municipalities domesticate ambitious climate norms and repoliticize climate change via local climate entrepreneurs and civic action. The paper contributes to understanding how climate policy diffusion and norm domestication can have different political outcomes in achieving global climate goals and argues for increased policy attention to the strategic use of climate policy diffusion for the depoliticization of climate change.     

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.     

An iconic approach for representing climate change

International and national greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals implicitly rely in part on individuals undertaking voluntary emissions reductions through lifestyle decisions. Whilst there is widespread public recognition of climate change as an issue, there are many barriers – cognitive, psychological and social – preventing individuals from enacting lifestyle decarbonisation. More effective climate change communication approaches are needed which allow individuals to engage meaningfully with climate change, thus opening new prospects for lifestyle decarbonisation. This study presents an iconic approach to engagement, tested in the UK context, which allows individuals to approach climate change through their own personal values and experiences. The iconic approach harnesses the emotive and visual power of climate icons with a rigorous scientific analysis of climate impacts under a different climate future. Although some climate icons already exist – for example the Thermohaline Circulation shutdown – these ‘expert-led’ icons fail to effectively engage ‘non-experts’. We demonstrate that the non-expert-led iconic approach helps overcome some of the cognitive and affective barriers that impede action towards lifestyle decarbonisation.     

Interface bureaucrats and the everyday remaking of climate interventions: Evidence from climate change adaptation in Zambia

When climate change policies are implemented in practice, they travel through the hands of a range of practitioners who not only mediate but also potentially transform climate interventions. This article highlights the role of a group of actors whose practices have so far received little attention in the study of climate change governance, namely the public servants who are responsible for the everyday implementation of national climate change policies and associated programmes on the ground. Situated at the frontline of the state and often engaging directly with citizens, these “interface bureaucrats” occupy a complex position in which they must balance their role as representatives of the state with the need to accommodate the pressures, interests and practical challenges associated with everyday policy implementation. In this article we examine how interface bureaucrats in Zambia seek to navigate this role as they go about implementing national climate change adaptation policies in practice, and what this means for the nature and outcome of these interventions. We identify key dilemmas of the interface bureaucrats in our study areas, namely (i) intervening with limited reach, (ii) implementing generic policies, and (iii) managing conflicting interests. We show how they address these dilemmas through highly pragmatic practices involving informal agreements with community members, discretionary adjustments of official policies, and negotiation of contested interventions. As a result, the nature and outcomes of climate change adaptation interventions end up differently from the official policies and the underlying governance interests of the central state. Our findings suggest a need for greater attention to the role of interface bureaucrats as everyday climate policy makers and point to the significance of pragmatism and compromise in the interaction between state actors and citizens in environmental interventions.     

Technological capability and transfer for achieving South Africa's development goals

Technological capability and technology transfer both play important roles in achieving low-carbon development targets and the concepts of both have appeared in national development and climate policy debates. Yet, they differ. Improving capabilities and transfer mechanisms are two differing approaches to technological development. Technology transfer is associated with a key political dynamic within international climate policy, in that developing countries request support from industrialised countries. Whereas technological capability focuses on building internal capabilities and is often framed in the context of national industrial policy plans rather than relying on external support. We argue that technology development, a combination of these approaches, can contribute to South Africa's low-carbon development through innovation and technology-based mitigation actions that increase domestic technological capabilities. Technological capability needs to become a determinant of mitigation action to effectively contribute to achieving South Africa's low-carbon development goals. International technology transfer and cooperation should contribute to boosting domestic capabilities to advance technological development. Technology transfer based on pure sales will not contribute to achieving long-term low-carbon development goals.     

Building a regime for climate protection: Finland and international climate policy

The effective management of climate change on a national as well as an international level requires close co-operation between the scientific community and the political sector. Climate change first became a major subject of scientific inquiry in the early 1980s, and real political interest in the issue was awakened towards the end of that decade. In the last few years, the dialogue between the scientific community and the political sector has increased considerably. As a result, climate change is today one of the most significant areas in environmental research and international environmental policy alike.This paper examines the emergence and consolidation of international climate change regime. The theory of regime building is used as discussed by Young (1989). International Cooperation. Cornell University Press, Ithaca. The paper begins with an outline of the historical emergence of climate research and climate policy. This is followed by a discussion of the history and development of the Rio Convention, with a look at the latest developments in international climate politics. The next section begins with an examination of the foundations and present strategies of Finnish climate policy, which is used as a case study, and the paper concludes with an assessment of the current state of Finnish climate policy, illustrating the problems of compliance individual countries face when adopting the norms and principles of the regime.     

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.     

Policy without politics: technocratic control of climate change adaptation policy making in Nepal

As developing countries around the world formulate policies to address climate change, concerns remain as to whether the voices of those most exposed to climate risk are represented in those policies. Developing countries face significant challenges for contextualizing global-scale scientific research into national political dynamics and downscaling global frameworks to sub-national levels, where the most affected are presumed to live. This article critiques the ways in which the politics of representation and climate science are framed and pursued in the process of climate policy development, and contributes to an understanding of the relative effectiveness of globally framed, generic policy mechanisms in vulnerable and politically volatile contexts. Based on this analysis, it also outlines opportunities for the possibility of improving climate policy processes to contest technocratic framing and generic international adaptation solutions.

Policy relevance

Nepal's position as one of the countries most at risk from climate change in the Himalayas has spurred significant international support to craft climate policy responses over the past few years. Focusing on the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) and the Climate Change Policy, this article examines the extent to which internationally and scientifically framed climate policy in Nepal recognizes the unfolding political mobilizations around the demand for a representative state and equitable adaptation to climate risks. This is particularly important in Nepal, where political unrest in the post-conflict transition after the end of the civil war in 2006 has focused around struggles over representation for those historically on the political margins. Arguing that vulnerability to climate risk is produced in conjunction with social and political conditions, and that not everyone in the same locality is equally vulnerable, we demonstrate the multi-faceted nature of the politics of representation for climate policy making in Nepal. However, so far, this policy making has primarily been shaped through a technocratic framing that avoids political contestations and downplays the demand for inclusive and deliberative processes. Based on this analysis, we identify the need for a flexible, contextually grounded, and multi-scalar approach to political representation while also emphasizing the need for downscaling climate science that can inform policy development and implementation to achieve fair and effective adaptation to climate change.     

Patterns of controversy and consensus in German,Canadian, and US online news on climate change

Individual action and support for policy to tackle climate change have been linked to perceptions of political and scientific controversy and consensus concerning the issue. Recent media effects research indicates that presentation of agreement or conflict between actors’ opinions influences how audiences respond to news about climate change and policy. While some national case studies have investigated portrayals of actors’ positions on important questions regarding climate change in the media, they are largely absent from comparative research. This study addresses this gap by analysing portrayals of actor-issue-positions and the emerging patterns of controversy and consensus in German, Canadian, and US coverage. Studying a sample of occurrences of climate change-related issues (N = 902) in-depth, the results show German media present political consensus about the need to limit emissions and societal controversy about the efficacy of specific mitigation measures. Presenting mainly consensus, Canadian media report more on climate change’s impact, leaving aside the issue of efficacy. In the US, media emphasise political controversy — about the need to limit emissions and occasionally about climate change’s impact on humans. The findings, consistent with other recent publications, can best be explained by journalists selectively indexing of seemingly relevant actor-issue-positions.     

Policy goals,partisanship and paradigmatic change in energy policy – analyzing parliamentary discourse in Germany over 30 years

The successful implementation of the Paris Agreement requires substantial energy policy change on the national level. In national energy policy-making, climate change mitigation goals have to be balanced with arguments on other national energy policy goals, namely limiting cost and increasing energy security. Thus far, very little is known about the relative importance of these goals and how they are related to political partisanship. In order to address this gap, we focus on parliamentary discourse around low-carbon energy futures in Germany over the past three decades and analyze the relative importance of, and partisanship around, energy policy goals. We find that the political discourse revolves around four, rather than three, goals as conventionally assumed; improving the competitiveness of the national energy technology industry is not only an additional energy policy goal, it is also highly important in the political discourse. In general, the relative importance of these goals is rather stable over time and partisanship around them is limited. Yet, a sub-analysis of the discourse on renewable energy technologies reveals a high level of partisanship, albeit decreasing over time. Particularly, the energy industry goal’s importance increases while its partisanship vanishes. We discuss how these findings can inform future energy policy research and provide a potential inroad for more ambitious national energy policies.

Key policy insights

• In addition to the three classic goals of energy policy (limiting cost, securing access and reducing the environmental burden) we identify a fourth policy goal: strengthening the national energy technology industry

• Conformity between the three classical energy and the industrial policy goals is a key driver explaining policy change

• For renewable energy technologies, partisanship around this fourth goal is lower than around other goals and decreases over time as innovation allows these technologies to increasingly correspond to policy-makers’ high-level goals

• Extant research underestimates the importance of industry policy goals, but overestimates environmental co-benefits of low-carbon energy options

• Paradigmatic policy change in Germany did not depend on top-down shifts in high-level policy goals but was driven by lower-level technology-specific goals

     

Seizing policy windows: Policy Influence of climate advocacy coalitions in Brazil,China, and India, 2000–2015

What drives the development of climate policy? Brazil, China, and India have all changed their climate policies since 2000, and single-case analyses of climate policymaking have found that all three countries have had climate coalitions working to promote climate policies. To what extent have such advocacy coalitions been able to influence national policies for climate-change mitigation, and what can explain this? Employing a new approach that combines the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) with insights from comparative environmental politics and the literature on policy windows, this paper identifies why external parameters like political economy and institutional structures are crucial for explaining the climate advocacy coalitions’ ability to seize policy windows and influence policy development. We find that the coalitions adjust their policy strategies to the influence-opportunity structures in each political context—resulting in confrontation in Brazil, cooperation in China, and a complementary role in India.     

Climate skepticism decreases when the planet gets hotter and conservative support wanes

Identifying historical patterns of fluctuation in climate change skepticism guides researchers, policy makers, and science communicators in efforts to catalyze change in the future. We analyzed data from 25 nationally representative polls collected in Australia from 2009 to 2019 (N = 20,655). Although it remains concerningly high, climate skepticism trended down in that 10-year period, particularly among conservatives. Multilevel analyses identified two variables that stood out as being relevant in explaining that trajectory. First, climate change skepticism was positively associated with support for conservative political parties in national polls. Second, climate change skepticism was negatively associated with the annual global temperatures the previous year. There was little evidence that climate change beliefs were associated with economic variables or with seasonal variations in temperature. Furthermore, there was only weak evidence that climate change beliefs were associated with national temperatures. This suggests that global temperatures in the previous year are impactful because of their informational value (as a communication heuristic for the urgency and immediacy of climate change) more so than for their experiential value (in the sense of people actually experiencing warmer weather). Importantly, the effect of previous global temperature was particularly pronounced among those with the strongest levels of skepticism: political conservatives. This suggests that rising global annual temperatures have the power to update beliefs among those most in need of converting to the climate cause.     

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.     

It's political: How the salience of one's political identity changes climate change beliefs and policy support

Previous research has demonstrated a striking difference in climate change beliefs and policy support between people who identify with the right-wing of politics and with the left-wing of politics. But are we destined to continue with this divergence? We suggest that there is movement around these differences based on the politicization of climate change and we conducted two experimental studies with 126 and 646 people, respectively, to examine this effect. We found that those people whose political identity was made salient were less likely to believe in an anthropogenic cause of climate change and less likely to support government climate change policies than those whose identity was not made salient; particularly when those people were aligned with the right-wing of politics. The results demonstrate the importance of the salience of one's political identity in determining attitudes and beliefs even for scientific facts such as climate change. Our research also identifies some ways forward in dealing with climate change-based on depoliticizing the issue.     

Public participation and climate change adaptation: avoiding the illusion of inclusion

Public participation is commonly advocated in policy responses to climate change. Here we discuss prospects for inclusive approaches to adaptation, drawing particularly on studies of long-term coastal management in the UK and elsewhere. We affirm that public participation is an important normative goal in formulating response to climate change risks, but argue that its practice must learn from existing critiques of participatory processes in other contexts. Involving a wide range of stakeholders in decision-making presents fundamental challenges for climate policy, many of which are embedded in relations of power. In the case of anticipatory responses to climate change, these challenges are magnified because of the long-term and uncertain nature of the problem. Without due consideration of these issues, a tension between principles of public participation and anticipatory adaptation is likely to emerge and may result in an overly managed form of inclusion that is unlikely to satisfy either participatory or instrumental goals. Alternative, more narrowly instrumental, approaches to participation are more likely to succeed in this context, as long as the scope and limitations of public involvement are made explicit from the outset.     

Watered down? Civil society organizations and hydropower development in the Darjeeling and Sikkim regions,Eastern Himalaya: A comparative study

ABSTRACT

Mitigating climate change is often framed as the ultimate collective action problem of this era and great emphasis is made on the need for approaches that foster ‘cooperation’ and ‘consensus’. This paper argues that the irony of this rhetoric could not be more stark; climate policy framing is an exclusionary process, and climate mitigating interventions that are engineered essentially to address neoliberal economic concerns rather than environmental challenges are often the source of multiple new conflicts. In this regard, this paper shows how the response of local non governmental organisations (NGOs) to hydropower development in the Darjeeling region of West Bengal in the Eastern Himalayas bears evidence to Gramscian analyses of ‘the manufacture of consent’ between elite bourgeois actors – the state, formal civil society, political parties and the private sector. Such ‘associational’ unions are only occasionally interrupted, as in the case of the people’s movement, Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT) in North Sikkim. Finding a balance between resistance and enabling political space to think and act differently, the movement led to the cancellation of several hydropower projects put forward in the name of climate mitigation, and in the process, drew attention to political processes involved in the manufacture of consent. Using case studies from the Darjeeling and Sikkim regions, this paper distinguishes between Gramsci’s vision of the political space of disruption vis-à-vis the covert agenda of climate consensus.

Key policy insights

• A politics of consensus in relation to climate change is an outcome of, and in turn reiterates, a narrowing of distance between the state and civil society.

• Including civil society in climate policy decision making and implementation is considered positive and inclusive, however, it is important to note that civil society is not always and everywhere inclusive and transformative.

• Both at global and national levels, it is claimed that climate change interventions happen in an overall framework of participatory, inclusive environmental governance; in relation to hydropower development, we note that this is hardly the practice on the ground.

     

Climate policy networks in South Korea: alliances and conflicts

A policy network analysis using a questionnaire survey was conducted to identify the main climate policy actors in South Korea and examine how they form alliances and come into conflict over four major issues. Generally, it was found that governmental organizations are the main actors in the South Korean climate policy arena and that they mediate between the business and civil sectors. In particular, key organizations in each sector play a leading role in the formation and maintenance of at least two distinct alliance networks: growth and environmental. In particular, the growth network has been stronger and more intense than the environmental network, with the exception of nuclear power policy. The crucial drivers of proactive policy discourse in South Korea have been scientific discourse and a consensus on the advent of anthropogenic climate change by the international scientific community, the international climate change negotiations and the pressure to commit to GHG emissions reduction, and low-carbon green growth strategy.

Policy relevance

The positions of South Korean governmental organizations (as well as other civil society organizations) on the four major issues of climate policy have not been aligned. The government has not acted as a unified body; instead it is an aggregated body composed of organizations with competing interests. If policy actors with different interests share the recognition of the state of the country within global society and understand international pressure as well as the urgency of combating climate change, then a common policy goal can be achieved. It is essential for the government to exert proactive leadership for climate policies in mediating the growth and environmental networks. It is important to boost environmental networks in order to overcome the alliance of growth networks. A more proactive response for combating climate change would establish open policy-making processes for environmental network actors and provide economic opportunities for climate actions.     

Everyday realities of climate change adaptation in Mozambique

This paper analyzes discourses and practices of flood response and adaptation to climate change in Mozambique. It builds on recent publications on climate change adaptation that suggest that the successes and failures of adaptation highly depend on the cultural and political realms of societal perceptions and the sensitivity of institutions. To capture this, the paper adopted a multi-sited ethnographic approach. Acknowledging that there is no central locus of representation that can unveil the working of disaster response in Mozambique, the paper brings together five vignettes of research in different ‘sites’ of concern to the rise in floods in Mozambique. These are the politics of climate change adaptation at the national institutional level, societal responses to increased flooding, local people's responses to floods, the evacuation and resettlement programme following the 2007 flood. The paper finds how adaptation to climate change becomes part of everyday politics, how actors aim to incorporate responses into the continuation of their normal behavior and how elites are better positioned to take advantage of adaptation programmes than the vulnerable people that were targeted. It argues that climate change adaptation must be made consonant with historically grown and ongoing social and institutional processes. It concludes with lessons that the analysis and methodology of the research can provide for the practice of climate change adaptation.     

An antipodean climate of uncertainty?

Climatic impact assessment is generally conducted by reference to numerical models, from which most estimates of climatic change are derived, and to the policy developers, by whom the impact assessments are demanded. The propagation of estimates derived from numerical climate model predictions of greenhouse-induced climate change through impact models into policy advice is a precariously uncertain process which compounds the considerable uncertainties already inherent in policy development. Clear statements of scientific confidence in the greenhouse phenomenon in the mid-1980s prompted demands for policy, and hence for policy advice. In Australia, as in many other countries, public and political awareness of the possibility of greenhouse-induced climatic change increased. These developments led to the formation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in June 1992; and to the review of the World Climate Programme in April 1993. This special issue ofClimatic Change illustrates some aspects of the difficulties surrounding projections of climatic impacts at a national scale where policy development almost always occurs under conditions of uncertainty. It may be valuable to identify uncertainty issues which could benefit from additional research and also sensitive points in the policy development process at which uncertainty can be used and abused. In this paper, the role of uncertainty in the greenhouse debate is reviewed from the perspective of a natural scientist working in a developed country. The aim is to offer a framework for the rest of this special issue ofClimatic Change. Uncertainty is by no means the only factor which influences views on climate change but increased understanding and more informed debate of all aspects of the uncertainties relating greenhouse-induced climatic change to policy development and implementation would be beneficial.     

Power interplay between actors: using material and ideational resources to shape local adaptation plans of action (LAPAs) in Nepal

Deliberation over how to adapt to short or long-term impacts of climate change takes place in a complex political setting, where actors’ interests and priorities shape the temporal dimension of adaptation plans, policies and actions. As actors interact to pursue their individual or collective interests, these struggles turn into dynamic power interplay. In this article, we aim to show how power interplay shapes local adaptation plans of action (LAPAs) in Nepal to be short-term and reactive. We use an interactional framing approach through interaction analyses and observations to analyse how actors use material and ideational resources to pursue their interests. Material and ideational resources that an actor deploys include political authority, knowledge of adaptation science and national/local policy-making processes, financial resources and strong relations with international non-governmental organizations and donor agencies. We find that facilitators and local politicians have a very prominent role in meetings relating to LAPAs, resulting in short-termism of LAPAs. Findings suggest that there is also a lack of female participation contributing to short-term orientated plans. We conclude that such power interplay analysis can help to investigate how decision making on the temporal aspects of climate adaptation policy takes place at the local level.

Key policy insights

• Short-termism of LAPAs is attributed to the power interplay between actors during the policy design process.

• Improved participation of the most vulnerable, especially women, can lead to the preparation of adaptation plans and strategies focusing on both the short and long-term.

• It is pertinent to consider power interplay in the design and planning of adaptation policy in order to create a level-playing field between actors for inclusive decision-making.

• Analysis of dynamic power interplay can help in investigating climate change adaptation controversies that are marked by uncertainties and ambiguities.