解读美国《总统气候行动计划》的动因

长期以来,美国因缺少联邦政府层面的气候行动计划而受到国际社会的指责。这一情况在奥巴马总统的第二执政期有所改变。2013年6月,奥巴马行政当局发布《总统气候行动计划》,被认为是迄今为止最为全面的联邦气候变化应对计划。本文通过梳理行动计划的主要内容,从美国自身和国际社会角度分析了该行动计划出台的各种因素及影响,指出奥巴马行政当局旨在通过启动该气候行动和整合行政资源,修复国家气候战略,提升政治影响,同时此举有助于扭转美国在国际气候谈判中的被动地位,并重新确立领导地位。     

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.     

适应气候变化政策机制的国际经验与启示

中国高度重视适应气候变化工作,实行减缓与适应并重的应对气候变化原则,已出台适应气候变化相关的战略、规划等一系列政策文件。但总体来看,中国适应气候变化政策与行动尚处于起步阶段,面临着法规制度缺位、监测评估不足、组织协调机制不完善等挑战,适应气候变化政策的类型、数量和力度都明显弱于减缓。为完善中国适应气候变化政策与机制的框架设计,文中梳理了相关研究、《联合国气候变化框架公约》下的适应气候变化国际机制及主要国家经验,提出了一套完整闭环的适应气候变化核心决策流程及关键支撑机制,并重点从开展法制建设、制定适应战略（计划）、建立监测评估机制、构建协调机制和完善资金机制等五方面,归纳了主要国家的经验与启示,最终研究提出完善我国适应气候变化政策与机制框架设计的建议,包括加快建立和完善适应气候变化法制建设、加快构建国家适应气候变化的政策体系、加快完善国家适应气候变化的机制设计、加强适应气候变化支撑能力建设、推动适应气候变化的国际合作等。     

Climate policy innovation: The adoption and diffusion of adaptation policies across Europe

Climate change adaptation governance is in flux. Adaptation policies are being adopted by governments at a rapid pace, particularly in Europe. In the period 2005–2010, the total number of recorded adaptation policy measures in the EU grew by some 635%. Despite the plethora of work on adaptation governance, few if any empirical studies have been conducted that explore the driving forces behind the rapid adoption and diffusion of adaptation policies. Working within the theoretical framework of national policy innovation (see Jordan and Huitema, 2014a, Jordan and Huitema, 2014b), we draw on a uniquely systematic database of national climate polices to develop a set of hypotheses on the drivers and barriers surrounding the adoption and diffusion of climate change adaptation policies across 29 European countries. Using an internal/external model we postulate that adaptation is largely being driven by internal factors. Additionally, we look to the possible effects of this policy adoption and diffusion to see if adaptation is emerging into a new and distinct policy field. What we find is that indeed it could be in a handful of countries.     

将灾害风险管理和适应气候变化纳入可持续发展

IPCC发布的《管理极端事件和灾害风险,推进气候变化适应》特别报告(SREX)指出,极端事件和灾害的影响很大程度上取决于社会经济系统的风险暴露程度及其脆弱性特征。这意味着,不合理的发展过程将加剧灾害风险及其损失,另一方面,采取积极的减灾和适应行动,能够减小灾害风险并促进社会、经济、环境的可持续发展。SREX报告有助于启发决策者与社会公众,为充满不确定风险的未来进行合理规划,包括关注未来因人口和社会财富增长导致的暴露度和脆弱性增加,在国家和部门层面整合适应、减灾与发展政策,利用多种政策工具加强决策的科学性和灵活性,发挥不同主体在适应治理与灾害风险管理中的作用等等。     

Governmentality and the climate-development nexus: The case of the EU Global Climate Change Alliance

This article uses a governmentality perspective to uncover the power effects of the external climate change adaptation assistance provided by the European Union (EU) through its flagship initiative in this regard: the Global Climate Change Alliance. By drawing upon a body of literature that conceptualizes the established international architecture in this regard as rooted in power relations, this article opens up our current perspective of the EU as an international climate actor. An analysis of policy documents and targeted semi-structured interviews reveals that the EU discursively emphasizes the responsibility of partner countries to manage risk and become ‘resilient’ to climate impacts, while downplaying the transformative potential of adaptation for development. We see this dynamic further reflected in GCCA policy techniques, which promote the production of quantified and depoliticized knowledge on adaptation. This in its turn further guides the allocation of GCCA support and is instrumentalized in order to establish a stable identity for the organization and reproduce the EU as a climate leader in this regard.     

Advising national climate policy makers: A longitudinal analysis of the UK Climate Change Committee

Despite the recent proliferation of national climate change advisory bodies, very little is known about what advice they provide, to whom, and when. To address these gaps in the literature, this article systematically analyses all 700 of the recommendations made by the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) in the period 2009–20. The CCC is one of the oldest climate change advisory bodies of its kind in the world and its design has been widely emulated by other countries. For the first time, this article documents how the CCC’s mitigation and adaptation recommendations have changed over time with respect to their addressee, sectoral focus and policy targets. It reveals that they became: more numerous per year; more cross-sectoral in their nature; clearer in targeting a specific addressee; and more focused in referring to specific policy targets. By drawing on Fischer’s synthesis of policy evaluation to derive a measure of policy ambition, it also reveals that despite many of its recommendations being repeated year after year, the CCC has become more willing to challenge the policy status quo. It concludes by identifying future research needs in this important and fast-moving area of climate governance, notably understanding the conditions in which the recommendations of advisory bodies (do not) impact national policy.     

Who determines transformational change in development and climate finance?

The language of transformational change is increasingly applied to climate policy, and particularly in climate finance. Transformational change in this context is used with respect to low-carbon development futures, with the emphasis on mitigation and GHG metrics. But, for many developing countries, climate policy is embedded in a larger context of sustainable development objectives, defined through a national process. Viewed thus, there is a potential tension between mitigation-focused transformation and nationally driven sustainable development. We explore this tension in the context of operationalizing the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which has to deal with the fundamental tension between country ownership and transformational change. In relation to climate finance, acceptance of diverse interpretations of transformation are essential conditions for avoiding risk of transformational change becoming a conditionality on development. We further draw lessons from climate governance and the development aid literature. The article examines how in the case of both the Clean Development Mechanism and Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions, there has been limited success in achieving both development objectives and ‘nationally appropriate’ mitigation. The development aid literature points to process-based approaches as a possible alternative, but there are limitations to this approach.

Policy relevance

The concept of transformational change has gained prominence in climate finance. The conundrum facing the GCF is that it seeks to support transformational change in the climate realm, in a context where countries may have competing priorities. Balancing or even transcending this tension is a fundamental design challenge for the GCF. A primary focus on mitigation, particularly if metrics of performance are tied exclusively to GHG reduction, raise concerns about diluting ownership by recipient countries and evokes concerns of conditionality or worse. The literature on development assistance has explored options notably conditions on process and adequate capacity, and suggests that there are no short cuts to building domestic ownership. Actors on climate change need to avoid the risk that transformational change is perceived as, and becomes, an imposed condition. The risk that transformation change, operationalized in the context of unequal power relations, becomes an imposition on development, needs to be avoided.     

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.     

Drivers of collaboration to mitigate climate change: An illustration of Swiss climate policy over 15 years

Climate change mitigation policy is driven by scientific knowledge and involves actors from the international, national and local decision-making levels. This multi-level and cross-sectoral context requires collaborative management when designing mitigation solutions over time and space. But collaboration in general policymaking settings, and particularly in the complex domain of climate mitigation, is not an easy task. This paper addresses the question of what drives collaboration among collective actors involved in climate mitigation policy. We wish to investigate whether common beliefs or power structures influence collaboration among actors. We adopt a longitudinal approach to grasp differences between the early and more advanced stages of mitigation policy design. We use survey data to investigate actors’ collaboration, beliefs and power, and apply a Stochastic Actor-oriented Model for network dynamics to three subsequent networks in Swiss climate policy between 1995 and 2012. Results show that common beliefs among actors, as well as formal power structures, have a higher impact on collaboration relations than perceived power structures. Furthermore, those effects hold true for decision-making about initial mitigation strategies, but less so for the implementation of those measures.     

Catching air? Climate change policy in Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan

Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan have each participated actively in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conferences of the Parties, and each is developing domestic rules and institutions to address UN obligations under the treaties. Russia and Ukraine are each Annex I/Annex B countries. Kazakhstan will become Annex I upon ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, but has not yet established itself as Annex B. Each state has evolved a distinct set of policies and priorities in the domestic and the international arena. Drawing largely on interviews in each country, this article presents brief histories of the evolution of climate policy, focusing on each state’s behavior in the international arena, the sources of domestic policy leadership, and the forces that led to change in each national approach. Current policies and practices are evaluated with an eye towards learning from the successes and failures in each state.     

Global climate policy and local energy politics: is India hiding behind the poor?

Along with the large middle-income countries Brazil, China, and South Africa, India has been put under increasing pressure to shoulder parts of the mitigation burden and commit to national emission reduction targets. India, however, refers to its limited capacity and widespread poverty. Is India hiding behind its poor? While others examine the distribution of emissions within the country to answer this question, we study domestic policy making for energy subsidies and access to clean energy. Empirical evidence suggests that domestic policy making is at least partially consistent with the pro-poor arguments advanced at the international level. Given their large number and the country's democratic system, the poor do have some weight in Indian politics. However, pro-poor policies end where they do not translate into greater vote shares. Moreover, India's international position ignores the existing complementarities between climate-friendly and pro-poor activities.

Policy relevance

Despite India's recent growth spurt, its concern to fight energy poverty at home before engaging in any commitments on climate policy at the international level should be taken seriously within the international negotiations. Policy making in India is driven by democratic incentives, which, in this case, work to the benefit of the poor. Pro-poor policies may not go as far as one would wish from a developmental perspective, but the impact of the masses of the poor on domestic policy making is politically significant and cannot be ignored. This also provides some broader lessons for mitigation and adaptation policies in developing countries: politicians respond to incentives and support will only reach the needy if the appropriate incentives are in place. While we observe some significant commitment and implementation problems even in a democratic country like India, such problems must be expected to be even more serious elsewhere. This should not be overlooked when designing institutions for the allocation of climate finance, such as the Green Climate Fund.     

Catching air? Climate change policy in Russia,Ukraine and Kazakhstan

Abstract

Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan have each participated actively in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conferences of the Parties, and each is developing domestic rules and institutions to address UN obligations under the treaties. Russia and Ukraine are each Annex I/Annex B countries. Kazakhstan will become Annex I upon ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, but has not yet established itself as Annex B. Each state has evolved a distinct set of policies and priorities in the domestic and the international arena. Drawing largely on interviews in each country, this article presents brief histories of the evolution of climate policy, focusing on each state's behavior in the international arena, the sources of domestic policy leadership, and the forces that led to change in each national approach. Current policies and practices are evaluated with an eye towards learning from the successes and failures in each state.     

Community level adaptation to climate change: The potential role of participatory community risk assessment

This paper explores the value of using community risk assessments (CRAs) for climate change adaptation. CRA refers to participatory methods to assess hazards, vulnerabilities and capacities in support of community-based disaster risk reduction, used by many NGOs, community-based organizations, and the Red Cross/Red Crescent. We review the evolution of climate change adaptation and community-based disaster risk reduction, and highlight the challenges of integrating global climate change into a bottom-up and place-based approach. Our analysis of CRAs carried out by various national Red Cross societies shows that CRAs can help address those challenges by fostering community engagement in climate risk reduction, particularly given that many strategies to deal with current climate risks also help to reduce vulnerability to climate change. Climate change can also be explicitly incorporated in CRAs by making better use of CRA tools to assess trends, and by addressing the notion of changing risks. However, a key challenge is to keep CRAs simple enough for wide application. This demands special attention in the modification of CRA tools; in the background materials and trainings for CRA facilitators; and in the guidance for interpretation of CRA outcomes. A second challenge is the application of a limited set of CRA results to guide risk reduction in other communities and to inform national and international adaptation policy. This requires specific attention for sampling and care in scaling up qualitative findings. Finally, stronger linkages are needed between organizations facilitating CRAs and suppliers of climate information, particularly addressing the translation of climate information to the community level.     

Climate change and energy security: an analysis of policy research

The literature on climate change’s impacts on energy security is scattered across disparate fields of research and schools of thought. Much of this literature has been produced outside of the academy by scholars and practitioners working in “think tanks,” government agencies, and international/multilateral institutions. Here we reviewed a selected set of 58 articles and reports primarily from such sources and performed textual analysis of the arguments. Our review of this literature identifies three potential mechanisms for linking climate change and energy security: Climate change may 1) create second-order effects that may exacerbate social instability and disrupt energy systems; 2) directly impact energy supply and/or systems or 3) influence energy security through the effects of climate-related policies. We identify emerging risks to energy security driven by climate mitigation technology choices but find less evidence of climate change’s direct physical impacts. We used both empirical and qualitative selection factors for choosing the grey literature sample. The sources we selected were published in the last 5 years, available through electronic media and were written in language accessible to general policy or academic readers. The organizations that published the literature had performed previous research in the general fields of energy and/or climate change with some analytical content and identified themselves as non-partisan. This literature is particularly valuable to scholars because identifies understudied relationships that can be rigorously assessed through academic tools and methodologies and informs a translational research agenda that will allow scholars to engage with practitioners to address challenges that lie at the nexus of climate change and energy security.     

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.     

Developing country perspectives on ‘mitigation actions’, ‘NAMAs’, and ‘LCDS’

The MAPS programme, which seeks to deepen mitigation ambition in developing countries, is engaged in exploring the concepts of Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) and Low Carbon Development Strategies (LCDS) from a developing country perspective. Here, climate mitigation practitioners in six developing countries were surveyed for their understanding of these concepts (anonymous, personal communications with climate mitigation practitioners in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, India, and South Africa). It is found that there is much scope for clarity and conceptual elaboration in this policy space. NAMAs are largely interpreted as mitigation activities packaged for submission to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) registry, but are not held to constitute the full set of mitigation activity in a developing country. New terminology may be needed to describe this broader set. A tighter interpretation of LCDS to distinguish between a strategic or coordinating policy action may be useful. Other themes arising include the way ‘national appropriateness’ is reflected in the concepts, and the role of international policy in deepening mitigation action in developing countries.     

Foreign policy ‘trilemmas’: understanding China's stance on international cap-and-trade

This article uses a policy analogy approach to explore China's attitude toward the possibility of global carbon market integration, including the development of a common cap-and-trade market for the global civil aviation industry. Like in other foreign policy domains, in international cap-and-trade, China faces a ‘trilemma’ between carbon market integration, state sovereignty and policy flexibility. By referring to how China has approached a comparable trilemma in foreign exchange policy making, we analyse China's possible stance on international cap-and-trade. We argue that China will prefer to gradually establish and strengthen, to a limited extent, intergovernmental governance mechanisms, which allow nation-states to prioritize sovereignty and policy flexibility in carbon trading policy making. In the conclusion we use this argument to explain China's responses to the carbon-trading initiatives of Australia, the EU, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and the World Bank.

Policy relevance

The international community has reached a consensus on the use of market mechanisms for mitigating climate change. While opposing the EU's plan to include Chinese airlines in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, China has started to co-explore with Australia the possibility of linking their carbon markets, and has adopted a supportive attitude toward the carbon trading initiatives led by the ICAO and the World Bank. Considering China's status as the largest emitting country of GHGs and its interdependence with major developed and developing countries, China's substantial participation would be crucial to the success of the global market-based efforts to reduce GHG emissions. This article presents an initial attempt to develop a better understanding of China's stance on international cap-and-trade.     

Progress and evaluation of international climate change cooperation北大核心CSCD

气候变化是当前世界面临的巨大挑战,应对气候变化需要国际间合作已成为普遍共识。IPCC第六次评估报告(AR6)第三工作组(WGⅢ)报告第十四章回顾了IPCC第五次评估报告(AR5)以来气候变化国际合作的进展,基于所提出的评价体系对进展进行了系统评估。报告认为,AR5以来气候变化国际合作最重要的进展是基于《巴黎协定》建立的以国家自主贡献为核心的全球行动模式;除《巴黎协定》外,国际上也形成了多种形式的合作机制,其中,气候俱乐部是国际气候合作研究的新热点。对于《巴黎协定》的有效性,目前国际社会存在正反两种观点,并认为《巴黎协定》能否达成既定目标取决于是否有能力强化全球下一步的集体气候行动目标和实施。     

Sharing the burden of financing adaptation to climate change

Climate change may cause most harm to countries that have historically contributed the least to greenhouse gas emissions and land-use change. This paper identifies consequentialist and non-consequentialist ethical principles to guide a fair international burden-sharing scheme of climate change adaptation costs. We use these ethical principles to derive political principles – historical responsibility and capacity to pay – that can be applied in assigning a share of the financial burden to individual countries. We then propose a hybrid ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ approach as a promising starting point for international negotiations on the design of burden-sharing schemes. A numerical assessment of seven scenarios shows that the countries of Annex I of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change would bear the bulk of the costs of adaptation, but contributions differ substantially subject to the choice of a capacity to pay indicator. The contributions are less sensitive to choices related to responsibility calculations, apart from those associated with land-use-related emissions. Assuming costs of climate adaptation of USD 100 billion per year, the total financial contribution by the Annex I countries would be in the range of USD 65–70 billion per year. Expressed as a per capita basis, this gives a range of USD 43–82 per capita per year.