Challenging the obsession with local level institutions in country ownership of climate change adaptation

Working with local level actors to enable country ownership is applauded within the multilateral climate finance landscape. However, are emerging adaptation interventions equitable by reflecting the priorities of local level vulnerable populations? This research sought to find out whether the engagement of local institutions in projects that seek to achieve country ownership enabled local level vulnerable groups to participate in and influence adaptation decision-making processes and outcomes, thereby enabling them to have a voice in local level adaptation. It used a case study of a Global Environmental Facility-managed coastal adaptation project in Tanzania, which sought to restore and protect mangroves to enable adaptation to sea level rise. Data was generated from 13 Focus Group Discussions and survey questionnaires administered to 629 individuals in three locations on the mainland of Tanzania and in Zanzibar. The findings indicate that community-based organizations were used to facilitate the implementation of project activities at the community level. However, participation spaces created in the project and facilitated by these local institutions were exclusionary and failed to enable vulnerable community groups to have a voice on mangrove restoration and protection. Use of these local institutions altered local level power relations and disempowered other pre-existing and (in)formal local resource management institutions. Community members questioned legitimacy of actions implemented by these local institutions. These findings suggest that working with local level stakeholders to generate country ownership does not automatically guarantee that actions will address the needs of local vulnerable groups. Multilateral climate finance institutions should acknowledge these risks and implement measures to address them.     

气候公约外多边机制对气候公约的影响

《联合国气候变化框架公约》是国际应对气候变化合作的主渠道。为推进该领域的国际合作,主要经济体能源与气候论坛等一些公约外涉及气候变化主题的多边协商机制陆续出现,并对公约下的谈判和公约框架下的国际合作产生了影响。这些机制与公约的关系定性地基本可分为包含、竞争、补充、交叉、平行和取代六类。进一步采用指标-空间距离法对这些机制与公约的紧密程度进行定量分析,结果表明,主要经济体能源与气候论坛对公约进程的影响最大,目前公约外机制尚不存在取代公约的可能性。各种公约外机制对公约的影响主要是通过技术支持、政治意愿和具有法律约束力的规定三类模式实现。     

Discursive Contestation on Technological Innovation and the Institutional Design of the UNFCCC in the New Climate Change Regime

ABSTRACT

Under the new climate change regime ushered in by the 2015 Paris Agreement, technology development and transfer have emerged as essential means of global action for climate change mitigation and adaptation. In particular, technological innovation has appeared as a leading component to be accelerated, encouraged, and enabled under the Paris Agreement. However, while making the rule book to implement the Paris Agreement, a clash has occurred between developed and developing countries over the meaning of technological innovation and the intervening policies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to support innovation in developing countries. By exploring rule-making processes and expert-meetings under the UNFCCC, this paper examines how this discursive contestation has progressed in relation to the meaning of technological innovation and the creation of an appropriate institutional design to support developing countries’ achievement of technological innovation. The analysis is based on the theoretical framework of discursive contestation between the two discourses of de-regulatory ecological modernisation and green governmentality with right-to-development. This research concludes by positing some policy implications.     

A Primer on Global Environmental Change

This paper sets out the science behind global environmental change, defined by the US Global Change Research Act as ‘changes in the global environment (including alterations in climate, land productivity, oceans or other water resources, atmospheric chemistry, and ecological systems) that may alter the capacity of the Earth to sustain life’. We explain why there is still scepticism about the science in the business world and introduce eight gestalt shifts that are likely to change how executives think about environmental change and the threats and opportunities such changes present. The paper concludes with future research directions on business and global environmental change and outlines how the business case for investment in clean technology means that the transition to clean tech is inevitable.     

Climate Negotiations,EITE Industries,and the WTO: Facing the Conflicts

Though developed countries have contributed the lion's share of greenhouse gases to date, developing countries are rapidly catching up – and seem unlikely to adopt meaningful GHG controls in the near term. This prospect concerns major developed countries, since their own GHG controls could cause carbon-intensive production to migrate to unregulated countries, a phenomenon called “carbon leakage.” This article surveys progress in international negotiations to date. It argues that, given the slow pace of efforts to create a global GHG control framework, carbon tariffs and other border measures are likely to be invoked as an alternative means of preventing carbon leakage. The article illustrates the legal and economic pitfalls of border adjustments and urges major emitting countries to suspend the imposition of border measures for a limited time while negotiating a “Code of Good Practice” to guide their trade-related climate measures going forward. The Code that we describe would constrain the scope of border measures and sharply limit their negative consequences.     

Political Economy of International Policy on the Transfer of Environmentally Sound Technologies in Global Climate Change Regime

Global governance on climate change has embraced the transfer of environmentally sound technologies as a crucial means of implementation to meet mitigation and adaptation. During the negotiation toward the Paris Agreement that replaced the Kyoto Protocol under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the negotiation on technology development and transfer experienced contestation between developed and developing countries over policy direction and options. Under this context, why, in which policy options, and how developed and developing countries have clashed have not been fully explored yet in the issue area of climate change. This paper attempts to unpack the negotiations over technology development and transfer as a part of the Paris Agreement by three dimensions of marketisation, privatisation, and de-regulatory approach on the theoretical ground of discursive contestation between neo-liberalism and structuralism. This research, revealing the ground and the range of stretched contestant policy options, will provide a means to discern whether policies and modalities to be adopted to implement the Paris Agreement are skewed toward developed countries or developing countries.     

Promoting GHG mitigation policies for agriculture and forestry: A case study in Guadeloupe,French West Indies

Climate change is now accepted as self-evident. It is time to find new production methods, set up new organizations and introduce new policies and new incentives to enable our economies and societies to face this issue. Innovation is required at all levels, from farming practices to government policy. Agricultural and forestry systems are strongly linked to their local environment and are often interdependent (economically, socially, etc.). This paper discusses how a landscape scale approach can help to mitigate climate change in forestry and agriculture. It describes the French Climagri^® approach, which is based on a GHG inventory and scenario analysis at sub-national scale in order to promote innovation. It discusses the strengths (transversal approach, GHG hot spot identification, impact of non-climate policies) and weaknesses (data collection, uncertainties, incentives) of such an approach based on a case study in Guadeloupe. This paper suggests ideas for tools to help in drawing up new efficient GHG policies and helps to explain landscape scale GHG inventories and data interpretation in a tropical context.