Climate Change and the Challenge of Non-equilibrium Thinking

Climate change is happening, that much is certain. But in what way? How much? And with what impacts? Complex, non-linear models try to predict trends and patterns, but, inevitably, each model is different, parameters are difficult to estimate and the precise impacts remain uncertain. We live in an uncertain world, one where the knowledge about both likelihoods and outcomes remains uncertain (Stirling 1999). The striving for increased predictive power over the consequences of climate change has yielded results in the past few decades. We clearly know a lot more than we did. But this is not enough to allow climate science to inform people to direct the future.While global circulation models and forecasting approaches will improve with better technology, more empirical data and faster numbercrunching capacities, the nature of climate– ecosystem interactions is such that non-linearity and the complexity of dynamic interactions means that uncertainty will always be present. This article explores the implications of this, drawing lessons from the drylands of Africa, where non-equilibrium thinking has challenged conventional approaches to pastoral development.European Research Council (ERC

The Art of Compromise

Policy is modeled as the outcome of negotiations between two three-party parliamentary states. An election in jurisdiction A determines the composition of the legislature that selects a representative to negotiate an intergovernmental policy agreement with the representative from the legislature of jurisdiction B. Negotiations are modeled using Nash’s (1950) bargaining framework, modified to account for a simultaneous legislative ratification vote. Though agreements favor the legislative representative least willing to compromise, agreements between the bargainers may not follow the ordering of the parties’ ideal policies. An electoral outcome where support for the center party comes from extreme voters may emerge.Vote balancing; intergovernmental bargaining; legislative ratification; willingness to compromise

When the powerful drag their feet

We examine the timing of group decisions that are taken by weighted voting. Decision-making is in two stages. In the second stage, players vote on a policy restriction. In the first stage, players vote to determine the timing of the second-stage decision: “early”, before players’ types are revealed, or “late”. Players differ in both size and voting power. We show that players with greater power tend to prefer a late vote, whereas less powerful players tend to want to vote early. By contrast, large players tend to prefer an early vote and small players a late vote. We present evidence from the literatures on corporate governance, international relations, European Union governance, and oil extraction. We examine an extension in which players choose the qualified majority threshold besides the timing of the second-stage vote

Sustainability

As a consummately effective ‘boundary term’, able to link disparate groups on the basis of a broad common agenda, ‘sustainability’ has moved a long way from its technical association with forest management in Germany in the eighteenth century. In the 1980s and 1990s it defined – for a particular historical moment – a key debate of global importance, bringing with it a coalition of actors – across governments, civic groups, academia and business – in perhaps an unparalleled fashion. That they did not agree with everything (or even often know anything of the technical definitions of the term) was not the point. The boundary work done in the name of sustainability created an important momentum for innovation in ideas, political mobilisation, and policy change, particularly in connection with the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held in Rio in 1992. All this of course did not result in everything that the advocates at the centre of such networks had envisaged, and today the debate has moved on, with different priority issues, and new actors and networks. But, the author argues, this shift does not undermine the power of sustainability as a buzzword: as a continuingly powerful and influential meeting point of ideas and politics.ESR

Regulatory manoeuvres : the 'Bt cotton' controversy in India

This paper asks what regulation actually means in practice in the post-economic reform context of India, taking the case of biosafety regulation and Bt cotton as a case. The last few years have been a test case for such regulations, culminating in the formal approval of Bt cotton for commercial production in 2002. The paper explores various dimensions of regulation – narrow and broad, “front end” and “back end”, technical and political. With the opening up of the economy and the encouragement of external investment in areas like biotechnology, biosafety regulation is one area retained by the central state. But how effective is this, given the role of powerful commercial players and the highly diverse set of practices found at more local, state levels? By examining the Bt cotton story in India – and in Karnataka state in particular – the paper demonstrates how – in practice – regulations emerge through a political process of negotiation between a wide range of actors in multiple sites. The result is usually an uneven, and often diverse, compromise, based on a combination of technical, social, political and, sometimes, moral considerations. It is the process of co-construction of policy, operating in a hybrid world between science, business and policy which is key for our understanding of regulation in practice. A particular focus of this paper is the interaction between national and state level processes in the Indian federal system, and an examination of how regulatory debates – formally located at the national level within national ministries and departments, firmly within the Delhi policy circuit – influence and, in turn, are influenced by what happens at a state level. Across these sites – all under the banner of “Bt cotton” – a number of quite different debates are being had: over the efficacy of the technology; over the changing nature of agriculture; over the control of agriculture and food by multinationals; over the role of the state in a federal system; over the relevance of regulation in a post-reform economy, and so on. Different actors, deploying different narratives about regulatory policy, join up with different allies at different times. There is no simple story. Yet the sheer complexity of the policy process, and the way this is embedded in the political and social fabric of India, is revealing and important for any discussion about what appropriate policy responses might be to the regulatory dilemmas presented by agricultural biotechnology in the developing world. Despite the advocacy of uniformity and harmonisation in regulatory policy, this paper shows how there clearly can be no one-size-fits-all solution

Global engagements with global assessments : the case of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD)

The IAASTD – the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development – which ran between 2003 and 2008, involving over 400 scientists worldwide, was an ambitious attempt to encourage local and global debate on the future of agricultural science and technology. Responding to critiques of top-down, northern-dominated expert assessments of the past, the IAASTD aimed to be more inclusive and participatory in both design and process. But how far did it meet these objectives? Did it genuinely allow alternative voices to be heard? Did it create a new mode of engagement in global arenas? And what were the power relations involved, creating what processes of inclusion and exclusion? These questions are probed in an examination of the IAASTD process over five years, involving a combination of interviews with key participants and review of available documents. The paper focuses in particular on two areas of controversy – the use of quantitative scenario modelling and the role of genetically-modified crops in developing country agriculture. These highlight some of the knowledge contests involved in the assessment and, in turn, illuminate four questions at the heart of contemporary democratic theory and practice: how do processes of knowledge framing occur; how do different practices and methodologies get deployed in cross-cultural, global processes; how is ‘representation’ constructed and legitimised; and how, as a result, do collective understandings of global issues emerge? The paper concludes that, in assessments of this sort, the politics of knowledge needs to be made more explicit, and negotiations around politics and values, framings and perspectives needs to be put centre-stage in assessment design. Keywords: agriculture; policy; science; innovation; participation; deliberation

Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: A Framework for Analysis

The concept of ‘sustainable livelihoods’ is increasingly important in the development debate. This paper outlines a framework for analysing sustainable livelihoods, defined here in relation to five key indicators. The framework shows how, in different contexts, sustainable livelihoods are achieved through access to a range of livelihood resources (natural, economic, human and social capitals) which are combined in the pursuit of different livelihood strategies (agricultural intensification or extensification, livelihood diversification and migration). Central to the framework is the analysis of the range of formal and informal organisational and institutional factors that influence sustainable livelihood outcomes. In conclusion, the paper briefly considers some of the practical, methodological and operational implications of a sustainable livelihoods approach

Making policy in the "new economy" : the case of biotechnology in Karnataka, India

This paper is a story of the making of a policy, one that included many different players, located across a variety of sites. By tracing the origins of the millennium biotechnology policy in Karnataka state, south India, examining the content of and participants in the debate that led up to it, and analysing the final result and some of its consequences, the paper attempts to understand what policy-making means in practice. Who are the policy-makers? What is a policy? What are the technical, political and bureaucratic inputs to policy-making? These questions are asked for a much hyped, hi-tech sector – biotechnology – seen by some as a key to future economic development, and central to the “new economy” of the post-reform era in India. The paper argues that a new style of politics is emerging in response to the changing contexts of the “new economy” era. This is particularly apparent in the hi-tech, science-driven, so-called knowledge economy sectors, where a particular form of science-industry expertise is deemed essential. The paper shows how the politics of policy-making is a long way from previous understandings of the policy process in India, based on the assumptions of a centralised planned economy where states danced to the centre’s tune and the private sector was not a major player. Biotechnology with its global R and D chains, its internationalised market for products or contract research, its multi-million dollar venture capital requirements and its need for top-level scientific expertise is worlds away from this earlier context. The new politics of policy-making, the paper argues, is characterised by the involvement of an influential business-science elite, able to push their demands through groups, task forces and commissions. Being associated with success in a global, competitive economy, key individuals provide iconic symbols of great value to politicians, and become important policy entrepreneurs in the new space opened up by the post-reform, federal politics of India. But such individuals, while projecting the assured image of global success, are also local, and great play is made of their Bangalore roots. Biotechnology in Karnataka, this paper argues, has got intimately wrapped up in such a new politics of policy-making, and this has some major consequences for how biotechnology is seen in the context of the economic development of the state, and the policy prescriptions that flow from this