{"title":"The International Politics of Carbon Dioxide Removal: Pathways to Cooperative Global Governance","authors":"Bryan Maher, J. Symons","doi":"10.1162/glep_a_00643","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00643","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios that limit warming to 1.5°C require that, in addition to unprecedented reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, between 100 and 1,000 metric gigatons of CO2 be removed from the atmosphere before 2100. Despite this, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is not yet firmly on national or global policy agendas. Owing to uncertainty about both technical potential and social license, it is unclear whether CDR on the required scale will even be feasible. This article asks what scholarship about the provision of global public goods can tell us about governing CDR. We identify four areas where new international cooperative efforts—likely performed by small clubs of motivated actors—could amplify existing CDR policy responses: development of CDR accounting and reporting methodologies, technology development and prototype deployment for technically challenging CDR, development of incentives for CDR deployment, and work on governance and accountability mechanisms that respond to social justice impacts and social license concerns.","PeriodicalId":47774,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Politics","volume":"22 1","pages":"44-68"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48208370","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Indigenous Peoples and Multiscalar Environmental Governance: The Opening and Closure of Participatory Spaces","authors":"Maria Gustafsson, Almut Schilling‐Vacaflor","doi":"10.1162/glep_a_00642","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00642","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract There has been an unprecedented inclusion of Indigenous peoples in environmental governance instruments like free, prior, and informed consent; reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) projects; climate adaptation initiatives; and environmental impact assessment. We draw on theories of participatory governance to show how locally implemented processes have been shaped by their interactions with invited, closed, and indigenous-led spaces at multiple scales. Empirically, our article is based on field research in Latin America, semistructured interviews, and a systematic literature review. We find four main barriers that have (re-)produced environmental injustices in environmental governance: first, a lack of influence over the institutional design of governance instruments; second, the exclusion of Indigenous peoples in the domestication of global instruments; third, policy incoherencies constraining the scope for decision-making; and fourth, weak cross-scale linkages between Indigenous-led spaces. This article helps to elucidate constraints of participatory spaces and identify leeway for transformation toward environmental justice.","PeriodicalId":47774,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Politics","volume":"22 1","pages":"70-94"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46673196","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction","authors":"S. Bernstein, M. Hoffmann, Erika Weinthal","doi":"10.1162/glep_e_00648","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_e_00648","url":null,"abstract":"We are writing this introduction just as COP 26 is wrapping up and the world (and GEP community) are assessing the work ahead to turn pledges and promises into action. The current issue includes investigations on a range of topics that inform the very agendas and politics that are underway and needed. The issue begins with a forum on the Paris Agreement, the unquestioned center of gravity for the global response to climate change even while many question its effectiveness in the aftermath of Glasgow. In “The Paris Agreement as Analogy in Global Environmental Politics,” Nicholas Chan explores how it has come to dominate the way the international community imagines and structures global environmental cooperation. He details the discursive and institutional “gravitational pull” of Paris, but also warns against the potentially problematic effects of the powerful Paris analogy, if applied too broadly to diverse problems in environmental politics. A second forum by Olúfé.mi Táíwò and Shuchi Talati, “Who Are the Engineers? Solar Geoengineering Research and Justice,” contributes to the growing body of work on the politics of solar geoengineering. In response to calls to abandon solar geoengineering research that range from environmental impacts to Northern dominance of the field itself, Táíwò and Talati argue instead for a more inclusive framework that is sensitive to concerns of global injustice and inequality. The forum provides concrete suggestions for supporting more inclusive research and governance, including bolstering alternative research programs to fund and build capacity of researchers and policymakers from the Global South. The research articles begin with a cross-issue exploration of global environmental negotiations. In “Design Trade-Offs Under Power Asymmetry: COPs and Flexibility Clauses,” Jean-Frédéric Morin, Benjamin Tremblay-Auger, and Claire Peacock explore how states navigate power asymmetries in environmental negotiations. They argue that the adoption of flexibility clauses helps powerful states signal their commitment to not unduly influence the work of COPs by providing weaker states with insurance against abuse of power differentials. They find support for this argument through an analysis of a database of over 2,000 international environmental agreements.","PeriodicalId":47774,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Politics","volume":"22 1","pages":"1-3"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42830857","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Crime, Security, and Illegal Wildlife Trade: Political Ecologies of International Conservation","authors":"R. Duffy","doi":"10.1162/glep_a_00645","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00645","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article takes a political ecology approach to understanding the integration of conservation with security in tackling the illegal wildlife trade. It builds on political ecology debates on militarization by connecting it to the dynamics of global environmental politics, specifically the discursive and material support from donors, governments, and conservation nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The combined effects of a highly competitive funding environment and security concerns of governments has produced a context in which NGOs strategically invoke the idea of the illegal wildlife trade as a security threat. For donors and governments, tackling the illegal wildlife trade is a means through which they can address security threats. However, this has material outcomes for marginalized peoples living with wildlife, including militarization, human rights abuses, enhanced surveillance, and law enforcement.","PeriodicalId":47774,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Politics","volume":"22 1","pages":"23-44"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42471319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Paasha Mahdavi, Jessica F. Green, Jennifer Hadden, Thomas N. Hale
{"title":"Using Earnings Calls to Understand the Political Behavior of Major Polluters","authors":"Paasha Mahdavi, Jessica F. Green, Jennifer Hadden, Thomas N. Hale","doi":"10.1162/glep_a_00641","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00641","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The role that private actors play in accelerating or preventing progressive climate policy and true decarbonization is a core research interest of global environmental politics. Yet scholars have struggled to measure the political behavior of multinational firms due to lack of transparency about their activities and inconsistency in reporting requirements across jurisdictions. In this research note, we present a new data source—firms’ earnings calls—that scholars might use to better understand the political behavior of major multinational polluters. To illustrate the value of earnings calls as a data source, we construct an original data set of all earnings calls made between 2005 and 2019 by major oil and gas firms. We then code these transcripts, demonstrating that although firms can be classified as more or less pro-climate, there is little evidence of the industry’s public acceptance of decarbonization. These unique data could permit researchers to explore important questions about climate politics, the evolution of private governance, and the relationship between policy and firms’ political behavior. Moreover, we suggest extensions of our approach, including other multinational industries that are amenable to this type of analysis.","PeriodicalId":47774,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Politics","volume":"22 1","pages":"159-174"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2021-11-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47943111","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Green Industrial Policy and the Global Transformation of Climate Politics","authors":"Bentley B. Allan, Joanna I. Lewis, Thomas Oatley","doi":"10.1162/glep_a_00640","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00640","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The rise of green industrial policy has injected purpose and competition into global environmental politics. Efforts to build green industry have raised the economic and geopolitical stakes of environmental issues as states seek to position their firms in global value chains and reshore strategic industries. This could help to generate the technologies and political momentum needed to accelerate global decarbonization. At the same time, these green interventions confront status quo interests and a variety of industrial policies that support fossil fuel-based industries. To help make sense of this new landscape, this introduction to the special issue defines green industrial policy and situates it within domestic political economy, social policy, and global geopolitics. We present six new studies that demonstrate and explore the global politics of green industrial policy. To illustrate the kinds of effects and implications of green industrial policy we are interested in exploring, we show how green industrial policy has transformed climate politics. Changes in state practice, ideas about the environment and economy, and technological cost declines came together to produce a new opportunistic and competitive climate politics. We then identify areas for further investigation as we call for a new climate politics research agenda, integrating green industrial policy more intentionally into studies of global environmental politics.","PeriodicalId":47774,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Politics","volume":"21 1","pages":"1-19"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46504423","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Strange Natures: Conservation in the Era of Synthetic Biology","authors":"Adam Wickberg","doi":"10.1162/glep_r_00638","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_r_00638","url":null,"abstract":"In global environmental governance, accountability tends to be narrowly perceived in terms of correct behavior within the confines of already-given institutional choices. What if that’s a trap? What if the environment keeps deteriorating and we waste our time arguing about how to improve the accountability of actors embedded in deeply unsustainable institutions? Are the organizations governing the global environment accountable to the environment itself? Certainly not, as “the environment” is commonly not perceived to have agency (Gaia theory/beliefs notwithstanding). Instead, they are accountable to a whole array of different organizations and individuals. The perceptions of who ought to be accountable to whom, in what way, and in accordance with what procedures vary across different issue areas and actor constellations. Susan Park and Teresa Kramarz, the editors of Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap, argue that the preoccupation with accountability focuses too often on only the narrow aspects of the implementation and performance of agreed procedures (“second-tier” accountability) rather than on the goal orientation and design of institutions (“first-tier” accountability). Given the ongoing worsening of the environmental crisis, for Kramarz and Park the preoccupation with second-tier accountability is insufficient at best and even runs the danger of distracting from the necessary deeper institutional reform. They lament the lack of feedback loops from second-tier accountability mechanisms and processes back to goal orientation and institutional design. Ideally, they contend, accountability norms and practices should be engaged to open up conversations and contestation about how to reorient governance institutions toward greater environmental effectiveness. The authors advance acute reflections on the challenges and opportunities that governance in polycentric systems poses for accountability. Cristina Balboa shows how environmental nongovernmental organizations’ mission to fight environmental degradation first gets derailed by having to compete with a multitude of peers for limited resources and then becomes further complicated by the pressure to be accountable to an amorphous, ambiguous, and potentially open-ended set of stakeholders with no clear hierarchy for whose concerns should be prioritized. Lars Gulbrandsen and Graeme Auld locate the contestation around the accountability of the Marine Stewardship Council’s (MSCs)","PeriodicalId":47774,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Politics","volume":"21 1","pages":"158-160"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47051209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"International Ozone Negotiations and the Green Spiral","authors":"Nina Kelsey","doi":"10.1162/glep_a_00631","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00631","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Scholarship examining the highly successful ozone negotiations is rare today, as lessons derived from them do not seem to have produced comparable success in climate negotiations. This article argues that there is a “missing piece” critical to understanding ozone negotiation success. I draw on path dependency and feedback literature as well as detailed historical research into the ozone negotiation process to propose a coherent feedback mechanism I refer to as the “green spiral.” In a green spiral, an iterative interaction between negotiation outcomes and changes to the sticky, internal material interests of industry works to make more stringent regulation feasible in subsequent negotiating rounds. Such dynamics offer a consistent explanation for the overall success of the ozone negotiations as well as the timing and nature of individual countries’ shifts in negotiating position and regulatory behavior over time. Understanding environmental negotiation through this lens offers insight into how outcomes of climate and other environmental negotiations might be improved.","PeriodicalId":47774,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Politics","volume":"21 1","pages":"64-87"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41555435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"It All Hinges on China: Environmental Governance in the Twenty-First Century","authors":"M. Henderson","doi":"10.1162/glep_a_00627","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00627","url":null,"abstract":"From recurring “airpocalypses” that send air pollution indexes off the charts and an insatiable demand for timber and mineral resources to President Xi Jinping’s promises to lead in global climate negotiations and share the model of “ecological civilization” through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the world’s most populous country has become the most critical to understanding global environmental politics. With Western democracies challenged to sustain even modest cuts to carbon emissions and most global consumers largely oblivious to the environmental impacts of their buying habits, it can be tempting for some to entrust environmental governance to a stronger, more authoritarian system. Whether such a system can work, and what its collateral costs would be, may determine the fate of the global environment in this century. Three additions to the growing bookshelf on Beijing’s ecological policies agree: “What happens to China environmentally in the 21st century matters deeply—for everyone” (Gardner, 221); “The fate of their nation and the fate of the planet depend greatly on” the Chinese people (Smith, 196); in short, “Everything seems to hinge on China” (Li and Shapiro, 147). When, starting in 1978, the Chinese Communist leadership turned away from Chairman Mao Zedong’s collectivist vision of economic development, they opened the door for the “sprouts of capitalism” to turn China into the “factory to the world” and, four decades later, the world’s third-largest and fastest-growing major consumer market (World Bank 2019). In the 1980s, China’s economic reforms seemed to hold the potential to reverse much of","PeriodicalId":47774,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Politics","volume":"21 1","pages":"148-153"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48362472","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Green Industrial Policy After Paris: Renewable Energy Policy Measures and Climate Goals","authors":"Joanna I. Lewis","doi":"10.1162/glep_a_00636","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00636","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Renewable energy (RE) will play a significant role in national climate mitigation strategies, including those put forth in the context of the Paris Agreement. This article examines the role of industrial policy in supporting renewables and how it compares to the use of other types of RE policies in both location and quantity around the world. On the basis of an original database of RE policy support measures developed for this analysis, the article illustrates which measures are most commonly being used around the world and what types of countries are using them. It highlights the use of a wide range of policy types, including many industrial policies, and a disparity in the use of industrial policies between smaller emitters and larger emitters, with important implications for which countries stand to benefit from the development of domestic RE industries and for our ability to achieve long-term climate goals.","PeriodicalId":47774,"journal":{"name":"Global Environmental Politics","volume":"21 1","pages":"42-63"},"PeriodicalIF":4.8,"publicationDate":"2021-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49669897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}