Local Environmental Change and Society in Africa

Social and natural scientists are currently obsessed with globalization, but this has not been matched by an equal interest in the societal consequences of local .
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Kenya should recognize that these changes will likely impede its ability to realize the human rights of many people. As a regional leader, Kenya should assess this impact, identify which individuals and communities are most vulnerable, and take steps to reduce this vulnerability and ensure that human rights standards are integrated into adaptation plans. Turkana County was chosen as the location for this research for a number of reasons.

Its traditional reliance on natural resources for food and livelihood, the historic marginalization of the region and lack of infrastructure, its considerable population growth, and the threat to Lake Turkana of Ethiopian development projects make the region especially vulnerable to drought that may be intensified by climate change. Turkana is home to Lake Turkana, the largest desert lake in the world, and is also globally renowned as the cradle of mankind. Pastoralist areas in East African countries tend to have the highest incidence of poverty and the least access to basic services compared with non-pastoralist areas.

For hundreds of years, nomadic herders have lived in semi-arid lowlands like Turkana County, adapting to the unpredictable environment by moving livestock according to the shifting availability of water and pasture. Like many other pastoralists in East Africa, the Turkana people have long struggled to access sufficient food and water. Historic marginalization and their livelihood in a fragile ecosystem make them especially vulnerable to the effects of any changes in the environment and climate.

Their situation illustrates how climate change could aggravate existing obstacles to the realization of basic human rights and challenge the ability of governments to protect and fulfill those rights. In the course of this research, Human Rights Watch conducted 40 interviews with pastoralists and fishers along the western shore of Lake Turkana. In addition, Human Rights Watch met with representatives of the Kenyan national government and Kenyan civil society during the climate change conferences in Lima, Peru December , Geneva, Switzerland February , and Bonn, Germany June , following up via email on issues raised at the meetings.

On March 3, Human Rights Watch wrote to the national government and requested information on national climate change policy. No response was received at time of writing. Interviews were conducted in Turkana and English using interpreters when necessary. None of the interviewees were offered any form of compensation and all interviewees were informed of the purpose of the interview and its voluntary nature, including their right to stop the interview at any point.

All individuals interviewed gave informed consent to be interviewed. Although most individuals were interviewed individually, some interviews with pastoralists were conducted in group settings, in line with community norms. A broad range of interviewees was sought, including men and women of different ages and livelihoods.

However, 30 of the 40 interviewees were men. In addition to interviews, Human Rights Watch consulted various secondary materials, including academic articles and reports from nongovernmental organizations, which provide further insight into human rights issues in Turkana. This material includes previous Human Rights Watch research as well as information collected by other credible experts and independent researchers.

An external technical expert reviewed an earlier draft of this report. However, this report is not a comprehensive assessment of the environmental and climate change threats to local communities in Turkana County.

Local environmental activists in Kenya

Such an assessment would require more in-depth qualitative and quantitative investigation, including in southern and western Turkana County, as well as mathematical modeling of multiple climate change scenarios. Human rights bodies, scientific experts, governments, and civil society have recognized that worldwide, climate change is having, and will continue to have, a devastating impact on the ability of people to enjoy their basic human rights and the capacity of governments to fulfill their obligations to realize those rights. While there is scientific consensus about global trends related to climate change, modeling and forecasting future changes in climate, particularly in specific regions and sub-regions of the world, is by its very nature complex and subject to some degree of uncertainty.

These uncertainties result from a wide range of factors, including limited climate data and the challenge of evaluating the dynamics of complex interacting systems. Countries in the global South, which are least responsible for climate change, are predicted to experience its most severe effects.

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Recognizing these risks, the UN Human Rights Council and other human rights bodies have adopted resolutions and issued statements highlighting the implications of climate change for the full enjoyment of human rights. Scientists believe Africa will be one of the continents most vulnerable to climate change, with average temperatures expected to increase throughout this century, and with drier subtropical regions warming more than the moister tropics.

The IPCC report also emphasized that climate change will cause economic growth to slow. According to the IPCC and other scientific studies, the African continent is already experiencing the effects of climate change in many regions. In addition to direct effects from heat stress attributed to climate change, scientific studies show that recurring drought and food insecurity can have indirect effects on health. According to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, climate change has already altered the distribution of some disease vectors, such as mosquitoes and ticks that have an active role in transmitting a pathogen from one host to another, and which carry a range of diseases such as malaria, dengue fever, spotted fever rickettsioses, and Rift Valley fever.

Severe weather events and flooding may also affect health directly by injury or death, and indirectly by contaminating water supplies or destroying water delivery and wastewater systems. Research by UNICEF suggests that climate change will have a significant impact on the health of children through increases in vector and waterborne diseases, and as a result of rising food prices and conflicts over resources.

As recognized by the IPCC, changes in climate and the resulting changes in disease patterns, poverty eradication, conflict and food security, have significant implications for access to water, food and health in Africa. African regional institutions have long highlighted the vulnerability of African states to the effects of climate change.

Starting in , the African Union has passed a number of resolutions expressing concern about the impact of climate change and the ability of countries to respond to its consequences. It has a semi-arid to arid climate and is among the poorest counties in the country. The constitution addressed public concerns about the concentration of power in the presidency by introducing a devolved system of government. County governments were established after the March general elections. Under the new structure, 47 county governments around Kenya have semi-autonomous status from the central government in order to address the inequitable distribution of resources that stemmed from centralization in the past.

Some functions critical for the lives of the Turkana, including provision of health and education services, have been devolved to the county level. Considerable ambiguity exists between national and county levels of government over other functions of importance to the Turkana, including security and natural resource management. The region encompassing Turkana County, the Lower Omo River valley, and the eastern shores of Lake Turkana, is globally renowned as the cradle of mankind: Archeologists working in the region have found here the oldest ancestors to modern humans.

Despite resistance, the British colonized the area in the s and forced the Turkana to settle in the area now known as Turkana County. After the Second World War, the colonial administration segregated the Turkana people by categorizing Turkana Province, as it was known under colonial rule, as a closed district, and enforced a strict disarmament of the Turkana people.

After independence, there was increased development in Turkana, but antagonistic relations and cattle raiding between the Turkana and their neighbors continued. Insecurity, combined with two severe droughts in the early s, further inhibited development efforts in the region. In the Kenyan national government devolved some government functions to county governments. This change provided opportunities for the Turkana to have more control over local policymaking and the allocation of resources, but the county continues to be underdeveloped and politically marginalized, ranking as one of the poorest counties in Kenya.

While the lake is critical for livelihoods, water in the lake is largely unfit for human consumption due to high salinity levels. People in Turkana rely mostly on water from seasonal rivers for drinking and domestic uses, often accessing it by digging in dry riverbeds, but also collecting water from springs, boreholes, and the near-perennial Turkwel River. Populations within Turkana County concentrate around the main transport route, which enters Turkana County from Kitale and West Pokot and connects the principal market towns of Lokichar, Lodwar, Kakuma and Lokichogio, and along the Turkwel River coming from West Pokot, and crossing the main transport route at Lodwar, heading east into Lake Turkana.

The Turkana identify themselves as indigenous peoples. In March , the Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples noted that indigenous peoples have contributed little to climate change, but they suffer the worst impacts globally. As a result, certain areas may experience extreme high intensity rainfall, while the overall annual rainfall remains neutral or even decreases slightly. Regional scientific studies have found increases in mean surface temperatures, and changes in precipitation extremes during the past 30 to 60 years. Despite these findings, it remains difficult for scientists to predict future long-term effects of climate change in the East Africa region, in part because there is insufficient historical data of climate patterns.

Many of these extreme climate events have led to displacement of communities and migration of pastoralists into and out of the country resulting in conflicts over natural resources. Slow-onset events associated with climate change also lead to competition over scarce resources resulting in human-wildlife conflicts. Other climate change impacts include widespread disease epidemics, sea-level rise, and depletion of glaciers on Mount Kenya. Over the past several years, Ethiopia has embarked on a massive plan for dams, water-intensive irrigated cotton and sugar plantations, and irrigation canals and other infrastructure in the Omo River Basin, which provides 90 percent of the water in Lake Turkana.

If these predictions are accurate, areas of Lake Turkana with high levels of biological productivity that are critical for fish spawning and rearing will dry up, with devastating impacts on the fishery. In addition, dramatic reductions in freshwater inputs from the Omo River into Lake Turkana, and increased evaporation rates from higher average air temperatures, will increase levels of salinity in the lake, also harming fish stocks. Changes to Lake Turkana will impact the environment far beyond its shores. The lake has a significant cooling effect on the region, regulating temperatures and precipitation, and preventing desertification.

In , as a result of a lawsuit filed by the NGO Friends of Lake Turkana, the Kenyan High Court ruled that the government is required to make public all relevant information in relation to the importation, purchase, and transmission of electricity from Ethiopia. As of September 15, , it has yet to comply with this decision. Questions about the long-term sustainability of the aquifer, including how quickly the aquifer would replenish itself after water has been extracted, have also been raised.

The pastoralists and fishers in Turkana County interviewed by Human Rights Watch painted a picture of a population struggling to survive in an inhospitable climate, ill-equipped to adapt to increasing changes in climate and livelihoods and receiving little support from government or civil society. They stated that changes in climate are already having a significant impact on their welfare in multiple ways. In combination with rapid population growth and industrial development, climate change is exacerbating the already significant challenges the Turkana face in securing sufficient water, food, health and security.

In Turkana, access to water for consumption, basic household needs, and livestock is critical for the lives and livelihoods of the Turkana people. However, growing water demand brought on by population growth, unpredictable rainy seasons and longer and more regular droughts have put increased pressure on water resources in recent years. In addition, the predicted drop in the water level of Lake Turkana could have a major impact on water availability for years to come.

One elder living near Lake Turkana described his reliance on the lake in times of drought. Traditionally, in times of drought, many pastoralist communities dig in dry riverbeds for water. However, communities now report longer and more severe droughts. As a result, they must dig deeper, but still may not find water. In one pastoral community a woman who was nine months pregnant, told Human Rights Watch of the 18 kilometer round-trip she had to walk, sometimes twice daily, in order to get water during the dry season from a riverbed where she could dig for water.

The small stream adjacent to the village supplied water only during the short rainy season. Kenya is bound under international law to progressively realize the right to water and sanitation of its citizens, using available resources in a non-discriminatory manner. Derived from a number of other rights guaranteed by international human rights law and complemented by more recent international human rights treaties explicitly recognizing the importance of water and sanitation, the general comment states that:. Because climate change can increase the frequency and severity of extreme weather events, such as drought or flooding, it can have a negative impact on the availability, accessibility, and quality of water.

When economic resources are limited, government obligation to progressively realize the human right to water requires States to plan adaptation measures. International human rights law also imposes obligations on states that are of immediate effect. The obligation to address the right to water in a way that is participatory, accountable and non-discriminatory is an immediately binding duty. Lack of access to potable water has a broad impact on all segments of society, but it disproportionately affects some populations.

In , Kenya, along with other counties, voted in the UN General Assembly to recognize a freestanding right to water, derived from the legal framework laid out in General Comment They pointed out that this has a variety of consequences for herders and can have self-reinforcing negative effects. The acute physical strain on livestock created by the lack of water and adequate grazing land makes livestock weaker and more prone to disease, and less suitable for production of milk, one of the staples of the Turkana diet.

Prolonged dry seasons lead to reductions in livestock numbers and less resilient livestock, to lower rates of milk production, and to reduced birthing rates. Diminishing access to grazing land and water also push the Turkana into increased conflict over remaining resources, which can lead to loss of livestock from raids by other ethnic groups. In several interviews mothers told us about losing their children to starvation. Parents expressed hopelessness while describing the challenges in accessing enough food to feed themselves and their children.

They said that the death of their livestock put an extra burden on households that traditionally rely in part on meat and milk for sustenance. Community members routinely cited hunger and malnutrition as among the most severe challenges they face. While food insecurity has plagued Turkana for generations, Human Rights Watch interviews with people in Turkana indicated that the changing climate is exacerbating this already tenuous situation. The reported patterns of unpredictable rainfall and increased drought will continue to reduce the grazing lands and limited water sources necessary for dry season livestock herding.

This will further compound existing food insecurity for a growing population that is largely reliant on adequate grazing lands and water for its livestock. The other critical livelihood in Turkana is fishing. Water level drops of between 13 and 22 meters because of decreased freshwater inputs from the Omo River are predicted to reduce the lake volume by 42 to 59 percent, and lake shorelines will recede. The reduction of natural floods by the construction of dams will diminish the signal for fish breeding. Fishing is also critical for many pastoral communities.

Pastoralists migrate to Lake Turkana to fish or engage in other economic transactions with fishers when livestock have been lost from prolonged periods of drought or from raids. Income from fishing is a critical alternative source of income to pastoralists to mitigate the impact of these losses. Threats to Lake Turkana affect the ability of pastoralists to use the lake as a buffer against the increased periods of drought that decimate their livestock herds. The lake also forms a physical barrier between the Turkana and ethnic groups inhabiting the other shores.

Its loss will likely make the area less secure. Moreover, states have a core obligation to take the necessary action to mitigate and alleviate hunger as provided for in article 11 2 , even in times of natural or other disasters. Food insecurity in Turkana is not a new issue, and the government has long had an obligation to deploy available resources to progressively realize the right to adequate food. However, based on existing climate modeling, climate change is likely to add additional stressors on food security such as increased temperatures and shifted rainfall patterns that may be less favorable for livestock herding and agriculture.

Although some pastoralists and fishers interviewed by Human Rights Watch were aware that there may be changes to the lake due to developments in the Omo River valley, no one we spoke with was aware of any government plan or action about alternative means of livelihood. The World Health Organization WHO has estimated that climate change will cause , additional deaths globally each year between and Scientific studies have found that the impact of climate change on health and life expectancy in Africa include direct effects from heat stress and indirect effects from the shifting epidemiology of diseases, such as West Nile fever, dengue, malaria, and yellow fever.

Diseases that are waterborne, or relate to poor sanitation stemming from lack of water, are also likely to be influenced by climate change, increasing risks of cholera and typhoid outbreaks and greater rates of diarrhea and trachoma. Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.

One study in Kenya found a relationship between trends in climate since rising temperatures and declining rainfall and childhood stunting, which is an indicator for childhood malnutrition. Turkana has had a long history of chronic malnutrition and some of the poorest health indicators in Kenya, with minimal health investment and infrastructure, staff, and services for its largely mobile pastoralist population, all of which is exacerbated by a growing population.

Parents told Human Rights Watch about a wide range of illness that they and their children suffered, including stomach aches and diarrhea, malaria, malnutrition and trachoma. They said that these illnesses were worse with the most recent droughts, and that when community members are sick they often have to walk long distances to reach a medical clinic.

At a health clinic we visited, the assistant health worker told us about chronic malnutrition in the surrounding communities and the difficulties of having one under-resourced health clinic serve a geographically dispersed population. Jane Ajele, the Turkana County Minister of Health, acknowledged the problems identified by the parents and the impact of the current drought and climate change.

In an interview with Human Rights Watch, she highlighted trachoma, a bacterial eye disease that is transmitted from person to person or through clothing or flies, as of particular concern, with rising incidence resulting from decreased availability of water for hand and face washing. The Constitution of Kenya guarantees every Kenyan the right to the highest attainable standard of health.

Local and global effects of climate change

As part of its obligations under the right to health, the Kenyan government needs to take action to address the acceleration of malnutrition and disease that is in part a result of climate change. In Turkana, access to dry season grazing land and water drives conflict between pastoralist communities, including between the Turkana and the Pokot, and near the Ethiopian border, between the Turkana and the Daasanach. While conflict between Turkana and Daasanach is long standing, local communities on the Western shores of Lake Turkana, including in Nachukule, told us they fear the raids will be more frequent.

Human Rights Watch visited one Turkana community in both early and late On our second visit, we found that the community had moved 20 kilometers south after having been displaced from their dry season grazing lands due to cattle raids by the Dassanach. One of the displaced pastoralists told Human Rights Watch:. But the natural sciences are not the only politicized disciplines. What do scientific findings mean in human terms? An answer is given by economics, which can attach cost estimates to the current impacts and projections of future impacts of climate change.

One such set of estimates is provided in the chapter by Mendelsohn, who comes up p. Economists such as Nicholas Stern in his famous report to the government of the United Kingdom come up with much higher estimates. A lot turns on seemingly technical factors such as the rate of discount used to calculate a present value for future costs.

Depending on the discount rate chosen, we can end up with massive differences in the size of the present value of future costs, and so radically different implications for climate policy. The choice of discount rate turns out to be a major ethical issue, not just a technical economic matter see the chapters by Howarth and R. Further contestation arises once we move beyond the confines of standard economic analysis to contemplate other ethical issues Dietz's chapter , pertaining for example to basic human needs, and the distribution of burdens and benefits of action and inaction across rich and poor, within and across national boundaries, as well as between generations.

Sagoff argues in his chapter that the asymmetry of burdens and benefits across generations means that economic thinking should not be at the core of climate policy analysis. Once we get past controversies over cost estimates and distributions, economics also provides a powerful set of analytics for thinking about the choice of policy instruments to achieve the desired level of mitigation expressed in terms of targets and timetables for total greenhouse gas emissions. Emissions trading requires that some authority sets a cap on total emissions, then issues permits for quantities that add up to that cap.

These permits can then be traded, such that companies for which reducing pollution is expensive can buy permits from those for which reductions are cheaper. The economic theory is very clear, but the politics and policy making is much murkier. It informs many discussions of national policy instruments, and extends to global policy and emissions trading across national boundaries. The discourse affects the content of global governance arrangements, which can even be privatized as carbon traders seek to escape international governmental authority see Paterson's chapter.

Market logic extends too to offsets, whereby polluters can compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions by paying somebody else, for example, to plant trees that will absorb an equal quantity of emissions. What actually happens at ground level in countries where there is weak monitoring capacity is another matter entirely. Unlike conventional markets where one party of the transaction can complain, or at least never transact with the other party again, both parties in offset transactions have every incentive to give misleading information to the public on the real number of trees planted and their actual effectiveness in p.

But whatever their consequences for mitigation, new kinds of climate markets present many opportunities for traders to become wealthy, becoming a constituency pushing for further marketization see Spash's chapter.

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National governments are embedded in market economies that constrain what they can do, and the social realm is often limited by economistic frames and discourse. However, markets are not necessarily just a source of constraint. Markets are made up of producers and consumers who might themselves change their behavior in ways that reduce emissions. The most important producers here are large corporations. Why might they change their ways? Corporate responses to the challenge of climate change have been highly variable see Pulver's chapter , and there is little reason to suppose a significant number of corporations will play a leadership role if governments do not.

The only corporations that do have a clear financial incentive to take the risks of climate change very seriously are insurance companies.

This is especially true of the big reinsurance companies with potentially high exposure to damages caused by extreme weather events. The high hopes once vested in insurance companies by some analysts Tucker on this score seem so far to have produced little in the way of comprehensive action.

A decarbonizing economy would of course have to involve changes in patterns of consumption, whether induced by government policy and price increases, or chosen by consumers through changing mores. Such basic individual and broad cultural changes that affect consumption have been promoted by a variety of social movements, religious actors, and celebrities. Many environmental organizations focus on consumer behavior—from the individual level up to the decarbonization and transition of towns and regions—both as a source of direct change and as a clear economic and political statement.

Luke also insists we understand the dangers of such forms of such behavioral control, even if it does look green. At any rate, changing consumer habits are no substitute for coordinated collective action. In a world where the legitimacy of public policies and other collective actions rests in large measure on the democratic credentials of the processes of their production, it matters a great deal what publics think, and what actions they consequently support, or are willing to p. Initially, many climate scientists, policy makers, and activists thought that the key here was simply getting publics to understand the facts by providing information the point behind Al Gore's documentary film An Inconvenient Truth , for example.

Edited by John S. Dryzek, Richard B. Norgaard, and David Schlosberg

Yet as Moser and Dilling point out in their chapter, just providing information normally has little impact on behavior. Most people get their information via the media, but as already noted there are structural features of mainstream media the reporting only of controversy, which requires two opposing sides that are problematic when it comes to communicating climate change. Thus there remain many failures in public cognition of the complex phenomena attending climate change see Jamieson's chapter.

Public opinion polls often show that people do care, and do want something to be done see Nisbet's chapter ; but there is no necessary urgency. In practice, many issues of more immediate concern and which impose far fewer burdens of cognition trump climate change when it comes to for example voting behavior. Information, scientific or otherwise, is often processed through the lens of existing beliefs formulated in areas of life remote from climate science.

Those beliefs can be very powerful, for better or for worse. Religious beliefs are particularly important in this respect see Kearns's chapter. Publics should not however be understood as simply mass publics, which are problematic when it comes to mastering complex issues simply by virtue of their mass nature. Publics of this sort can be found at many levels: They are organized in many different ways, ranging from community groups to the translocal solidarity identified by Routledge in his chapter to global networks of activists depicted by Lipschutz and McKendry in their chapter.

Concerned publics almost by definition are geared for action in the way mass publics most of the time are not. But the extent of their influence in the face of structural political forces and powerful recalcitrant actors remains highly uncertain. Increasingly, concerned publics advance a discourse of climate justice.

The political philosopher John Rawls once famously proclaimed that justice should be the first virtue of social institutions. Itself disputable, that ideal remains a distant aspiration when it comes to climate change. Considerations of justice have often been marginalized in favor of economic efficiency and aggregate welfare in public policies and intergovernmental negotiations. Yet climate justice does inform policy debates and positions taken in negotiations, as well as political activism. The debate around climate justice has revived an argument within justice theory about the adequacy of proposing principles for ideal situations of the kind Rawls himself proposed.

The alternative task for theory involves addressing major pressing and concrete social and political problems, concerning human rights, poverty, and now the changing climate. Increasingly, justice frameworks are being used in the development of climate policy strategies. The fact is that existing vulnerabilities will be exacerbated by climate change. The costs of climate change and the unintended effects of some policy responses to it will not be evenly distributed, and we need, at the outset, some way to measure the vulnerabilities to be experienced in such an unequal way see Polsky and Eakin's chapter.

Many of the direct costs of climate change itself will, as Mendelsohn points out in his chapter, be felt by the poor in developing countries. Those costs are sufficiently severe to undermine human security in terms of rights and basic needs see Barnett's chapter. Climate change can have many substantial direct impacts on human health, and many secondary impacts if health problems undermine the adaptive capacity of social systems see Hanna's chapter. Many indigenous communities, already living on the margins, are particularly vulnerable see Figueroa's chapter.

These people are of course those with the least political power in global politics in general, and when it comes to climate change in particular. They may have justice on their side, but that alone will not give them an effective voice. Environmental ethicists and climate justice theorists have examined the moral challenges that attend climate change, and what ought to be done in response.

Beyond the science, the economic arguments, the policy differences, and the actions and frames of the various actors in the climate change drama, lies a normative dimension of the crisis. Emerging norms of justice may play a number of roles in regulating the relationships of the whole range of human actors as they confront climate change. As Gardiner in his chapter summarizes, questions of justice concern the procedures around which decisions are made, the unfairness of the distribution of existing vulnerabilities to climate change and the fair distribution of benefits and burdens in the present and near future see also Baer's chapter , the extent and nature of our obligations to both those within and outside our own country international or cosmopolitan justice , responsibility to future generations or intergenerational justice—see Howarth's chapter , and even the potential injustice done to nature itself.

For example, the concept of international justice takes nations as its basic unit of ethical considerability—and as such, national governments can deploy this discourse when it suits their interests to do so. So developing countries can point to the history of fossil fuel use on which developed countries built their economies, such that fairness demands that it is the developing countries that should shoulder the burden of mitigation. The response on the part of the wealthy countries is that for most of this history, their governments had no awareness that what they were doing could change the climate, and so ought not to be held uniquely responsible for future mitigation.

Effective global action on mitigation could benefit from taking a more cosmopolitan approach to justice, one in which people rather than nations are the subjects of moral considerability and responsibility see discussions in chapters by Harris, Baer, and Gardiner. Here, obligations of justice surpass those owed only to those in our own country. Given global climate change, such nationalist limits begin to look irrelevant—as our individual actions affect people outside our own nations, our obligations exceed those borders as well. In this light, rich consumers in China have a global climate responsibility equal to that of rich consumers in the United States.

Pragmatically, as Harris points out, if it introduced measures to restrict the emissions of its own rich, China would then have more credibility in international negotiations when it asked the US cut its emissions. This is just one example of how ethical considerations could have real practical importance.

The larger point is that while the discourse of climate justice can be put in the service of those most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, it can also facilitate resolution of collective problems. Negotiating a context defined by concerned publics, experts, lobbyists, and structural limits on what they can do, governments can choose to act on climate issues. Some of them already do.

Dealing with major climate change issues has however never been a part of the core priorities of any government. Of course environmental policy has been a staple of government activity especially in developed countries since the s. But it remains the case that the environment is not core business in the same way that the economy is. Governments acted swiftly and with the expenditure of vast sums of money in response to global financial crisis in —9.

They have never shown anything like this urgency or willingness to spend on any environmental issue. The difference is easily explained: The second concern of most governments in developed countries has been to operate and finance a welfare state see Gough and Meadowcroft's chapter , which itself is predicated upon continued economic growth.

The core security imperative of government—protection against external threats—has p. Failure on one of these core priorities has the potential for swift catastrophe for any government, be it in terms of fiscal crisis and punishment by voters at the polls, or in the case of security erosion or even loss of sovereignty. Failure when it comes to climate change, where the risks, burdens, and benefits are distributed in complex fashion across space and time, does not yet mean anything at all comparable in the immediacy of its consequences for government. While none of them performs adequately, some national governments do perform better when it comes to climate policy than others, though this variation is not easily explained see Christoff and Eckersley's chapter.

The surprising development here is that the UK has shown signs of trying to break the mold. In stark contrast to its counterparts in the United States and Australia, the leadership of the Conservative Party in the UK has decided to try to appeal to green voters. In the face of the failure—or in the US in the s the blatant refusal—of national governments to substantively address the issue, subnational governments US states such as California, regions, cities, and localities have in many cases adopted policies to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases see the chapter by Bulkeley.

However, while insisting on the importance of subnational action, even its most ardent enthusiasts would not see it as a substitute for effective national and international policy action.


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Despite its seeming refusal to countenance any infringement on its sovereignty of the sort that agreeing as part of a global process to cut its emissions would connote, China could decide to make substantial unilateral cuts see Schreurs's chapter. Chinese policy for the moment remains dominated by the economic growth imperative, but some of those exasperated by the kind of stalemate so common in liberal democratic states think that Chinese style authoritarianism might be capable of more decisive action. However, actually implementing such decisions amid complex circumstances may prove beyond the capacity of authoritarianism,.

However, when it came to the Copenhagen Accord, China dropped the G77 for which it had been a spokesman in favor of a G2 deal with the United States. The governments that compose the G77 generally stress their right to very conventional forms of economic growth that may themselves do little for their rural poor. What could induce national governments to do better? Aside from international agreements of which more shortly , there is some scope for reframing climate issues in ways that would make effective national government action more likely.

That reframing might involve recognition of the security dimension of climate change. Climate change can, as Gilman et al. Security could also refer to the basic security of human needs, as argued by Barnett in his chapter. A security framing does mean emphasizing threat and so fear, in a way that Moser and Dilling in their chapter have identified as problematic in moving public opinion.

And as a comprehensive frame for climate issues, it probably makes most sense for the United States—a global superpower with security interests in all parts of the world that could therefore be affected by impacts of climate change that are only locally catastrophic. In this light, mitigation might actually be an economically profitable option.

This particular reframing has been adopted most extensively in the coordinated market economies of northern Europe and Japan , and as Hajer and Versteeg point out in their chapter, can now also be found very prominently in international negotiations on climate change. But as they also note, there can be a large gap between discourse structuration and discourse institutionalization, where the discourse adopted actually conditions the content of public policies.

A more radical reframing would see national governments adopting resilience rather than economic growth as their core priority see the chapter by Adger et al. Neither coordinated collective action nor discursive reframings can stop at the national level. Climate change involves a complex global set of both causal practices and felt impacts, and as such requires coherent global action—or, at a minimum, coordination across some critical mass of global players. Without such coordination, there is substantial p. Enough players doing this will of course result in little in the way of effective action.

Such is the status quo. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was established in to organize negotiations that eventually involved just about all the world's states. But Kyoto failed to deliver much in the way of actual reductions. The world's largest emitter, the United States, did not ratify the agreement, which imposed no obligations at all on developing countries.

So at the time of writing, the world's two largest economies and largest emitters, the USA and China, are not covered by Kyoto. These are also two of the states that cling most tightly to a notion of sovereignty that cannot be diminished by global governance. Even those states that did ratify the Protocol generally fell far short of the commitments they had registered. What happened at the eleventh hour in Copenhagen was that G was supplanted by G2. China and the United States, two of the most problematic participants in the prior negotiations and when it comes to the very idea of global governance in general, produced a Copenhagen Accord with no binding targets for anyone and no enforcement mechanism for the weak targets that were proclaimed.

While most countries agreed to take note of the Accord, few did so with any enthusiasm, or with any intention to do anything much in consequence. Our authors disagree about the best response to this kind of disappointment, and the very weak international climate regime that it leaves in place. Biermann suggests a number of ways to strengthen the regime, including the establishment of a World Environment Organization on a par with the World Trade Organization, a strengthening rather than abandonment of the UNFCCC itself, and a stronger institutionalized role for civil society organizations many of which push for stronger action on the international stage.