Climate Governance Across The Globe

This book takes an innovative approach to studying international climate governance by providing a critical analysis of climate leadership, pioneership and followership across the globe. The volume assesses the interactions between climate leaders, pioneers and followers, across multilevel and/or polycentric climate governance contexts. Examining the state and sub-state levels in both the Global South and Global North, as well as regional, supranational EU and international climate governance levels, the authors explore 16 countries across Asia, Australasia, Europe, and Central and North America, plus the European Union. Each chapter employs a comprehensive and consistent framework for analyzing leadership and pioneership, as well as followership. The findings provide new insights into the strategies and actions of sub-state, state-level, and supranational leaders and pioneers. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in environmental politics and climate change governance, as well as those interested in political elites, EU studies and, more broadly, comparative politics and international relations.

Since 2009, a diverse group of developing states that includes China, Brazil, Ethiopia and Costa Rica has been advancing unprecedented pledges to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, offering new, unexpected signs of climate leadership. Some scholars have gone so far as to argue that these targets are now even more ambitious than those put forward by their wealthier counterparts. But what really lies behind these new pledges? What actions are being taken to meet them? And what stumbling blocks lie in the way of their realization? In this book, an international group of scholars seeks to address these questions by analyzing the experiences of twelve states from across Asia, the Americas and Africa. The authors map the evolution of climate policies in each country and examine the complex array of actors, interests, institutions and ideas that has shaped their approaches. Offering the most comprehensive analysis thus far of the unique challenges that developing countries face in the domain of climate change, Climate Governance in the Developing World reveals the political, economic and environmental realities that underpin the pledges made by developing states, and which together determine the chances of success and failure.

Provides a systematic assessment of climate change initiatives that have emerged across the globe independent of United Nations sponsored negotiations and treaties.

An overview of the forms of agency in urban climate politics, including their strengths, limitations and the power dynamics between them. Written by renowned scholars from around the globe, it is ideal for researchers and practitioners working in the area of urban climate politics and governance.

This book explores the establishment of emissions trading as a form of environmental, market-based governance. It conceptualizes markets as institutions, and analyzes them as a system of climate governance. To this end, it argues that international efforts to promulgate markets run up against local cultures of markets that shape economic practices and knowledge to different degrees. The book also examines the material implications of emissions markets on the environment and climatic systems. In sum, the study finds that cultures of markets present a substantial challenge to a universalist prescription for resolving climate change and highlights issues at the interface of political and economic governance in different political economies. This includes issues of citizen, state, and industry participation, and the materiality of economic and financial productivity.

World's foremost experts explain how polycentric thinking can enhance societal attempts to govern climate change, for researchers, practitioners, advanced students. This title is also available as Open Access.

This book explores the real-world consequences changing ideas and strategies have on effective climate governance. Its main focus is on why accountability matters - both for transformations and transitions in international climate change governance and how international support for environmentally responsible actions, and extending shared accountabilities, might strengthen climate governance globally. A main point of discussion is if and how better understanding of accountabilities and transformations in ecosystems dynamics, the capacities of organisms to adapt, migrate or otherwise respond to environmental or climatic changes, can improve climate governance mechanisms. Bringing together a diverse set of considerations from various fields of study, chapters examine responses to environmental transformations that occur during periods of climatic crisis, such as species depletion, industrialisation, de-industrialisation or urbanisation. Throughout, this book aims to further readers understanding of if or how accountable climate governance can reduce the risks of global political disorder and widespread conflict in the 21st century, arising from environmental transformations of depleted forests, re-routed waterways, coastlines impacted by sea level rises, changed rainfall patterns and industrial practices.

Climate change poses one of the greatest challenges for human society in the twenty-first century, yet there is a major disconnect between our actions to deal with it and the gravity of the threat it implies. In a world where the fate of countries is increasingly intertwined, how should we think about, and accordingly, how should we manage, the types of risk posed by anthropogenic climate change? The problem is multi-faceted, and involves not only technical and policy specific approaches, but also questions of social justice and sustainability. In this volume the editors have assembled a unique range of contributors who together examine the intersection between the science, politics, economics and ethics of climate change. The book includes perspectives from some of the world's foremost commentators in their fields, ranging from leading scientists to political theorists, to high profile policymakers and practitioners. They offer a critical new approach to thinking about climate change, and help express a common desire for a more equitable society and a more sustainable way of life.