Thirteen plus one: a comparison of global climate policy architectures

We critically review the Kyoto Protocol and thirteen alternative policy architectures for addressing the threat of global climate change. We employ six criteria to evaluate the policy proposals: environmental outcome, dynamic efficiency, cost-effectiveness, equity, flexibility in the presence of new information, and incentives for participation and compliance. The Kyoto Protocol does not fare well on a number of criteria, but none of the alternative proposals fare well along all six dimensions. We identify several major themes among the alternative proposals: Kyoto is “too little, too fast”; developing countries (DCs) should play a more substantial role and receive incentives to participate; implementation should focus on market-based approaches, especially those with price mechanisms; and participation and compliance incentives are inadequately addressed by most proposals. Our investigation reveals tensions among several of the evaluative criteria, such as between environmental outcome and efficiency, and between cost-effectiveness and incentives for participation and compliance.     

Action targets: a new approach to international greenhouse gas controls

Abstract

This article introduces and explores a new form of international commitment to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, called an action target. Action targets differ from other forms of targets, such as the Kyoto Protocol's fixed targets, in that they define a quantity of GHG abatement to be achieved, rather than a future emission level to be reached. This article explains the basic mechanics of how action targets might operate, and analyses the approach across a range of criteria, including uncertainty management and contributions to sustainable development in non-Annex I (developing) countries. The analysis suggests that action targets might improve the prospects of widening and deepening developing country participation in the international climate regime.     

Towards a theory of targeting

A representative economic model is used to analyze local policies to reestablish full employment. It addresses three types of barriers: 1. Rigid wages, 2. Occupational (or industrial) immobility, and 3. Geographic immobility. These factors are considered in the framework of three types of policies: 1. Laissez-faire, 2. Narrowly targeted employment incentives, and 3. Broadly targeted incentives. The paper concludes that the usefulness of the abstract model will depends upon the ability of local development officials to combine the implications of the model with information about the local economic development narrative. In turn, the narrative depends upon an in-depth local knowledge of history, institutions, practices and personalities.     

Does public policy support or undermine climate change adaptation? Exploring policy interplay across different scales of governance

Policy makers have now recognised the need to integrate thinking about climate change into all areas of public policy making. However, the discussion of ‘climate policy integration’ has tended to focus on mitigation decisions mostly taken at international and national levels. Clearly, there is also a more locally focused adaptation dimension to climate policy integration, which has not been adequately explored by academics or policy makers. Drawing on a case study of the UK, this paper adopts both a top-down and a bottom-up perspective to explore how far different sub-elements of policies within the agriculture, nature conservation and water sectors support or undermine potential adaptive responses. The top-down approach, which assumes that policies set explicit aims and objectives that are directly translated into action on the ground, combines a content analysis of policy documents with interviews with policy makers. The bottom-up approach recognises the importance of other actors in shaping policy implementation and involves interviews with actors in organisations within the three sectors. This paper reveals that neither approach offers a complete picture of the potentially enabling or constraining effects of different policies on future adaptive planning, but together they offer new perspectives on climate policy integration. These findings inform a discussion on how to implement climate policy integration, including auditing existing policies and ‘climate proofing’ new ones so they support rather than hinder adaptive planning.     

Contested H2O: Science, policy and politics in water resources management in Chile

This paper critically explores the politics that mediate the use of environmental science assessments as the basis of resource management policy. Drawing on recent literature in the political ecology tradition that has emphasised the politicised nature of the production and use of scientific knowledge in environmental management, the paper analyses a hydrological assessment in a small river basin in Chile, undertaken in response to concerns over the possible overexploitation of groundwater resources. The case study illustrates the limitations of an approach based predominantly on hydrogeological modelling to ascertain the effects of increased groundwater abstraction. In particular, it identifies the subjective ways in which the assessment was interpreted and used by the state water resources agency to underpin water allocation decisions in accordance with its own interests, and the role that a desocialised assessment played in reproducing unequal patterns of resource use and configuring uneven waterscapes. Nevertheless, as Chile’s ‘neoliberal’ political-economic framework privileges the role of science and technocracy, producing other forms of environmental knowledge to complement environmental science is likely to be contentious. In conclusion, the paper considers the potential of mobilising the concept of the hydrosocial cycle to further critically engage with environmental science.     

Forty-year multi-scale land cover change and political ecology data reveal a dynamic and regenerative process of forests in Peruvian Indigenous Territories

This article explores deforestation and reforestation dynamics over 415,749 hectares of 25 titled Indigenous Community Lands (ICLs) in the Peruvian Amazon over forty years at three scales: total area, regions, and communities. We focus on ICLs as the territorial unit of analysis, as they are increasingly discussed regarding their importance for conservation. Additionally indigenous communities (ICs) are a too-marginalized group in the Amazon that merit more attention. Analyses of this kind are often short-term and use only large-scale Earth Observation methodologies. We use a multi-method approach linking remote sensing with ground verification, and qualitative historical political ecology work with ICs. We find that overall accumulated deforestation was low at 5%, but that when reforestation is considered, net deforestation was only 3.5%. At the community level deforestation and afforestation dynamics are complex, except for one period that indicates a macro state driver in the region. Results suggest inadequate accounting for forest regeneration in deforestation analyses and challenge the notion that presenting stakeholders with accumulated forest loss values is helpful in tropical areas where forests and people are dynamic. Furthermore, our work with communities highlights that categorizing them and their lands as pro-environment or not in general terms is unhelpful for determining fund flows to ICLs for environmental or development purposes.     

Optimal rural land use allocation in central China: Linking the effect of spatiotemporal patterns and policy interventions

Rural land use development is experiencing a transition stage of socioeconomic and land use development in China. Historic land use transition process and policy interventions have key influence on the applicability of land use allocation solutions in future land use management. Strategic land use allocation is therefore required to possess a good adjustment capability to the transition process. Although heuristic optimization methods have been promising to solve land use allocation problems, most of them ignored the spatially explicit effect of historic land use transition and policies. To help resolve this issue, this study aims to optimize future land use pattern in the context of rural land use development. We took Yunmeng County, one of the typical major grain producing and rapidly urbanizing areas in central China, as a case study and solved the sustainable land use allocation problem by using an improved heuristic optimization model. The model was constructed based on the integration of a spatial discrete particle swarm optimization and cellular automata-Markov simulation approach. The spatiotemporal land use patterns and policy interventions were represented by the CA-Markov as in spatially explicit transition rules, and then incorporated into the discrete PSO for optimal land use solutions. We examined the influence of the joint effect of spatiotemporal land use patterns and policy interventions on the land use allocation outcome. Our results demonstrate the robustness and potential of the proposed model, and, more importantly, indicate the significance of incorporating the spatiotemporal land use patterns and policy interventions into rural land use allocation.     

中国履行《蒙特利尔议定书(基加利修正案)》减排三氟甲烷的对策分析

2016年10月制定的《关于消耗臭氧层物质的蒙特利尔议定书（基加利修正案）》将三氟甲烷（HFC-23）纳入了其附件F第二类管控物质名单,并要求缔约国自2020年1月1日起以缔约方核准的技术对HFC-23进行销毁。伴随中国二氟一氯甲烷（HCFC-22）原料用途需求增长,其副产物HFC-23的产生量呈上升趋势,尽管HCFC-22生产工艺不断优化,HFC-23的副产率逐步下降,预测2050年HFC-23产生量将达到2.47万t（或365.56 Mt CO₂-eq),2020—2050年HFC-23累计产生量约56.3万t,折合约8332.40 Mt CO₂-eq。截至2015年,通过清洁发展机制以及国家发展和改革委员会减排专项的资助,中国以焚烧分解技术销毁HFC-23累计54585 t,为全球温室气体减排做出了重要贡献,但这一减排也花费了巨额资金投资焚烧设备和支付焚烧运行费用,提高了企业的生产成本、浪费了氟资源。研究显示,HFC-23资源化利用技术路线是可行的且中国相关技术专利正在逐步增加,鼓励和推进HFC-23资源化利用技术开发与应用是消除HFC-23排放可行的技术途径,也是未来中国加入并履行《基加利修正案》关键的技术路线选择。     

The challenges of the landing obligation in EU fisheries

A feasibility study was conducted on the impacts of the new Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) rules requiring catches in regulated fisheries to be landed and counted against quotas of each Member State - the landing obligation (LO), and that catch of species subject to the LO below a minimum conservation reference size (MCRS) be restricted to purposes other than direct human consumption. The aim was to estimate the level of discarded fish likely to be covered by the new rules, the impact of the rules on EU fisheries and the regulatory challenges and responses to them. Data from EU's Scientific, Technical and Economic Committee on Fisheries (STECF) database were analysed to estimate the volume of unwanted catches produced by EU fisheries. Views were sought from policy officials and fisheries scientists through a questionnaire on the implications of the LO and the control of fisheries across Member States, and the potential adjustments that might be needed. Findings show that 11% (44,000 t) of the total catches of EU countries from which data were available are of fish under MCRS. The species with the highest volume of undersized discards associated with the lowest quota, which would potentially restrict the fishing opportunities for other quota species (i.e. choke species), are plaice and haddock with 18,000 and 14,000 t of undersized fish respectively, followed by whiting and cod with 5000 and 6000 t of undersized fish respectively. Discards data shows that the Netherlands, United Kingdom, France and Belgium will be most affected by landings for non-human markets. Findings also show that existing infrastructure at landing ports in all Member States is limited because there are currently limited facilities in place to handle animal by-products produced by the catching sector. Policy officials maintained that while they could support the fishing industry through funding programmes, it is the responsibility of fishers to ensure they have the right infrastructure to handle unwanted catches. The expectation is that the LO combined with the restriction to non-human consumption purposes will encourage fishers to internalise the costs of catching unwanted fish and motivate them to avoid unwanted catch. This will be realised if sufficient flexibility is given to fishers to find their own solutions to reducing unwanted catches. It is concluded that gear technology measures exist to enable the regulated fisheries to increase gear selectivity.