Is anticipatory governance opening up or closing down future possibilities? Findings from diverse contexts in the Global South

There is an urgent need to understand how anticipation processes such as scenario planning impact governance choices in the present. However, little empirical research has been done to analyze how anticipation processes frame possibilities for action. This paper investigates how assumptions about the future open up or close down anticipatory governance actions in a large number of climate-focused anticipation processes. We focused on four Global South regions: West Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central America. We apply an analytical framework that identifies four diverse approaches to anticipatory governance and connect this to the notion of opening up or closing down of possibility spaces for action. Across the four regions, we find that many anticipation processes open up dialogue about deep uncertainties and pluralistic worldviews but end up informing mostly technocratic and linear planning actions in the present. We also observe that anticipation processes in the Central American context more often break this trend, particularly when transformative ambitions are formulated. The focus on more technocratic futures and linear planning strategies and reliance on a mostly North-based global futures industry may close down more culturally, socially and politically diverse and regionally relevant future worldviews in anticipation processes.     

Incorporating blue carbon sequestration benefits into sub-national climate policies

The emissions reduction pledges made by individual countries through the 2015 Paris Agreement represent the current global commitment to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in the face of the enduring climate crisis. Natural lands carbon sequestration and storage are critical for successful pathways to global decarbonization (i.e., as a negative emissions technology). Coastal vegetated habitats maintain carbon sequestration rates exceeding forest sequestration rates on a per unit area basis by nearly two orders of magnitude. These blue carbon habitats and their associated carbon sequestration benefits are vulnerable to losses from land-use change and sea-level rise. Incorporation of blue carbon habitats in climate change policy is one strategy for both maintaining these habitats and conserving significant carbon sequestration capabilities. Previous policy assessments have found the potential for incorporation of coastal carbon sequestration in national-level policies, yet there has – to date – been little inclusion of blue carbon in the national-scale implementation of Paris commitments. Recently, sub-national jurisdictions have gained attention as models for pathways to decarbonization. However, few previous studies have examined sub-national level policy opportunities for operationalizing blue carbon into climate decision-making. California is uniquely poised to integrate benefits from blue carbon into its coastal planning and management and its suite of climate mitigation policies. Here, we evaluated legal authorities and policy contexts addressing sequestration specifically from blue carbon habitats. We synthesized the progressive action in California’s approaches to mitigate carbon emissions including statutory, regulatory, and non-regulatory opportunities to incorporate blue carbon ecosystem service information into state- and local-level management decisions. To illustrate how actionable blue carbon information can be produced for use in decision-making, we conducted a spatial analysis of blue carbon sequestration in several locations in California across multiple agencies and management contexts. We found that the average market values of carbon sequestration services in 2100 ranged from $7,730 to $44,000 per hectare and that the social cost of carbon sequestration value was 1.3 to 2.7 times the market value. We also demonstrated that restoration of small areas with high sequestration rates can be comparable to the sequestration of existing marshes. Our results illustrate how accessible information about carbon sequestration in coastal habitats can be directly incorporated into existing policy frameworks at the sub-national scale. The incorporation of blue carbon sequestration benefits into sub-national climate policies can serve as a model for the development of future policy approaches for negative emissions technologies, with consequences for the success of the Paris Agreement and science-based decarbonization by mid-century.     

Sharing responsibility for trade-related emissions based on economic benefits

How to share responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions between consumers and producers is a highly sensitive question in international climate policy negotiations. Traditional ‘Production-Based Accounting’ (PBA), which assigns responisibility to the region where emissions are released, has frequently been challenged by ‘Consumption-Based Accounting’ (CBA) schemes that suggest that greenhouse gas emissions generated to produce traded goods and services should be attributed to their final consumers. PBA and CBA both lack a sound foundation in economic theory as they do not consider the economic benefits accruing to producers or consumers if carbon emissions do not carry a price that reflects their social costs. We build on well-established economic theory to derive how to share responsibility for trade-related emissions between producers and consumers and apply this novel approach for the most prominent bilateral trade relationships using multi-regional input–output data. We propose an ‘Economic Benefit Shared Responsibility’ (EBSR) scheme, in which China is attributed significantly higher responsibility for emissions than in CBA, while lower emissions and responsibility are attributed to both the US and the EU.     

Citizen preferences on private-public co-regulation in environmental governance: Evidence from Switzerland

Environmental policy is touching on ever more aspects of corporate and individual behavior, and there is much debate over what combinations of top-down (government-imposed) and bottom-up (voluntary private sector) measures to use. In democratic societies, citizens’ preferences over such combinations are crucial because they shape the political mandates based on which policymakers act. We argue that policy designs that involve private-public co-regulation receive more citizen support if they are based on inclusive decision-making, use strong transparency and monitoring mechanisms, and include a trigger for government intervention in case of ineffectiveness. Survey experiments in Switzerland (N = 1941) provide strong support for these arguments. Our research demonstrates that differences in co-regulation design have major implications for public support. Another key finding is that there seems to be a contradiction between inclusiveness and democratic accountability for policy outcomes. The findings are surprisingly consistent across two very different green economy issues we focus on empirically (decarbonization of finance, pesticides). This suggests that our study design offers a useful template for research that explores public opinion on green economy policy designs for other issues and in other countries.     

Scenario archetypes reveal risks and opportunities for global mountain futures

Mountain social-ecological systems (MtSES) are transforming rapidly due to changes in multiple environmental and socioeconomic drivers. However, the complexity and diversity of MtSES present challenges for local communities, researchers and decision makers seeking to anticipate change and promote action towards sustainable MtSES. Participatory scenario planning can reveal potential futures and their interacting dynamics, while archetype analysis aggregates insights from site-based scenarios. We combined a systematic review of the global MtSES participatory scenarios literature and archetype analysis to identify emergent MtSES archetypal configurations. An initial sample of 1983 rendered 42 articles that contained 142 scenarios within which were 852 ‘futures states’. From these future states within the scenarios, we identified 59 desirable and undesirable futures that were common across studies. These ‘common futures’ were grouped into four clusters that correlated significantly with three social-ecological factors (GDP per capita, income inequality, and mean annual temperature). Using these clusters and their associated significant factors, we derived four MtSES scenario archetypal configurations characterized by similar key adaptation strategies, assumptions, risks, and uncertainties. We called these archetypes: (1) “revitalization through effective institutions and tourism”; (2) “local innovations in smallholder farming and forestry”; (3) “upland depopulation and increased risk of hazards”; and (4) “regulated economic and ecological prosperity”. Results indicate risks to be mitigated, including biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradation, cultural heritage change, loss of connection to the land, weak leadership, market collapse, upland depopulation, increased landslides, avalanches, mudflows and rock falls, as well as climate variability and change. Transformative opportunities lie in adaptive biodiversity conservation, income diversification, adaptation to market fluxes, improving transport and irrigation infrastructure, high quality tourism and preserving traditional knowledge. Despite the uncertainties arising from global environmental changes, these archetypes support better targeting of evidence-informed actions across scales and sectors in MtSES.     

Risk-opportunity analysis for transformative policy design and appraisal

The climate crisis demands a strong response from policy-makers worldwide. The current global climate policy agenda requires technological change, innovation, labour markets and the financial system to be led towards an orderly and rapid low-carbon transition. Yet progress has been slow and incremental. Inadequacies of policy appraisal frameworks used worldwide may be significant contributors to the problem, as they frequently fail to adequately account for the dynamics of societal and technological change. Risks are underestimated, and the economic opportunities from innovation are generally not assessed in practice. Here, we identify root causes of those inadequacies and identify them to structural features of standard analysis frameworks. We use a review of theoretical principles of complexity science and the science of dynamical systems and formulate a generalisation of existing frameworks for policy analysis and the appraisal of outcomes of proposed policy strategies, to help better identify and frame situations of transformational change. We use the term “risk-opportunity analysis” to capture the generalised approach, in which conventional economic cost-benefit analysis is a special case. New guiding principles for policy-making during dynamic and transformational change are offered.     

Assessing the value of price caps and floors

This article assesses the long-term economic and climatic effects of introducing price caps and price floors in hypothetical global climate change mitigation policy. Based on emission trends, abatement costs and equilibrium climate sensitivity from IPCC and IEA reports, this quantitative analysis confirms that price caps could significantly reduce economic uncertainty. This uncertainty stems primarily from unpredictable economic growth and energy prices, and ultimately unabated emission trends. In addition, the development of abatement technologies is uncertain. Furthermore, this analysis shows that rigid targets may entail greater economic risks with little or no comparative advantage for the climate. More ambitious emission objectives, combined with price caps and price floors, could still entail significantly lower expected costs while driving similar, or even slightly better, climatic outcomes in probabilistic terms.     

Some dangers of ‘dangerous’ climate change

Abstract

The UNFCCC has set the objective of preventing ‘dangerous’ climate change. The concept of climate change being ‘dangerous’ has generally been interpreted to mean that there are thresholds below which the planet is ‘safe’ and above which it is in danger. This creates the fiction that danger can be averted, when that is largely a matter of perspective. Policies based on fictions can succeed if the major parties are willing to go along with them, but this is not the case at present. It is dangerous to try and motivate the public on the basis of a patent fiction, since that obscures policy-critical ignorance and may ultimately create more brittle political frameworks. An alternative to maintaining the fiction is to acknowledge at the outset the arbitrary and conditional nature of any specific choice or definition of what is ‘dangerous’ climate change and what is not. Although our choices are somewhat arbitrary, they can be informed by a range of analytical perspectives, and the decisions we reach have real import. In this setting, we need a way to provide order to (arbitrary) choices that draws on what is known, but still acknowledges the conditional nature of the choices. It is argued here that the aesthetic realm may be suited to this need.     

Mapping public appraisals of carbon dioxide removal

Efforts to deliver on net zero emissions targets are set to rely on carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods. Democratic, trustworthy and socially intelligent research, development, demonstration and deployment of CDR methods in aid of net zero will be highly dependent on how different publics evaluate them, and ultimately which groups support or oppose them. This paper develops a novel, nationally representative method for the multi-criteria appraisal of five policy relevant CDR methods – plus an option not to pursue CDR at all – by members of the British public (n = 2,111). The results show that the public supports the inclusion of CDR in UK climate policy. CDR methods often characterised as ‘natural’ or ‘nature-based’ are appraised more highly than ‘technological’ ones, in the descending order: habitat restoration, afforestation, wood in construction, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, and direct air carbon capture and storage. Yet, there is no significant disagreement in the appraisal of technological methods and they therefore may be less polarizing, suggesting that popular preconceptions of what is natural – and therefore more attractive – may be holding them back. CDR methods being mainly developed by public sector and non-governmental organisations are also appraised more highly than those being developed by private interests. Regional differences in option appraisal reveal where particular CDR methods are more or less likely to be supported or opposed; stressing the importance of matching physical requirements for CDR with appropriate social contexts. Demographic and socio-economic analyses show that people who appraise CDR methods most highly tend to be older respondents, male, or of a higher social grade. Finally, those with hierarchical worldviews and who voted ‘leave’ in the UK’s referendum on EU membership are less supportive of CDR than those with egalitarian worldviews and who voted ‘remain’.     

Racing climate change: Collaboration and conflict in California's global climate change policy arena

Media accounts routinely refer to California's Assembly Bill 32 (AB 32), the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, as “landmark” climate change legislation. On its surface, this label is an accurate reflection of the state's forward-thinking stance across many environmental issues including pesticides, toxic substances, solid waste, and air quality. For all its promise, however, AB 32 can also be considered a low point in the landscape of conflict between state environmental regulators and California's environmental justice movement. While the legislation included several provisions to address the procedural and distributive dimensions of environmental justice, the implementation of AB 32 has been marked by heated conflict. The most intense conflicts over AB 32 revolve around the primacy of market mechanisms such as “cap and trade.” This article examines the drivers and the manifestations of these dynamics of collaboration and conflict between environmental justice advocates and state regulators, and pays particular attention to the scalar and racialized quality of the neoliberal discourse. The contentiousness of climate change politics in California offers scholars and practitioners around the world a cautionary tale of how the best intentions for integrating environmental justice principles into climate change policy do not necessarily translate into implementation and how underlying racialized fractures can upend collaboration between state and social movement actors.