Institutional and organizational capacities for adapting to climate change in the least developing countries

In our research, we focus on three action arenas: village development, agriculture and forestry. The reason for this is that adaptation capacity is a function of both the intensity of the impacts caused by climate change and the resources to which a community has access and entitlement. Local development therefore is a key issue in increasing adaptive capacities, and in this area the relevant government organizations are the Village Development Committee (VDC), the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation (MFSC). In each of these ministries and departments, we conducted several key informant interviews at all levels of the organization, from the head offices to the field outposts. We also conducted long open-ended interviews in the villages

Lost in Translation

Did Latin American privatisation polices fail because of flawed implementation of fundamentally sound policies or because privatisation policies were themselves seriously flawed? Using the Brazilian electric power reforms as a narrative tool, this paper examines the causal chain assumed by large-scale privatisation policies implemented as part of structural reform and adjustment programmes. The paper concludes that many privatisation policies and the economic stabilisation programmes within which they were embedded were not mutually reinforcing as policymakers had expected and that in their application, much of what privatisation theories claimed was lost in translation

Trees and Water:Mainstreaming Environment in the Graduate Policy Analysis Curriculum

In this article, we describe and evaluate a teaching project embedded within a core policy analysis course that allows students to engage with a major public policy issue—in our case, environmental policy—without a corresponding cost in terms of reducing curricular space for developing general policy analysis skills. We think that a win-win arrangement is attainable: a fairly intense immersion into a key thematic area of public policy and a correspondingly more vivid, realistic, and integrated treatment of general policy analysis. The project has the potential to allow teachers and students to explore in depth and develop the skills and appreciation required for practice in any major policy area, even in tightly packed graduate policy programs.</p

The Framing of Sustainable Consumption and Production in SDG 12

This paper examines the processes of formulation of UN Sustainable Development Goal 12 (SDG 12)–‘Ensure SustainableConsumption and Production Patterns’–and its targets and indicators. We argue that business interests have steered its nar-rative of sustainable growth. The outcome of the SDG 12 negotiations reflects a production- and design-centered perspectivethat emerged in the 1990s and has a business-friendly regulatory approach and faith in solutions through new technologies.We show how the targets and indicators emerged in debates between national governments, UN agencies, civil society andprivate sector organizations–and how they reflect both the political process and technical and practical considerations intranslation of a broad concept into the SDG format. While the emergence of SDG 12 as a standalone goal stems from a pushby developing countries to build pressure on developed countries, and its presence may open space for attention to this areain the future, many of its targets were watered down and left vague. The indicators to measure progress on the targets fur-ther narrow the scope and ambition of Goal 12, whose current content does not adequately reflect earlier more transforma-tive conceptualizations of Sustainable Consumption and Production

Overcoming barriers to climate smart agriculture in India

Purpose – This paper aims to report on a case in which encouraging climate-smart agriculture in the form of better irrigation techniques in India can contribute to both climate change mitigation and adaptation goals by improving resource-use efficiency. It provides grounded institutional analysis on how these transformations can occur. Design/methodology/approach – The authors based their research on three complementary approaches: institutional, sociological and technical. The institutional approach analyzed actors and interests in the waterenergy nexus in India via over 25 semi-structured key informant interviews. The sociological approach surveyed over 50 farmers and equipment suppliers for insight into technology adoption. The technical component analyzed water and energy consumption data to calculate potential benefits from transitioning to more efficient techniques. Findings – Because policymakers have a preference for voluntary policy instruments over coercive reforms, distortions in policy and market arenas can provide opportunities for embedded actors to leverage technology and craft policy bargains which facilitate Pareto superior reforms and, thereby, avoid stalemates in addressing climate change. Enlarging the solution space to include more actors and interests can facilitate such bargains more than traditional bilateral exchanges. Practical implications – The analysis provides insights into crafting successful climate action policies in an inhospitable institutional terrain. Originality/value – Studies about climate change politics generally focus on stalemates and portray the private sector as resistant and a barrier to climate action. This paper analyzes a contrary phenomenon, showing how reforms can be packaged in Pareto superior formats to overcome policy stalemates and generate technology-based climate and environmental co-benefits in even unpromising terrain such as technologically laggard and economically constrained populations

Privatization and liberalization in the Brazilian electric power industry

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, February 2006.Includes bibliographical references.In 1996, when Brazil was well-underway to privatising and liberalising its electric power industry, few would have predicted that within five years the reforms would be a shambles. Like its neighbors Argentina and Chile, Brazil based its electricity reforms on the orthodox therapies of privatisation and liberalisation. The industry was well-positioned to benefit from the reforms: it was technically sophisticated, relatively efficient, and attractive to both domestic and foreign investors. Electricity rates had been suppressed for a long time, but they were not populist and it was the residential customer who cross-subsidised industry. As such, political backlash to increasing electricity prices was unlikely and, in fact, Brazil had successfully begun to raise electricity rates as early as 1993. Despite these fortuitous circumstances, the reforms did not induce sufficient investment and Brazil suffered a massive electricity rationing in 2001. For ten months all classes of consumers had to cut consumption by 20%. By 2002, the electricity reforms were politically dead and none of the candidates in Brazil's presidential elections that year, not even the incumbent administration's nominee, favoured continuing with them.(cont.) My dissertation explains why the reforms failed, approaching the issue from three different perspectives-the policy, the economic and the industrial. Collectively, these essays explain why sectoral neoliberal reforms had a short shelf-life.by Sunil Tankha.Ph.D

Overcoming barriers to climate smart agriculture in India

Purpose: This paper aims to report on a case in which encouraging climate-smart agriculture in the form of better irrigation techniques in India can contribute to both climate change mitigation and adaptation goals by improving resource-use efficiency. It provides grounded institutional analysis on how these transformations can occur. Design/methodology/approach: The authors based their research on three complementary approaches: institutional, sociological and technical. The institutional approach analyzed actors and interests in the water-energy nexus in India via over 25 semi-structured key informant interviews. The sociological approach surveyed over 50 farmers and equipment suppliers for insight into technology adoption. The technical component analyzed water and energy consumption data to calculate potential benefits from transitioning to more efficient techniques. Findings: Because policymakers have a preference for voluntary policy instruments over coercive reforms, distortions in policy and market arenas can provide opportunities for embedded actors to leverage technology and craft policy bargains which facilitate Pareto superior reforms and, thereby, avoid stalemates in addressing climate change. Enlarging the solution space to include more actors and interests can facilitate such bargains more than traditional bilateral exchanges. Practical implications: The analysis provides insights into crafting successful climate action policies in an inhospitable institutional terrain. Originality/value: Studies about climate change politics generally focus on stalemates and portray the private sector as resistant and a barrier to climate action. This paper analyzes a contrary phenomenon, showing how reforms can be packaged in Pareto superior formats to overcome policy stalemates and generate technology-based climate and environmental co-benefits in even unpromising terrain such as technologically laggard and economically constrained populations

Disinterested agents or mismatched plans? : Public administration capacities and climate change responses in the least developing countries

Purpose: Developed countries agreed at COP15 to pay US$100bn annually for adaptation and mitigation in developing countries. This paper aims to evaluate how prepared are donors and recipients to spend this money well by analyzing institutional and organizational capabilities for climate change adaptation in least developed country (LDC) administrations using the case of Nepal, a country which can be considered to be an archetypal LDC. Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted over 100 in-depth structured qualitative interviews with government officials from across the organizational chain in the ministries concerned with climate change, ranging from