scholarly journals When digital mass participation meets citizen deliberation: Combining mini-publics and maxi-publics in climate policy-making

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anatol Itten ◽  
Niek Mouter
Keyword(s):  
Climate Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Value Evaluation ◽  
Expert Opinions ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
Policy Alternatives ◽  
Political Environments ◽  
Citizen Deliberation ◽  
Mass Participation

Notwithstanding the rationale and the demand for public participation in climate policies, aggregated perspectives of maxi-publics are often belittled as uninformed, self-interested and short-term focused. The upcoming vogue of climate assemblies, citizen parliaments and other forms of mini-publics is to give citizens a central role in climate policy-making and in some cases to break political impasse. Yet climate mini-publics face challenges in political environments too, such as co-option, favoring expert-opinions and losing touch with the broader public. To remedy such pitfalls, recent papers have argued to combine synchronous deliberations of small groups of citizens with online participation procedures for the larger public. In this article, we report the results of a three-step combination model, where first a mini-public in the region of Súdwest-Fryslân (NL) were given a ‘carte blanche’ to draft the content and the parameters of several related policy alternatives. Second, their proposals where fed into a digital participation tool, the Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) to consult the wider public. A total of 1,376 (approx. 2% of the inhabitants) expressed their preferences and explained why they favour a dominant role for the municipality and the residents but are reticent about giving the market too big a role. Third, a citizen forum translated the outcomes of the maxi-public into policy recommendations, which were unanimously approved by the municipal council. In this paper, we report our findings of combining mini-and maxi-publics and how actors involved evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the combination of these two participatory approaches.

scholarly journals A room with a view: a special issue with a special perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 205-210
Author(s):  
Simone Borghesi
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Emerging Economies ◽  
Emissions Trading ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Climate Policies

AbstractThe present article describes the main insights deriving from the papers collected in this special issue which jointly provide a ‘room with a view’ on some of the most relevant issues in climate policy such as: the role of uncertainty, the distributional implications of climate change, the drivers and applications of decarbonizing innovation, the role of emissions trading and its interactions with companion policies. While looking at different issues and from different angles, all papers share a similar attention to policy aspects and implications, especially in developing countries. This is particularly important to evaluate whether and to what extent the climate policies adopted thus far in developed countries can be replicated in emerging economies.

Comments: Carbon Tariffs - Fair Incentives for Change?

2021 ◽  
Vol 73 (05) ◽  
pp. 8-8
Author(s):  
Pam Boschee
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
Carbon Price ◽  
Carbon Leakage ◽  
Carbon Taxes ◽  
Trading Systems ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Carbon Tariff

Carbon credits, carbon taxes, and emissions trading systems are familiar terms in discussions about limiting global warming, the Paris Agreement, and net-zero emissions goals. A more recent addition to the glossary of climate policy is “carbon tariff.” While the concept is not new, it recently surfaced in nascent policymaking in the EU. In 2019, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed a “carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM)” as part of a proposed green deal. In March, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on a World Trade Organization (WTO)-compatible CBAM. A carbon tariff, or the EU’s CBAM, is a tax applied to carbon-intensive imports. Countries that have pledged to be more ambitious in reducing emissions—and in some cases have implemented binding targets—may impose carbon costs on their own businesses. Being eyed now are cross-border or overseas businesses that make products in countries in which no costs are imposed for emissions, resulting in cheaper carbon-intensive goods. Those products are exported to the countries aiming for reduced emissions. The concern lies in the risk of locally made goods becoming unfairly disadvantaged against competitors that are not taking similar steps to deal with climate change. A carbon tariff is being considered to level the playing field: local businesses in countries applying a tariff can better compete as climate policies evolve and are adopted around the world. Complying with WTO rules to ensure fair treatment, the CBAM will be imposed only on high-emitting industries that compete directly with local industries paying a carbon price. In the short term, these are likely to be steel, chemicals, fertilizers, and cement. The Parliament’s statement introduced another term to the glossary of climate policy: carbon leakage. “To raise global climate ambition and prevent ‘carbon leakage,’ the EU must place a carbon price on imports from less climate-ambitious countries.” It refers to the situation that may occur if businesses were to transfer production to other countries with laxer emission constraints to avoid costs related to climate policies. This could lead to an increase in total emissions in the higher-emitting countries. “The resolution underlines that the EU’s increased ambition on climate change must not lead to carbon leakage as global climate efforts will not benefit if EU production is just moved to non-EU countries that have less ambitious emissions rules,” the Parliament said. It also emphasized the tariff “must not be misused to further protectionism.” A member of the environment committee, Yannick Jadot, said, “It is a major political and democratic test for the EU, which must stop being naïve and impose the same carbon price on products, whether they are produced in or outside the EU, to ensure the most polluting sectors also take part in fighting climate change and innovate towards zero carbon. This will give us the best chance of remaining below the 1.5°C warming limit, whilst also pushing our trading partners to be equally ambitious in order to enter the EU market.” The Commission is expected to present a legislative proposal on a CBAM in the second quarter of 2021 as part of the European Green Deal.

The Finnish Climate Change Act: Architecture, Functions, and Challenges

Climate Law ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 301-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ismo Pölönen
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Dynamic Features ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
Legal Implications ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Term Energy ◽  
Public Scrutiny ◽  
The Cost

The article examines the key features and functions of the proposed Finnish Climate Change Act (fcca). It also analyses the legal implications of the Act and the qualities and factors which may limit its effectiveness. The paper argues that, despite its weak legal implications, the fcca would provide the regulatory preconditions for higher-quality climate policy-making in Finland, and it has the capacity to play an important role in national climate policy. The fcca would deliver regulatory foundations for systematic and integrated climate policy-making, also enabling wide public scrutiny. The proposed model leaves room for manifold climate-policy choices in varying societal and economical contexts. The cost of dynamic features is the relalow predictability in terms of sectorial paths on emission reductions. Another relevant challenge relates to the intended preparation of overlapping mid-term energy and climate plans with instruments of the fcca.

scholarly journals Country resolved combined emission and socio-economic pathways based on the RCP and SSP scenarios

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johannes Gütschow ◽  
M. Louise Jeffery ◽  
Annika Günther ◽  
Malte Meinshausen
Keyword(s):  
Policy Analysis ◽  
Climate Policy ◽  
Ghg Emissions ◽  
Single Model ◽  
Country Level ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Climate Policies ◽  
Emissions Scenarios ◽  
Sres Scenarios ◽  
Country Specific

Abstract. Climate policy analysis needs reference scenarios to assess emissions targets and current trends. When presenting their national climate policies, countries often showcase their target trajectories against fictitious so-called baselines. These counterfactual scenarios are meant to present future Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions in the absence of climate policy. These so-called baselines presented by countries are often of limited use as they can be exaggerated and the methodology used to derive them is usually not transparent. Scenarios created by independent modeling groups using integrated assessment models (IAMs) can provide different interpretations of several socio-economic storylines and can provide a more realistic backdrop against which the projected target emission trajectory can be assessed. However, the IAMs are limited in regional resolution. This resolution is further reduced in intercomparison studies as data for a common set of regions are produced by aggregating the underlying smaller regions. Thus, the data are not readily available for country-specific policy analysis. This gap is closed by downscaling regional IAM scenarios to country-level. The last of such efforts has been performed for the SRES scenarios (Special Report on Emissions Scenarios), which are over a decade old by now. CMIP6 scenarios have been downscaled to a grid, however they cover only a few combinations of forcing levels and SSP storylines with only a single model per combination. Here, we provide up to date country scenarios, downscaled from the full RCP (Representative Concentration Pathways) and SSP (Shared Socio-Economic Pathways) scenario databases, using results from the SSP GDP (Gross Domestic Product) country model results as drivers for the downscaling process. The data is available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3638137 (Gütschow et al., 2020).

What Next?

2019 ◽  
pp. 141-142
Author(s):  
Gilbert E. Metcalf
Keyword(s):  
Climate Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Carbon Tax ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Taking Action

This brief chapter moves from explaining why a carbon tax is smart policy to showing how the reader can learn more and get engaged in shaping the policy debate. It provides information for individuals or groups interested in taking action on a carbon tax. It provides links to various groups that carry out research on climate policy that should inform policy making as well as to groups working to enact a carbon tax. It also explains how to engage with politicians and encourages readers to reach out to their Representatives and Senators to support smart climate policy like a carbon tax.

Debunking myths about oil: A case study of oil subsidies

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-200
Author(s):  
Jung Taek Han ◽  
Seo Yeon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Oil Politics ◽  
Policy Making Process ◽  
States Government ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Mass Participation

Despite increasing demands for the reform of oil subsidies, the United States government fails to enact substantial reform policies on the issue. The paper visits the biggest unresolved cleavage in the environmental policy literature where there have been no attempts to quantitatively assess the influence of lobbying and mass participation on the policy-making process. It thus attempts to quantify and examine various factors behind legislators’ votes, and the results are hard to square with a pure lobbying model. While the role of lobbying is certainly not ruled out of the explanatory model per se, this paper observed that congressional preferences may instead also be driven by the voter perception towards environmental regulation in each state. The thrust of the argument is that lobbying, while being a decisive factor, may not be the only one influencing legislators’ decisions for the oil subsidy reform bills. This study hypothesizes that the exchange model theory might not fully provide an explanation of why oil subsidies continuously fall through. It suggests that oil politics may instead follow the neo-pluralist model: While lobbying is an important factor in voting results, legislators are mindful of voters’ perspectives in spite of the fact that they are unorganized—and that they might in fact be even more powerful determinants than the lobby variable.

Making Economic Policies Work

2018 ◽  
pp. 154-164
Author(s):  
Ling Chen
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Local State ◽  
Economic Environment ◽  
The Political ◽  
Private Firms ◽  
State Agencies ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Direct Role ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Political Environments

This chapter summarizes the findings of the book. It draws attention to how global production fragmented or integrated state agencies and businesses, shaped the ways they perceived their interests, and ultimately affected the local political environments for domestic private firms. Compared with other approaches, the theory advanced in this book takes the incentives of local state agencies seriously. It shows that in an authoritarian country where businesses do not have a direct role in policy making, the local bureaucrats, by pursuing their own political and economic interests, can influence the political and economic environment of production. The chapter then broadens out to map major Asian economies in Northeast and Southeast Asia in a comparative picture.

Spanish Foreign Policy

2020 ◽  
pp. 649-667
Author(s):  
Ramón Pacheco Pardo
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Soft Power ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Middle Powers ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Domestic Level

Spain’s foreign policy since its transition to democracy has been marked by a high degree of continuity over the years and across governments. Foreign-policy-making structures have remained relatively unchanged at the domestic level, with the president and the Cabinet Office playing a dominant role as a result of the presidentialization of Spanish politics. Domestic structures are complemented by EU-level structures evermore relevant as foreign policy has become increasingly Europeanized. In terms of goals, successive Spanish governments have prioritized Europeanization itself, a strong presence in Latin America and the Mediterranean, and boosting economic opportunities for Spanish businesses. Regarding foreign-policy tools, Spain has long displayed a preference for multilateralism, diplomacy, and soft power over the use of military power. In other words, Spain has prioritized the use of the main tools available to middle powers.

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