Abstract
In this article, a framework is suggested to deal with the analysis of global environmental risk governance. Climate Change is taken as a particular form of contemporary environmental risk, and mobilised to refine and characterize some salient aspects of new governance challenges. A governance framework is elaborated along three basic features: (1) a close relationship with science, (2) an in-built reflexivity, and (3) forms of governmentality. The UNFCCC-centered system is then assessed according to this three-tier framework. While the two-first requisites are largely met, the analysis of governmentality points to some institutional weak spots.
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Notes
Karl Popper spoke of progress and the adaptation of species in terms of invading and inventing new environmental niches (Popper 1994).
Such strategies may include decision principles such as precaution and prevention, and response strategies such as mitigation and adaptation.
Whether that is an appropriate way of dealing with the complexity of the problem is arguable. Recent efforts are looking into issues such as consumption goods and other decentralized activities triggering GHG emission directly or indirectly. Helm (2008), for instance, recently claimed that emissions in consumption could be a better-suited policy rationale than the current production-oriented Kyoto framework.
We agree with the IRGC on the terminology here, that the term ‘tolerable’ refers to “an activity that is seen as worth pursuing (for the benefit it carries) yet it requires additional efforts for risk reduction within reasonable limits” while the term acceptable refers to “an activity where the remaining risks are so low that additional efforts for risk reduction are not seen as necessary” (Renn 2008, p. 28).
Novel risks may be pointed out or suggested by other institutions or agents, such as the public or civil society. Their role is, however, not covered in the limited frame of this paper.
This is closely related to, and may be perceived as a different form of problematization of the issue at stake. While the natural sciences would problematize risks in terms of their physical significance, political structures need to adjust and problematize them in terms of their social significance. Plus, they need to solve the political problem of society’s integration of and response to risks.
See for instance, the calls for 60% reductions in GHG in comparison to the (not too ambitious, but far from being reached) 5.2% mitigation target under the Kyoto Protocol.
This argument is in a similar vein to the one expressed by Beck, when mentioning the politicians’ risk of becoming the “captives of the errors and uncertainties of scientific knowledge on how to deal with risk” if they turn themselves into “executive organs for scientific pronouncements and proposals” (Beck 1997).
“The many decisions taken by the COP at its annual sessions now make up a detailed rulebook for the effective implementation of the Convention” (UNCCS 2002, p. 8).
See the discussion on ‘entrance rights’ (‘droits d’entrée’) as major constitutive element of an established field in Bourdieu (2001).
Despite the existence of other bilateral and multilateral agreements, the UN may be seen as the “only multilateral organization that is [almost] universal in its membership and global in its scope” (Strong 1991, p. 297, cited by Elliott 2005). Okereke and Bulkeley (2007), however, mention an explosion of alternatives and involvement of non-state actors (NSAs) as part of a changing order in international climate governance.
Ott (2007), while commenting on more than a decade of environmental diplomacy: “the diplomatic processes to co-ordinate the international responses to climate change are slow and ineffective”.
This pitfall of the first generation of international climate agreements seems to be changing in the first steps of the post-Kyoto negotiations.
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Turnheim, B., Tezcan, M.Y. Complex Governance to Cope with Global Environmental Risk: An Assessment of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Sci Eng Ethics 16, 517–533 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-009-9170-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-009-9170-1