Three Faces of Climate Justice Dolšak, Nives; Prakash, Aseem
Annual review of political science,
05/2022, Letnik:
25, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Voluntary programs have become widespread tools for governments and nongovernmental actors looking to improve industry's environmental and regulatory performance. Voluntary programs can be ...conceptualized as club goods that provide nonrival but potentially excludable benefits to members. For firms, the value of joining a green club over taking the same actions unilaterally is to appropriate the club's positive brand reputation. Our analysis of about 3,700 U.S. facilities indicates that joining ISO 14001, an important nongovernmental voluntary program, improves facilities' compliance with government regulations. We conjecture that ISO 14001 is effective because its broad positive standing with external audiences provides a reputational benefit that helps induce facilities to take costly progressive environmental action they would not take unilaterally.
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