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31 results in Climate and Sustainability Elements

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Sustaining Development in Small Islands

Sustaining Development in Small Islands
  • Climate Change, Geopolitical Security, and the Permissive Liberal Order
  • Matthew Louis Bishop, Rachid Bouhia, Salā George Carter, Jack Corbett, Courtney Lindsay, Michelle Scobie, Emily Wilkinson
  • Published online:
    30 January 2025
    Print publication:
    30 January 2025
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  • The viability of small island developing states (SIDS) is threatened by three distinct processes – a backlash against globalisation; rising geopolitical competition between powers; and accelerating climate change – which are pulling at the threads binding the liberal international order together. We suggest that this order has been kinder to SIDS than is often acknowledged because its underpinning norms – sovereign equality, non-interference, and right to development – are inherently permissive and thus provide SIDS with choices rather than imperatives. Their leaders should fight for the continuation and enhancement of that order rather than be seduced by alternatives. We provide a rationale for and examples of policies to achieve this, including reforms to the way ODA is measured, debt restructured, climate finance allocated, and global governance organised. These enhancements represent the most plausible pathway for SIDS in a period of significant global upheaval. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Institutionalising Multispecies Justice

Institutionalising Multispecies Justice
  • Danielle Celermajer, Anthony Burke, Stefanie Fishel, Erin Fitz-Henry, Nicole Rogers, David Schlosberg, Christine Winter
  • Published online:
    29 January 2025
    Print publication:
    27 February 2025
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  • Multispecies Justice (MSJ) is a theory and practice seeking to correct the defects making dominant theories of justice incapable of responding to current and emerging planetary disruptions and extinctions. Multispecies Justice starts with the assumption that justice is not limited to humans but includes all Earth others, and the relationships that enable their functioning and flourishing. This Element describes and imagines a set of institutions, across all scales and in different spheres, that respect, revere, and care for the relationships that make life on Earth possible and allow all natural entities, humans included, to flourish. It draws attention to the prefigurative work happening within societies otherwise dominated by institutions characterised by Multispecies Injustice, demonstrating historical and ongoing practices of MSJ in different contexts. It then sketches speculative possibilities that expand on existing institutional reforms and are more fundamentally transformational. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Collaborative Ethnography of Global Environmental Governance

Collaborative Ethnography of Global Environmental Governance
  • Concepts, Methods and Practices
  • Stefan C. Aykut, Simone Rödder, Max Braun
  • Published online:
    23 May 2024
    Print publication:
    13 June 2024
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  • Environmental mega conferences have become the format of choice in environmental governance. Conferences of the Parties (COPs) under the climate change and biodiversity conventions in particular attract global media attention and an ever-growing number of increasingly diverse actors, including scholars of global environmental politics. They are arenas for interstate negotiation, but also temporary interfaces that constitute and represent world society, and they focalise global struggles over just and sustainable futures. Collaborative event ethnography (CEE) as a research methodology emerged as a response to these developments. This volume retraces its genealogy, explains its conceptual and methodological foundations and presents insights into its practice. It is meant as an introduction for students, an overview for curious newcomers to the field, and an invitation for experienced researchers wishing to experiment with a new method. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Learning for Environmental Governance

Learning for Environmental Governance
  • Insights for a More Adaptive Future
  • Andrea K. Gerlak, Tanya Heikkila
  • Published online:
    22 April 2024
    Print publication:
    16 May 2024
  • Learning is critical for our capacity to govern the environment and adapt proactively to complex and emerging environmental issues. Yet, underlying barriers can challenge our capacity for learning in environmental governance. As a result, we often fail to adequately understand pressing environmental problems or produce innovative and effective solutions. This Element synthesizes insights from extensive academic and applied research on learning around the world to inform both research and practice. We distill the social and structural features of governance to help researchers and practitioners better understand, diagnose, and support learning and more adaptive responses to environmental problems.
Building Capabilities for Earth System Governance

Building Capabilities for Earth System Governance
  • Jochen Prantl, Ana Flávia Barros-Platiau, Cristina Yumie Aoki Inoue, Joana Castro Pereira, Thais Lemos Ribeiro, Eduardo Viola
  • Published online:
    30 January 2024
    Print publication:
    09 May 2024
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  • This Element develops a new Strategic Capabilities Framework for studying and steering complex socio-ecological systems. It is driven by the central question of what are the most essential capabilities that ought to be fostered for addressing the fundamental 21st Century environmental challenges and Earth system transformations. The author's objective is to innovate transformative ideas toward better climate and ocean governance that are of interest both to academics and policymakers in the field. Rather than investigating the design and effectiveness of institutions in governing the climate and the oceans, the authors offer an alternative approach starting from the assumption that global governance arrangements must be informed by the capabilities of the communities affected. This Element aims to offer out-of-the-box thinking about capabilities-focused and community-centered frameworks that align multi-level systems of governance with the fundamental challenges of global environmental change. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Trade and the Environment

Trade and the Environment
  • Drivers and Effects of Environmental Provisions in Trade Agreements
  • Clara Brandi, Jean-Frédéric Morin
  • Published online:
    07 December 2023
    Print publication:
    21 December 2023
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  • The mushrooming of trade agreements and their interlinkages with environmental governance calls for new research on the trade and environment interface. The more than 700 existing preferential trade agreements (PTAs) include ever more diverse and far-reaching environmental provisions. While missed opportunities remain and harmful provisions persist, numerous environmental provisions in PTAs entail promising potential. They promote the implementation of environmental treaties and cover numerous environmental issues. New concepts, data, and methods, including detailed content analysis across multiple institutions, are needed to explain these interlinkages and understand whether and how PTAs with environmental provisions can contribute to tackling global environmental challenges. Making use of the most extensive coding of environmental provisions in PTAs to date and combining quantitative data with qualitative analyses, this Element provides a comprehensive yet fine-grained picture of the drivers and effects of environmental provisions in PTAs. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The Politics of Deep Time

The Politics of Deep Time
  • Frederic Hanusch
  • Published online:
    13 November 2023
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    07 December 2023
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  • Human societies increasingly interact with processes on a geological or even cosmic timescale. Despite this recognition, we still lack a basic understanding of these interconnections and how they translate into politics. This Element provides an exploration and systematization of 'the politics of deep time' as a novel lens of planetary politics in three steps. First, it demonstrates why deep-time interactions render the politics of deep time essential; second, it asks how deep time should be politicized and third, it explicates the politics of deep time by examining representative cases. The Element also formulates a conceptual framework to open up possibilities for alliances that seek to better understand and realize the politics of deep time, pioneering a debate on how planetary temporalities can be politically institutionalized. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
A Green and Just Recovery from COVID-19?

A Green and Just Recovery from COVID-19?
  • Government Investment in the Energy Transition during the Pandemic
  • Kyla Tienhaara, Tom Moerenhout, Vanessa Corkal, Joachim Roth, Hannah Ascough, Jessica Herrera Betancur, Samantha Hussman, Jessica Oliver, Kabir Shahani, Tianna Tischbein
  • Published online:
    20 October 2023
    Print publication:
    16 November 2023
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  • Stimulus spending to address the economic crisis brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to either facilitate the transition away from fossil energy or to lock in carbon-intensive technologies and infrastructure for decades to come. Whether they are focused on green sectors or not, stimulus measures can alleviate or reinforce socio-economic inequality. This Element delves into the data in the Energy Policy Tracker to assess the extent to which energy policies adopted during the pandemic will expedite decarbonization and explores whether governments address inequities through policies targeted to disadvantaged, marginalized and underserved individuals and communities. The overall finding is that the recovery has not been sufficiently green or just. Nevertheless, a small number of policies aim to advance distributive justice and provide potential models for policymakers as they continue to attempt to 'build back better'. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Just Transitions

Just Transitions
  • Promise and Contestation
  • Dimitris Stevis
  • Published online:
    25 April 2023
    Print publication:
    18 May 2023
  • Just transition prompts us to explore a number of important dimensions of Earth System Governance research, including sustainability transformations, inequality, power and justice. This Element aims to place just transition in the dynamics of the world political economy over the last several decades and to offer an overview of the varieties of just transitions based on an analytical scheme that focuses on their breadth (coverage), depth (social and ecological priorities) and ambition. The focus on breadth, depth and ambition centers on power, inequality and injustice and allows us to analyze and compare just transitions as a prerequisite for their fuller interpretation.
The Normative Foundations of International Climate Adaptation Finance

The Normative Foundations of International Climate Adaptation Finance
  • Romain Weikmans
  • Published online:
    06 February 2023
    Print publication:
    23 February 2023
  • Billions of dollars are annually transferred to poor nations to help them adapt to the effects of climate change. This Element examines how the discourses on adaptation finance of many developing country negotiators, environmental groups, development charities, academics and international bureaucrats have renewed a specific vision of aid, that of an aid intended to respond to international injustices and to fuel a regular transfer of resources between rich and poor countries. By reviewing manifestations of this normative vision of aid in key contemporary debates on adaptation finance, the author shows how these discourses have contributed to the significant financial mobilisation of developed countries towards adaptation in the Global South. But there remains a stark contrast between the many expectations associated with these discourses and today's adaptation finance landscape.
The Emergence of Geoengineering

The Emergence of Geoengineering
  • How Knowledge Networks Form Governance Objects
  • Ina Möller
  • Published online:
    14 January 2023
    Print publication:
    09 February 2023
  • For many years, suggestions to 'geoengineer' the climate occupied a marginal role in climate change science and politics. Today, visions of massive carbon drawdown and sunlight reflection have become reasonable additions to conventional mitigation and adaptation. Why did researchers start engaging with ideas that were, for a long time, considered highly controversial? And how did some of these ideas come to be perceived worthy of research funding and in need of international governance? This Element provides an analysis of the recent history and evolution of geoengineering as a governance object. It explains how geoengineering evolved from a thought shared by a small network into a governance object that is likely to shape the future of climate politics. In the process, it generates a theory on the earliest phase of the policy cycle and sheds light on the question why we govern the things we govern in the first place.
Addressing the Grand Challenges of Planetary Governance

Addressing the Grand Challenges of Planetary Governance
  • The Future of the Global Political Order
  • Oran R. Young
  • Published online:
    10 January 2023
    Print publication:
    09 February 2023
  • The world today confronts unprecedented needs for governance having profound implications for human well-being that are difficult - perhaps impossible - to address effectively within the prevailing global political order. This makes it pertinent to ask whether we must assume that the global order will continue during the foreseeable future to take the form of a state-based society as we think about options for addressing these challenges. Treating political orders as complex systems and drawing on our understanding of the dynamics of such systems, the author explores the prospects for a critical transition in the prevailing global political order. Individual sections analyze constitutive pressures, systemic forces, tipping elements, the effects of scale, the defining characteristics of potential successors to the current order, and pathways to a new order. In the process, seeking to make a more general contribution to our understanding of critical transitions in large political orders.
Adaptive Governance to Manage Human Mobility and Natural Resource Stress

Adaptive Governance to Manage Human Mobility and Natural Resource Stress
  • Saleem H. Ali, Martin Clifford, Dominic Kniveton, Caroline Zickgraf, Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson
  • Published online:
    10 January 2023
    Print publication:
    09 February 2023
  • Connections between resources and migration operate as a complex adaptive system rather than being premised in linear, causal mechanisms. The systems thinking advocated within this Element increases the inclusion of socio-psychological, financial, demographic, environmental and political dimensions that mediate resource-(im)mobility pathways. The Earth Systems Governance paradigm provides a way to manage global migration flows more effectively, allowing for consideration of networks and interdependencies in addition to its inherent adaptiveness. Resource rushes, hydropower displacement, and climate-induced retreat from coastal areas are all examples of circumstances linking resources and human mobility. Movement can also ameliorate environmental conditions and hence close monitoring of impacts and policies which harness benefits of migration is advocated. Green remittance bonds, and land tenure policies favoring better arable resource usage are key ingredients of a more systems-oriented approach to managing mobility. The Global Compact on Migration offers an opportunity to operationalize such adaptive governance approaches in the Anthropocene.
Organizing and Institutionalizing Local Sustainability

Organizing and Institutionalizing Local Sustainability
  • A Design Approach
  • Aaron Deslatte
  • Published online:
    18 November 2022
    Print publication:
    15 December 2022
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  • This Element explores the role of public managers as designers. Drawing from systems-thinking and strategic management, a process-tracing methodology is used to examine three design processes whereby public managers develop strategies for adapting to climate change, build the requisite capabilities and evaluate outcomes. Across three cases, the findings highlight the role of managers as 'design- oriented' integration agents and point to areas where additional inquiry is warranted. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The Carbon Market Challenge

The Carbon Market Challenge
  • Preventing Abuse Through Effective Governance
  • Regina Betz, Axel Michaelowa, Paula Castro, Raphaela Kotsch, Michael Mehling, Katharina Michaelowa, Andrea Baranzini
  • Published online:
    12 September 2022
    Print publication:
    06 October 2022
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  • Carbon markets – both emission trading systems and baseline and credit systems – are an increasingly common policy instrument being introduced to address climate change mitigation. However, their design is crucial to ensure that they deliver cost-effective emission reductions while maintaining environmental integrity. This Element puts together a comprehensive, principle-based overview of the risks and abuses to environmental integrity and cost effectiveness that have emerged for carbon markets at all jurisdictional levels around the world, provides concrete examples, and offers effective policy and governance solutions to overcome such risks. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Children and Climate Change

Children and Climate Change
  • Ann V. Sanson, Karina Padilla Malca, Judith Van Hoorn, Susie Burke
  • Published online:
    25 August 2022
    Print publication:
    22 September 2022
  • The existential threat posed by climate change presents a challenge to all those concerned about the next generation. This Element reviews and discusses its implications for the development of children (ages 0-12) today and in the future, and for the parents, teachers, researchers, and professionals who have responsibility for children. This Element adopts a bioecological model to examine both the direct impacts on children's physical and psychological well-being as well as indirect impacts through all the systems external to the child, emphasizing the greater vulnerability of children in the Global South. Given evidence of well-founded climate anxiety, this Element examines children's coping strategies and discusses the key roles of caregivers and schools in protecting and preparing children to face current and future challenges – with knowledge, hope, and agency as central themes. This Element highlights many under-researched areas and calls for action by all those caring for and about children's future.
The Distributive Politics of Environmental Protection in Latin America and the Caribbean

The Distributive Politics of Environmental Protection in Latin America and the Caribbean
  • Isabella Alcañiz, Ricardo A. Gutiérrez
  • Published online:
    01 August 2022
    Print publication:
    18 August 2022
  • The study of environmental politics in Latin America and the Caribbean expands as conflicts stemming from the deterioration of the natural world increase. Yet this scholarship has not generated a broad research agenda similar to the ones that emerged around other key political phenomena. This Element seeks to address the lack of a comprehensive research agenda in Latin American and Caribbean environmental politics and helps integrate the existing, disparate literatures. Drawing from distributive politics, this Element asks who benefits from the appropriation and pollution of the environment, who pays the costs of climate change and environmental degradation, and who gains from the allocation of state protections.
Changing Our Ways

Changing Our Ways
  • Behaviour Change and the Climate Crisis
  • Peter Newell, Freddie Daley, Michelle Twena
  • Published online:
    10 March 2022
    Print publication:
    31 March 2022
  • In this Element, the authors develop an account of the role of behaviour change that is more political and social by bringing questions of power and social justice to the heart of their enquiry in order to appreciate how questions of responsibility and agency are unevenly distributed within and between societies. The result is a more holistic understanding of behaviour, as just one node within an ecosystem of transformation that bridges the individual and systemic. Their account is more attentive to questions of governance and the processes of collective steering necessary to facilitate large scale change across a diversity of actors, sectors and regions than the dominant emphasis on individuals and households. It is also more historical in its approach, looking critically at the relevance of historical parallels regarding large-scale behaviour change and what might be learned and applied to the contemporary context action.
Climate Change and Human Behavior

Climate Change and Human Behavior
  • Impacts of a Rapidly Changing Climate on Human Aggression and Violence
  • Andreas Miles-Novelo, Craig A. Anderson
  • Published online:
    01 February 2022
    Print publication:
    03 March 2022
  • Much of the current rhetoric surrounding climate change focuses on the physical changes to the environment and the resulting material damage to infrastructure and resources. Although there has been some dialogue about secondary effects (namely mass migration), little effort has been given to understanding how rapid climate change is affecting people on group and individual levels. In this Element, we examine the psychological impacts of climate change, especially focused on how it will lead to increases in aggressive behaviors and violent conflict, and how it will influence other aspects of human behavior. We also look at previously established psychological effects and use them to help explain changes in human behavior resulting from rapid climate change, as well as to propose actions that can be taken to reduce climate change itself and mitigate harmful effects on humans.
Decarbonising Economies

Decarbonising Economies
  • Harriet Bulkeley, Johannes Stripple, Lars J. Nilsson, Bregje van Veelen, Agni Kalfagianni, Fredric Bauer, Mariësse van Sluisveld
  • Published online:
    28 January 2022
    Print publication:
    24 February 2022
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  • Based on an interdisciplinary investigation of future visions, scenarios, and case-studies of low carbon innovation taking place across economic domains, Decarbonising Economies analyses the ways in which questions of agency, power, geography and materiality shape the conditions of possibility for a low carbon future. It explores how and why the challenge of changing our economies are variously ascribed to a lack of finance, a lack of technology, a lack of policy and a lack of public engagement, and shows how the realities constraining change are more fundamentally tied to the inertia of our existing high carbon society and limited visions for what a future low carbon world might become. Through showcasing the first seeds of innovation seeking to enable transformative change, Decarbonising Economies will also chart a course for future research and policy action towards our climate goals. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

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