Over the last 10 years, the concept of a global ‘carbon budget’ of allowable CO2 emissions has become ubiquitous in climate science and policy. Since it was brought to prominence by the Fifth ...Assessment Report of the IPCC, the carbon budget has changed how climate change is enacted as an issue of public concern, from determining the optimal rate of future emissions to establishing a fixed limit for how much emissions should be allowed before they must be stopped altogether. Exploring the emergence of the carbon budget concept, this article shows how the assessment process of the IPCC has offered scientific experts the means to modify how the climate issue is problematized, and discusses the implications of this ‘modifying-work’ for the politics of climate change. It finds that the ‘modified climate issue’ must be seen as an outcome of the ordinary work within established scientific and political institutions, and the agency these institutions afford scientists to enact the issue differently. On this basis, it argues that the case of the carbon budget holds important insights not only for the relationship between climate science and policy, but also for the pragmatist literature on ‘issue formation’ in STS.
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A history of the global carbon budget Lahn, Bård
Wiley interdisciplinary reviews. Climate change,
May/June 2020, Volume:
11, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
The idea of a global “carbon budget”—the cumulative amount of “allowable” carbon emissions to meet a global temperature target—has become established as a central concept in climate science and ...policy. As a concept explicitly aimed at mediating between scientific knowledge and policymaking, the carbon budget has always been actively positioned in relation to ongoing policy debates, but the specific forms this concept has taken have varied. This article reviews key contributions to the carbon budget literature from the 1980s until today, in order to identify how scientists have positioned the concept between the worlds of science and policy. Three main shifts are identified in how the policy relevance of the carbon budget is envisaged in the scientific literature. The shifts can be related in part to developments in climate science, and in part to changes in international climate policy. The history of the carbon budget thus illustrates how science and policy interacts to shape dominant understandings of how climate change can be known and governed.
This article is categorized under:
Climate, History, Society, Culture > Ideas and Knowledge
The near‐linear relationship between cumulative carbon emissions and global temperature rise, as illustrated in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on 1.5°C (IPCC, 2018, p. 105).
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
Norwegian welfare and prosperity have thrived in step with a growing petroleum sector dominating Norway's economy. However, new knowledge about the limits of the world's carbon budget and how this ...might render some fossil fuel reserves 'unburnable' now presents carbon as a potential risk. Carbon risk may be climatic, in that petroleum extraction contributes to global greenhouse gas emissions; or it could be economic, as current investments might end up as 'stranded assets' in a world seeking to move beyond oil. Since at least 2013, policy advocacy coalitions have employed the carbon risk concept to challenge two fundamental institutions in Norwegian petroleum resource governance: the licensing of offshore exploration areas and the petroleum tax policy. Drawing on official documents and media statements, as well as workshops and interviews with a broad range of stakeholders in Norwegian climate and petroleum policy, this paper analyses policy processes in which notions of carbon risk have been at the centre of disagreements between opposing advocacy coalitions challenging or defending the status quo of Norwegian petroleum resource governance. We identify a growing mismatch between a discernible change in Norwegian public discourse, on the one hand, and inertia in the petroleum resource management regime, on the other. Increased rhetorical connections between carbon risk and petroleum policies have caused tension and debate that challenge the governance of Norwegian petroleum production.
Key policy insights
Petroleum policy and climate policy have been institutionalized into separate policy fields at the national level in Norway.
This separation is increasingly challenged by advocacy coalitions pointing to the climatic and economic risks of future oil and gas production.
While the coalition highlighting economic risks has been more successful than the one pointing to climatic risks of oil production, neither has so far had material effects on the practices of Norwegian petroleum governance.
The existing international and EU-level climate policy regime helps legitimize a continued separation between climate- and oil policymaking in Norway.
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BFBNIB, GIS, IJS, KISLJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM, UPUK
Policy relevance is the
raison d’être
for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), yet few studies have analysed what the concept entails, not least from the perspective of key target ...groups for the IPCC. We present a framework which enables analysis of how different
actor strategies
(heating up and cooling down) contribute to shape relevance-making in specific
political situations
when IPCC knowledge is interpreted and used. Drawing on empirical evidence from the reception and use of the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15) across three policy making levels, the paper demonstrates different examples of creating policy relevance. First, the paper analyses the origin of SR15 and the failed attempts to formally acknowledge SR15 in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. Second, it investigates how SR15 has been used to develop and legitimize the EU net-zero target and the European Green Deal. Third, the paper demonstrates how SR15 has been used both for legitimizing and challenging climate policy at the national level, using the example of Norway. In sum, the reception of SR15 demonstrates that while IPCC outputs have resulted in controversy at the international level, they have been highly relevant at regional and national levels. The analysis shows that policy relevance is context-dependent and indirect—created through processes involving many actors, institutions, and types of knowledge. Situating these findings within the larger shift in the international climate regime implied by the Paris Agreement, the paper concludes with a set of empirically grounded recommendations for how the IPCC may approach the goal of policy relevance post-Paris.
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CEKLJ, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
The Paris Agreement is built on a tension between the common goal of limiting warming to 1.5 °C and the differentiation that follows from the principle of equity. Scientific expertise is commonly ...seen as providing important means to overcome this tension, for example in the Agreement’s “global stocktake”, which is said to be undertaken “in the light of equity and the best available science”. This raises the question of how scholarly communities best can contribute to deliberations on equitable differentiation in the effort required to meet common temperature goals. To discuss this question, the paper looks to the literature within Science and Technology Studies on the role of science in policymaking, where disagreement exists over the merits of “heating up” controversies through politicization, versus “cooling down” issues by seeking consensus. It assesses two cases in which scientific expertise has engaged with questions of equitable effort-sharing in international climate politics: The “Bali Box” of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, and the “Civil Society Equity Review” undertaken prior to COP21 in Paris. Based on a comparison of the two cases, it is argued that scientific contributions should not shy away from highlighting conflicts in values and interests, and that “heating up” discussions about climate justice may be a valuable contribution to overcoming the tensions of the Paris Agreement.
•Common understandings of climate change see science and policy as clearly separable.•This carries a risk of ‘flip-flop movements’ if scientific purity is challenged.•The IPCC ‘Bali Box’ of emission ...reduction targets is analysed as a case of this.•Climate targets are better understood as simultaneously political and scientific.
Our understanding of climate change is dominated by quantified scientific knowledge, with science and politics usually seen as operating separately and autonomously from one another. By investigating a particular fact box in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), this paper challenges the assumption that science and policy can be clearly delineated. The so-called “Bali Box” gained a prominent role in negotiations leading up to the Copenhagen Conference in 2009, as it was widely seen as providing a “fixed point” – a quantified scientific answer to the question of equitable effort-sharing between North and South. This understanding of the Bali Box triggered a backlash, however, when the hybrid character of the box as an assemblage of science, political considerations and moral judgements became evident to actors in the negotiations. The paper employs the notion of boundary objects to analyse the history of the Bali Box, and argues that climate politics will benefit from a richer understanding of the interplay between science and policy. Moving beyond characterizations that place the Bali Box on either side of a clear boundary between the scientific and the political, we suggest focusing instead on what the Box as a hybrid product is doing, i.e. how it simplifies and quantifies, what it covers and what it leaves outside.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
Norges internasjonale klimapolitikk har alltid hatt som målsetting å oppnå et mest mulig enhetlig globalt klimaregime. Parisavtalen reflekterer i stedet – og bidrar til å forsterke – et fragmentert ...klimaregime med et mylder av nye samarbeidsformer mellom land. I denne artikkelen trekker vi frem tre trender som preger det nye klimaregimet: et skifte fra klima- til grønn industripolitikk; økende spenning mellom klima- og handelspolitikk; og tettere sammenkobling mellom klima- og petroleumspolitikk. Vi viser hvordan nye klimaklubber både lager nye spilleregler og oppstår som motsvar til disse. Vi ønsker med dette å vise hvordan et fragmentert klimaregime fører til nye rammevilkår og utfordringer for norsk klimapolitikk. Klimaklubbkvalene omfatter både problemstillinger knyttet til hvem Norge skal samarbeide med og hvordan slikt samarbeid skal formaliseres, men også konsekvensene av å samarbeide med noen fremfor andre.
Abstract in English:Norway’s Climate Club QuandaryNorway’s international climate policy has always aimed at building a unitary global climate regime. However, the Paris Agreement reflects and accelerates the fragmentation of the climate regime and has been accompanied by the emergence of a myriad of new climate initiatives between countries. This article highlights three trends that characterize the emerging climate regime: a shift from climate to green industrial policy; rising tension between climate and trade policy and pressure to merge climate and petroleum policy. We illustrate how climate clubs both create new rules within the climate regime and are formed in response to such rules. Navigating this new international landscape will be a central challenge for Norwegian climate policy moving forward. Norway’s climate club quandary in this context implies choices between different political strategies and competing interests and with possible consequences for what type of climate regime Norway will contribute to. The climate club quandary is both related whom Norway seeks to collaborate with and the formalization of such collaboration, but also the consequences of collaborating with some countries and not with others.
Klimapolitikk i oljestaten Lahn, Bård
Norsk sosiologisk tidsskrift,
12/2023, Volume:
7, Issue:
4-5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Makt- og demokratiutredningen konkluderte for 20 år siden med at det norske folkestyret er under press som følge av blant annet rettsliggjøring, markedsretting og overnasjonal styring. Samtidig ...påpekte utredningen at Norge er blitt en «oljestat» og problematiserte hva det betyr for forventningene til statens rolle. Mindre problematisert var hva «oljestaten» betyr for utformingen av norsk klima- og miljøpolitikk og håndteringen av det utredningen kalte Norges «klimadilemma». 20 år etter kan vi konstatere at olje og klima har blitt en stadig mer sentral konfliktlinje i norsk politikk, og at klimapolitiske hensyn i økende grad utfordrer oljestaten. Samtidig har den faktiske forvaltningen av oljeressursene endret seg lite, og norsk olje- og gassutvinning er langt høyere i dag enn man forventet for 20 år siden. Hva forteller dette oss om den demokratiske styringen av klimapolitikk og oljeressurser i Norge? For å diskutere dette spørsmålet gjennomgår artikkelen hvordan klimapolitiske krav og målsettinger har utfordret norsk oljepolitikk i løpet av de siste 20 årene, og hvilke politiske endringer disse utfordringene har medført. Gjennomgangen viser at oljepolitikken har blitt sterkt politisert som følge av nye klimakrav, og at dette har gitt økt debatt om den demokratiske styringen av oljeressursene. Flere av metodene som har blitt brukt for å utfordre oljestaten er imidlertid knyttet til nettopp de prosessene som Makt- og demokratiutredningen assosierer med folkestyrets forvitring – overnasjonal styring, markedsretting og rettsliggjøring. Dette åpner for å nyansere Makt- og demokratiutredningens advarsler og å framheve verdien av politisering for aktiv demokratisk debatt og stillingtaken i spørsmål som berører sterke, etablerte næringsinteresser.
Makt- og demokratiutredningen konkluderte for 20 år siden med at det norske folkestyret er under press som følge av blant annet rettsliggjøring, markedsretting og overnasjonal styring. Samtidig ...påpekte utredningen at Norge er blitt en «oljestat» og problematiserte hva det betyr for forventningene til statens rolle. Mindre problematisert var hva «oljestaten» betyr for utformingen av norsk klima- og miljøpolitikk og håndteringen av det utredningen kalte Norges «klimadilemma». 20 år etter kan vi konstatere at olje og klima har blitt en stadig mer sentral konfliktlinje i norsk politikk, og at klimapolitiske hensyn i økende grad utfordrer oljestaten. Samtidig har den faktiske forvaltningen av oljeressursene endret seg lite, og norsk olje- og gassutvinning er langt høyere i dag enn man forventet for 20 år siden. Hva forteller dette oss om den demokratiske styringen av klimapolitikk og oljeressurser i Norge? For å diskutere dette spørsmålet gjennomgår artikkelen hvordan klimapolitiske krav og målsettinger har utfordret norsk oljepolitikk i løpet av de siste 20 årene, og hvilke politiske endringer disse utfordringene har medført. Gjennomgangen viser at oljepolitikken har blitt sterkt politisert som følge av nye klimakrav, og at dette har gitt økt debatt om den demokratiske styringen av oljeressursene. Flere av metodene som har blitt brukt for å utfordre oljestaten er imidlertid knyttet til nettopp de prosessene som Makt- og demokratiutredningen assosierer med folkestyrets forvitring – overnasjonal styring, markedsretting og rettsliggjøring. Dette åpner for å nyansere Makt- og demokratiutredningens advarsler og å framheve verdien av politisering for aktiv demokratisk debatt og stillingtaken i spørsmål som berører sterke, etablerte næringsinteresser.
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