Three Faces of Climate Justice Dolšak, Nives; Prakash, Aseem
Annual review of political science,
05/2022, Letnik:
25, Številka:
1
Journal Article
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There is overwhelming consensus about the science of climate change. Climate politics, however, remains volatile, driven by perceptions of injustice, which motivate policy resistance and undermine ...policy legitimacy. We identify three types of injustice. The first pertains to the uneven exposure to climate change impacts across countries and communities within a country. Socially, politically, and economically disadvantaged communities that have contributed the least to the climate crisis tend to be affected the most. To address climate change and its impacts, countries and subnational units have enacted a range of policies. But even carefully designed mitigation and adaptation policies distribute costs (the second justice dimension) and benefits (the third justice dimension) unevenly across sectors and communities, often reproducing existing inequalities. Climate justice requires paying careful attention to who bears the costs and who gets the benefits of both climate inaction and action.
This paper examines whether US cities’ membership in voluntary climate clubs improves the municipal bond ratings issued by S&P, Moody’s, and Fitch. We suggest that only clubs focused on climate ...adaptation could help cities signal their resilience to climate risks and their ability to service their municipal bonds. Yet, club membership is only a signal of intent. By itself, it does not offer concrete evidence that cities have adopted adaptation policies or enhanced their resilience to climate risks. We examine three climate clubs: ICLEI, whose membership obligations cover climate and other environmental issues; C40, whose scope covers both climate mitigation and adaptation; and 100 Resilient Cities (100RC), which focuses on adaptation only. Employing a two-way fixed effects model for a panel of 80 US cities from 1995 to 2018, we find that 100RC membership leads to a small improvement in bond ratings. This has important policy implications: Assurances about implementing adaptation policy, as opposed to evidence about how adaptation reduces climate risks, could have spillover effects on municipal finance. In such cases, climate adaptation could have tangible implications for city-level finances.
Laws restricting foreign funding to domestically operating nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have proliferated in developing countries. This is puzzling because Western powers support the norm ...that NGOs are critical for democracy and development, recommend governments partner with NGOs, and sometimes use trade sanctions to encourage adherence to this norm. We examine whether rising trade with China influences the onset of NGO restrictions. China, which has emerged as an important export destination, articulates a different norm of state sovereignty over NGOs and does not sanction developing countries that enact restrictive NGO laws. Analysis of 153 developing countries from 2000 to 2015 finds that increasing exports to China may double the risk of NGO crackdown, but only when accompanied by declining exports to Western democracies. NGO scholars should recognize there are multiple norms about state-NGO relationship and that norm acceptance is influenced by the economic clout of the power that espouses a particular norm.
Can businesses voluntarily adopt progressive environmental policies? Most environmental regulations are based on the assumption that the pursuit of profit leads firms to pollute the environment, and ...therefore governments must impose mandatory regulations. However, new instruments such as voluntary programs are increasingly important. Drawing on the economic theory of club goods, this book offers a theoretical account of voluntary environmental programs by identifying the institutional features that influence conditions under which programs can be effective. By linking program efficacy to club design, it focuses attention on collective action challenges faced by green clubs. Several analytic techniques are used to investigate the adoption and efficacy of ISO 14001, the most widely recognized voluntary environmental program in the world. These analyses show that, while the value of ISO 14001's brand reputation varies across policy and economic contexts, on average ISO 14001 members pollute less and comply better with governmental regulations.
This article attempts to understand the recent social history of Kannauj, a small town in North India famous for manufacturing ittar and associated products. Social history is captured by ...understanding the interconnectedness of society, economy and politics. The article argues that various social networks—meshed, cluster-based and transactional—facilitate business in ittar and associated products and also shape everyday politics of economic life interconnecting economy, society and politics.
Governments enact environmental regulations to compel firms to internalize pollution externalities. Critics contend that regulations encourage technological lock-ins and stifle innovation. ...Challenging this view, the Porter-Linde hypothesis suggests that appropriately designed regulations can spur innovation because (1) pollution reflects resource waste; (2) regulations focus firms' attention on waste; and (3) with regulation-induced focus, firms are incentivized to innovate to reduce waste. This article explores the regulation–innovation linkage in the context of voluntary regulations. The authors focus on ISO 14001, the most widely adopted voluntary environmental program in the world. Examining a panel of 79 countries for the period 1996–2009, they find that country-level ISO 14001 participation is a significant predictor of a country's environmental patent applications, a standard proxy for innovation activity. The policy implication is that public managers should consider voluntary regulation's second-order effects on innovation, beyond their first-order effects on pollution and regulatory compliance.
The voluntary and civil society sector plays important roles in climate policy, mitigation and adaptation, especially given the pervasive government and market failures in this policy domain. Does ...the quality and quantity of scholarship published in nonprofit-focused journals reflect the topic’s importance? This article reviews voluntary sector scholarship on climate issues and serves to introduce Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly’s first organized collection of research on the voluntary sector and climate change. We begin by summarizing and commenting on the findings of a modified systematic literature review of past research on this subject. We then introduce the other five articles published in this symposium, place them in the context of past literature, and discuss their potential contributions to helping researchers expand the conversation and the knowledge on this topic in future work. Finally, we outline ideas and issues for future research.
Laws that restrict foreign funding to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) can depress voting through two mechanisms. First, they can signal a democracy recession. Consequently, citizens might fear ...rigged elections where their vote will not influence who forms the next government. Second, by denying funding to NGOs, these laws can undermine NGOs’ ability to generate social capital, which is crucial to mitigate collective action problems associated with voting. Since 1990, 13 of Africa’s 54 states have enacted laws restricting foreign funding for NGOs. Drawing on the 2016 Afrobarometer survey (36 countries, 53,936 respondents), we find support for the argument that restrictive NGO laws reduce citizens’ electoral participation in national elections probably by signaling democracy recession, and not by undermining social capital that foreign-funded NGOs are supposed to generate. In fully democratic countries, respondents are around 94% more likely to report having voted in a recent national election even after controlling for restrictive NGO laws.
We examine Twitter data to assess the impact of media exposes on the reputations of two international nonprofits, Oxfam and Save the Children (STC). Using a random sample of 6794 Tweets, we study the ...daily gap between positive and negative sentiments expressed towards these organizations. The “unweighted gap” and the “weighted gap” (weighted by the number of followers) of the Twitter handle follow broadly the same trajectory with high fluctuation in response to new negative or positive media stories. Twitter handles with large audiences amplify variability in weighted gap. While Oxfam’s reputation did not fully recover to pre-Haiti levels even 6 months after the scandal, STC’s reputation returned to pre-scandal levels in 8 days, although it fluctuated in response to new revelations. Overall, reputation recovery for both organizations was aided when they received celebrity endorsements and focused public attention on their positive activities, especially by linking to visible global events.
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