scholarly journals Science‐based analysis for climate action: how HSBC Bank uses the En‐ROADS climate policy simulation

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-352
Author(s):  
Florian Kapmeier ◽  
Andrew S. Greenspan ◽  
Andrew P. Jones ◽  
John D. Sterman
Keyword(s):  
Climate Policy ◽  
Policy Simulation ◽  
Climate Action

scholarly journals Are citizen juries and assemblies on climate change driving democratic climate policymaking? An exploration of two case studies in the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Wells ◽  
Candice Howarth ◽  
Lina I. Brand-Correa
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Comparative Case Study ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Elected Representatives ◽  
The Impact

Abstract In light of increasing pressure to deliver climate action targets, and the growing role of citizens in raising the importance of the issue, deliberative democratic processes (e.g. Citizen Juries and Citizen Assemblies) on climate change are increasingly being used to provide a voice to citizens in climate change decision-making. Through a comparative case study of two processes that ran in the UK in 2019 (the Leeds Climate Change Citizens’ Jury and the Oxford Citizens’ Assembly on Climate Change), this paper investigates how far Citizen Assemblies and Juries on climate change are increasing citizen engagement on climate change and creating more citizen-centred climate policy-making. Interviews were conducted with policy-makers, councillors, professional facilitators and others involved in running these processes to assess motivations for conducting these, their structure and the impact and influence they had. The findings suggest the impact of these processes is not uniform: they have an indirect impact on policymaking by creating momentum around climate action and supporting the introduction of pre-planned or pre-existing policies rather than a direct impact by being truly being citizen-centred policymaking processes or conducive to new climate policy. We conclude with reflections on how these processes give elected representatives a public mandate on climate change, that they help to identify more nuanced and in-depth public opinions in a fair and informed way, yet it can be challenging to embed citizen juries and assemblies in wider democratic processes.

scholarly journals Scaling up local climate action: A survey of climate policy priorities in the Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities region

2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 36-69
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Rhodes ◽  
Tamara Krawchenko ◽  
Katherine Pearce ◽  
Karena Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Climate Policy ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Regional Scale ◽  
Vancouver Island ◽  
Climate Impacts ◽  
Coastal Communities ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Barriers And Opportunities ◽  
Upper Level

Regional planning can help functionally-connected communities share expertise and the costs of climate action and amplify collective concerns and needs to upper-level governments. Understanding communities’ climate impacts, policies and barriers to action is foundational to the development of regional-scale climate planning. In support of a nascent climate strategy in the Vancouver Island and Coastal Communities region of British Columbia, our study employs a web-based survey of local government officials (n=106) to identify the existing climate impacts, policy priorities, barriers, and opportunities that guide climate policy-making in the region, including the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that nearly all communities have experienced climate-related impacts and have implemented a variety of climate policies. However, local governments face substantial barriers—including a lack of financial resources, authority and staffing capacity—to pursue climate action and planning.

scholarly journals Whose climate intervention? Solar geoengineering, fractions of capital, and hegemonic strategy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Surprise ◽  
Jean Philippe Sapinski
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Carbon Emissions ◽  
Research Finding ◽  
Capitalist Class ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Solar Geoengineering ◽  
Market Driven ◽  
Technological Capital ◽  
Business As Usual

Proposals for slowing climate change by reflecting sunlight back to space, known as solar geoengineering (SG), are gaining traction in climate policy. Given SG’s capacity to slow warming without reducing carbon emissions, prominent criticism suggests that it will enable fossil fueled business-as-usual. This assessment is not without merit, yet the primary funders of SG research do not emanate from fossil capital. We analyze sources of funding for SG research, finding close ties to financial and technological capital as well as a number of billionaire philanthropists. These corporate sectors and associated philanthropies comprise part of “climate capital” – the fraction of the capitalist class aligned with climate action. We argue that SG is being positioned as a tactic for enabling incremental, market-driven decarbonization, explore key institutions advocating this approach in US climate policy, and conclude that SG is poised to serve as a tool for class compromise between fossil and climate capital.

scholarly journals Beliefs About Consequences from Climate Action Under Weak Climate Institutions: Sectors, Home Bias, and International Embeddedness

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 28-50
Author(s):  
Patrick Bayer ◽  
Federica Genovese
Keyword(s):  
Climate Policy ◽  
Home Country ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
Good News ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Distributional Effects ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Nationally Representative

Climate policy has distributional effects, and ratcheting up climate ambition will only become politically feasible if the general public believes that their country can win from ambitious climate action. In this article, we develop a theory of belief formation that anchors distributional effects from climate action at the sector level. Specifically, we study how knowing about these impacts shapes public beliefs about collective economic consequences from climate policy—not only in a home country but also abroad. A nationally representative survey experiment in the United Kingdom demonstrates that respondents are biased toward their home country in assessing information about winning and losing sectors: while beliefs brighten for good news and worsen for bad news when the home country is involved, distributional effects from abroad are discounted for belief formation. We also show that feelings of “international embeddedness,” akin to globalization attitudes, make UK respondents consistently hold more positive beliefs that the country can benefit from ambitious climate action. Ruling out several alternative explanations, these results offer a first step toward a better understanding of how distributional effects in one issue area, such as globalization, can spill over to other issue areas, such as climate change.

scholarly journals Perceived Cultural Impacts of Climate Change Motivates Climate Action and Support for Climate Policy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim-Pong Tam ◽  
Angela Leung ◽  
Brandon Koh
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Communication Strategy ◽  
Public Understanding ◽  
Student Sample ◽  
Cultural Impacts ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

The impacts of climate change on human cultures receive increasing attention in recent years. However, the extent to which people are aware of these impacts, whether such awareness motivates climate action, and what kinds of people show stronger awareness are rarely understood. The present investigation provides the very first set of answers to these questions. In two studies (with a student sample with N = 198 from Singapore and a demographically representative sample with N = 571 from the United States), we observed a generally high level of awareness among our participants. Most important, perceived cultural impacts of climate change robustly predicted intentions to engage in climate change mitigation behavior and climate activism, as well as support for climate policy. We also found expected associations between perceived cultural impacts and psychological and demographic variables (e.g., cosmopolitan orientation, moral inclusion, political orientation). These findings not only add a cultural dimension to the research on public understanding of climate change but also reveal a viable application of cultural frames as an effective climate communication strategy.

The Forest Sector in the 2030 EU Climate Policy Framework: Looking back to Assess Its Future

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 124-142
Author(s):  
Kathrin Böhling ◽  
Maria Fernanda Marques Todeschini
Keyword(s):  
Land Use ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Policy Framework ◽  
Climate Mitigation ◽  
Forest Sector ◽  
Carbon Neutrality ◽  
Wide System ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Significant Step ◽  
Coalitional Politics

Abstract From 2021 onwards, forests and forestry will for the first time contribute to the European Union’s climate action targets. The new Land Use, Land Use Change & Forestry (lulucf) Regulation commits Member States to achieve carbon neutrality on the basis of an EU-wide system. The system accounts for carbon sequestered and emitted from forests and other land uses like crop- and wetland. What looks like a significant step in the Union’s climate policy framework, however, leaves the large potential of Europe’s forest sector for climate mitigation untapped. The present article draws this conclusion from a comprehensive analysis of 67 documents related to decision-making on the lulucf Regulation. It reveals coalitional politics and the salience of the Commission’s behavior as key to explain the Regulation’s limited scope and concludes with assessing the future role of forests in the Union’s climate policy framework.

The diffusion of climate policies among German municipalities

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Abel
Keyword(s):  
Climate Policy ◽  
Event History Analysis ◽  
Policy Cycle ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Local Climate ◽  
Energy Technologies ◽  
History Analysis ◽  
Diffusion Effects ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Transnational City

AbstractThe German government established a funding scheme for local climate policy in 2008. The translation of this programme into climate action varies between municipalities. This article studies the drivers and barriers for the diffusion of the programme among German municipalities. A major aim is to disentangle the diffusion effects across different steps within the policy cycle by employing Event History Analysis and spatial panel autoregressive models. Geographical proximity, party channels and transnational city networks are predictors of the diffusion process. Differences in diffusion effects between policy adoption and substantial policy output indicate that emulation as well as learning influence policy activity. Furthermore, increasing deployment of solar photovoltaic systems in neighbouring municipalities is associated with an intensification of climate policy in the focal municipality. The absence of similar effects for other renewable energy technologies hints at the “conditional nature” of policy learning with respect to the policy-makers’ vote- and policy-seeking behaviour.

scholarly journals Designing Border Carbon Adjustments for Enhanced Climate Action

2019 ◽  
Vol 113 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael A. Mehling ◽  
Harro van Asselt ◽  
Kasturi Das ◽  
Susanne Droege ◽  
Cleo Verkuijl
Keyword(s):  
International Trade ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Paris Agreement ◽  
Carbon Leakage ◽  
Trade Law ◽  
International Trade Law ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
International Climate ◽  
Environmental Considerations

AbstractThe Paris Agreement advances a heterogeneous approach to international climate cooperation. Such an approach may be undermined by carbon leakage—the displacement of emissions from states with more to less stringent climate policy constraints. Border carbon adjustments offer a promising response to leakage, but they also raise concerns about their compatibility with international trade law. This Article provides a comprehensive analysis of border carbon adjustments and proposes a way to design them that balances legal, administrative, and environmental considerations.

scholarly journals The Politics of Climate Change Adaptation

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 317-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nives Dolšak ◽  
Aseem Prakash
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Disaster Management ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
Adaptation Policies

Climate action has two pillars: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation faces collective action issues because its costs are focused on specific locations/actors but benefits are global and nonexcludable. Adaptation, in contrast, creates local benefits, and therefore should face fewer collective action issues. However, governance units vary in the types of adaptation policies they adopt. To explain this variation, we suggest conceptualizing adaptation-as-politics because adaptation speaks to the issues of power, conflicting policy preferences, resource allocation, and administrative tensions. In examining who develops and implements adaptation, we explore whether adaptation is the old wine of disaster management in the new bottle of climate policy, and the tensions between national and local policy making. In exploring what adaptation policies are adopted, we discuss maladaptation and the distinction between hard and soft infrastructure. Finally, we examine why politicians favor visible, hard adaptation over soft adaptation, and how international influences shape local policy.

scholarly journals Japan’s Climate Change Discourse: Toward Climate Securitisation?

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 53-64
Author(s):  
Florentine Koppenborg ◽  
Ulv Hanssen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
White Paper ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
Security Issue ◽  
Political Issue ◽  
Climate Action ◽  
The Status ◽  
Climate Crisis ◽  
First Time

This article situates Japan in the international climate security debate by analysing competing climate change discourses. In 2020, for the first time, the Japanese Ministry of the Environment included the term “climate crisis” (<em>kikō kiki</em>) in its annual white paper, and the Japanese parliament adopted a “climate emergency declaration” (<em>kikō hijō jitai sengen</em>). Does this mean that Japan’s climate discourse is turning toward the securitisation of climate change? Drawing on securitisation theory, this article investigates whether we are seeing the emergence of a climate change securitisation discourse that treats climate change as a security issue rather than a conventional political issue. The analysis focuses on different stakeholders in Japan’s climate policy: the Japanese Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the parliament, the Cabinet, and sub- and non-state actors. Through a discourse analysis of ministry white papers and publications by other stakeholders, the article identifies a burgeoning securitisation discourse that challenges, albeit moderately, the status quo of incrementalism and inaction in Japan’s climate policy. This article further highlights Japan’s position in the rapidly evolving global debate on the urgency of climate action and provides explanations for apparent changes and continuities in Japan’s climate change discourse.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document