Climate Change Governance

Climate change, Governance

The effect of international environmental institutions: how we might learn more

Analysts of international politics can measure and explain the effect of international environmental institutions on the behavior of states and other actors and on the natural environment in three steps. First, we measure the outcome to be explained in terms of goal attainment, defined as the difference, over time or across cases, between actor behavior or the state of the natural environment on dimensions identified by institutional goals and certain end points determined by institutional goals. Second, we assess the effect of an institution in terms of the extent to which the existence or operation of the institution contributes, ceteris paribus, to variation in goal attainment. We transform these two variables into a score of institutional effectiveness to indicate the degree to which institutions contribute to the resolution of the environmental problems that motivate their establishment. Third, we analyze the relationship between institutional effectiveness and specific dimensions of institutional design—such as decision-making rules, membership and access conditions, and the compliance syste

Banking Crisis vs. Credit Crunch? A Cross-Country Comparison of Policy Responses to Dilemmas in Banking Regulation

Restrictive policies aimed at reducing the likelihood of bank failure during recessions tend to increase the probability of a credit crunch. In this paper we infer governments' policy responses to this dilemma by studying the cyclical behavior of bank capital in 1369 banks from 28 OECD countries during the period 1992-98. We find significant differences across countries. In the US and Japan, bank capital is counter-cyclical, that is, the typical bank strengthens its capital base during periods of weak economic activity. In the other countries, there is no relationship between the level of macroeconomic activity and bank capital. From these findings we infer that severe banking crises in the US and Japan may have made policymakers there more vigilant towards unhealthy banks, even when this implies an increase in the risk of a credit crunch. In countries without such crisis experience, policymakers seem to be less concerned about future banking crises. Our results suggest that the strong push by the US for the 1988 Basle Accord may have been a reflection of this increased sensitivity. They also suggest that, to the extent business cycles do not develop in synchronicity across countries and policymakers respond differently to the banking crisis-credit crunch dilemma, current reforms of the Basle Accord, which are designed to tighten regulatory requirements, may encounter difficultie

Do global climate summits influence public awareness and policy preferences concerning climate change?

A survey-embedded experiment implemented around the time of the 2014 annual Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (N ≈ 1200) examined whether such summits are able to increase citizens’ awareness of climate problems. This study finds that exposure to positive or negative cues about the COP increases climate change awareness, particularly among participants who start out with a low level of awareness. Neither positive nor negative cues about the COP significantly affect people’s policy preferences. Our finding resonates with Bernard Cohen’s observation that the mass media may not often be successful in telling people what to think, but they are successful in telling readers what to think about

Water scenarios for the Zambezi River Basin, 2000 - 2050

Consumptive water use in the Zambezi river basin (ZRB), one of the largest freshwater catchments in Africa and worldwide, is currently around 15-20% of total runoff. This suggests many development possibilities, particularly for irrigated agriculture and hydropower production. Development plans of the riparian countries indicate that consumptive water use might increase up to 40% of total runoff already by 2025. We have constructed a rainfall–runoff model for the ZRB that is calibrated on the best available runoff data for the basin. We then feed a wide range of water demand drivers as well as climate change predictions into the model and assess their implications for runoff at key points in the water catchment. The results show that, in the absence of effective international cooperation on water allocation issues, population and economic growth, expansion of irrigated agriculture, and water transfers, combined with climatic changes are likely to have very important transboundary impacts. In particular, such impacts involve drastically reduced runoff in the dry season and changing shares of ZRB countries in runoff and water demand. These results imply that allocation rules should be set up within the next few years before serious international conflicts over sharing the Zambezi’s waters arise

An experimental analysis of consumer preferences towards public charging infrastructure

As the share of battery-electric vehicles (BEVs) in car fleets increases, more and more car holders will need to charge their electric vehicles at public facilities. Designing public charging infrastructure so as to make it attractive to current and future BEV holders thus becomes essential. We implemented a choice experiment with a large sample of current BEV (N = 950) and non-BEV (N = 1,881) holders to examine the relevance of several design features that are widely presumed to be important in this regard: waiting (queueing) time, charging time, price, energy source, and amenities. Mean queueing time turns out to be most relevant, and car holders are also willing to pay for limiting or avoiding (uncertain) queueing times. The main implications for commercial and public charging infrastructure providers are that they should seek to provide fast charging, real-time observability of charger occupancy, and the opportunity to reserve chargers

National Institutions and Global Public Goods: Are Democracies More Cooperative in Climate Change Policy?

This article examines whether democracies contribute more to the provision of global public goods. It thus contributes to the debate on the effects of domestic institutions on international cooperation. The focus is on human-induced climate change, in Stern's words "the biggest market failure the world has ever seen.” Using new data on climate change cooperation we study a cross-section of 185 countries in 1990-2004. The results show that the effect of democracy on levels of political commitment to climate change mitigation (policy output) is positive. In contrast, the effect on policy outcomes, measured in terms of emission levels and trends, is ambiguous. These results demonstrate that up until now the democracy effect has not been able to override countervailing forces that emanate from the free-rider problem, discounting of future benefits of climate change mitigation, and other factors that cut against efforts to reduce emissions. Even though democracies have had a slow start in moving from political and legal commitments (policy output) to emission reductions (policy outcomes), particularly in the transportation sector, we observe some encouraging signs. The main implication of our findings for research on international politics is that greater efforts should be made to study policy output and outcome side by side. This will help in identifying whether more democratic countries experience larger "words-deeds” gaps also in other policy areas, and whether there are systematic differences of this kind between domestic and international commitments and across different policy area

Simple reframing unlikely to boost public support for climate policy

Ambitious policies for limiting climate change require strong public support. But the public’s appetite for such policies, as currently observed in most countries, is rather limited. One possibility for enhancing public support could be to shift the main justification in the public policy discourse on greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation from benefits of reducing climate change risks (the conventional justification) to other types of benefits. Technological innovation and green jobs, community building, and health benefits are widely discussed candidates. The intuition is that re-framing GHG mitigation efforts and their benefits in such terms could make them more personally relevant and more emotionally engaging and appealing to citizens. However, based on results from two survey embedded experiments (combined N=1664), and in contrast to some earlier studies, we conclude that simple re-framing of climate policy is unlikely to increase public support, and outline reasons for this finding. As the added value of other justifications remains unclear at best and potentially nil, sticking to climate risk reduction as the dominant justification seems worthwhile

Globalization and the environment

We study the effects of economic globalization (liberalization of international trade and investment flows) on the environment in the context of a model that integrates standard factor endowment theory (FET) with the pollution haven hypothesis (PHH). Both FET and PHH imply that inward investment burdens the environment while outward investment is favorable for environmental quality. The model suggests that FET and PHH can be discriminated on the basis of the effects of the interaction between trade in goods and inward FDI on the environment. In particular, the interaction is positive under the former and negative under the latter theory. We examine the effects of FDI for SO2 concentrations in a large set of countries during the last two decades. We find that inward FDI is associated with higher concentrations while outward FDI is associated with lower concentrations. And that increased FDI amplifies the effects of increased trade. The last result constitutes prima facie evidence in favor of the PHH over the FET. --FDI,trade,environment,pollution haven,factor endowments,SO2