Earth System Governance最新文献

Net Zero pledges have become the most prominent expression of political and business commitment to climate action in the 2020s. The article examines the relevance of this policy framework within the diverse context of Central American countries, which exemplify the varied experiences of middle-income economies outside the G20. The countries in the region have crafted long-term strategies and short-term policies amid rising climate ambition under significant capability gaps and the unfulfilled promises of climate development finance. This Perspective calls on the earth system governance community to draw on evidence from a larger and more diverse set of local circumstances to define expectations of climate target setting and the integration of carbon removal into climate policy. The article highlights the continued relevance of issues like capacity gap, for instance, to complete GHG inventories or to establish a carbon removal policy. But also the importance of past failures of the climate regime, notably the unfulfilled promises of finance under the Kyoto Protocol, which continue to influence policy debates in Central America.

In view of the multiple challenges faced by agriculture, agroforestry can promote multifunctional farming landscapes. While the law is a decisive factor for the adoption of agroforestry, it is not as yet comprehensively addressed in agroforestry and governance research. We operationalize Ostrom's social-ecological systems framework to analyze agri-environmental laws at EU, German federal and state level using doctrinal and non-doctrinal legal research methods. We show that current legal provisions disincentivize farmers to establish agroforestry system and do not adequately address the benefits and risks of agroforestry systems for ecosystem functions and services and thus overall multifunctionality. We identify terminological misconceptions on the term ’agroforestry’, contradictions between subsidy law and command-and-control law, and a lack of tailored steering towards multifunctionality as major legal barriers to the promotion of agroforestry. Therefore, the example of agroforestry illustrates the challenge inherent in reconciling agricultural and environmental targets in agri-environmental law.

Satellites permit (near) real-time visibility of a wide range of environmental conditions, across large areas, and to diverse audiences. In climate risk management, this technology is becoming entangled with parametric insurance technology. In areas with large uninsured populations and scarcity of environmental data, satellite-based parametric insurance is increasingly promoted as an efficient way to provide coverage against extreme weather events. Satellites can facilitate payouts for events like tropical cyclones using environmental proxies (e.g., wind speed) and demographic data, bypassing traditional post-disaster assessments. Using qualitative methods, we investigate how the entanglement impacts the understanding, management and governance of climate disasters. We find that both technologies reduce on-the-ground complexities through how such disasters are perceived, anticipated, and governed. The entanglement intensifies the depoliticization of climate disasters and further compromises climate justice. This development in climate risk governance is crucially relevant to consider in the ongoing Loss and Damage Finance negotiations.

This article focuses on how short-termism impacts on the quality of urban development and, in turn, both population and planetary health. The first section of the paper clarifies key terms - short-termism, health, urban development and upstream - then summarises the context of urban development in the United Kingdom, and the evidence linking urban environments to population and planetary health. The main analysis section draws on data from interviews with 132 participants carried out between May and September 2021. Using the Commercial Determinants of Health framework, six thematic areas are identified: Policy & Political Economy; Legislation and Regulation; Commercial Actors; Underlying Drivers (Power); Externalities; and Partnership. Analysis suggests 17 key messages, the majority of which point to the need for stronger government intervention, a position supported by private sector, if fairly enacted.

Bioeconomy policies aim at fostering economic growth while solving the sustainability challenges of the fossil-based economy. However, these policies do little to discuss the resilience challenges of bioeconomies and the bio-based production systems on which they rest. Specifically, the environmental stresses that are likely to threaten the delivery of the bioeconomy's desired functions are barely addressed. This paper aims to understand why the salience of environmental resilience challenges is low in bioeconomy strategies. We conduct an exploratory comparative analysis of the policy design processes of six countries - Malaysia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy and Germany - building on expert interviews and a conceptual approach that emphasizes the importance of the policy design space. Our findings suggest that key factors in explaining the low salience of environmental resilience challenges are the predominantly economic motivation among leading authorities and the under-representation of environmental actors across policy design spaces.

Science-policy interfaces are influential institutions that support policymakers in addressing complex environmental challenges. However, the power that SPIs wield in this capacity has been largely overlooked by the existing literature, which has primarily focused on the effectiveness of SPIs, often portraying them as apolitical and policy-neutral institutions.

Drawing on an integrative literature review, this article proposes a shift from effectiveness towards justifying the power of SPIs through assessing their legitimacy. We develop a framework for enhancing the democratic and epistemic quality of SPIs that comprises 12 criteria across the three dimensions of input, throughput, and output legitimacy. Input legitimacy criteria include inclusivity, consideration of multiple knowledge systems, and transdisciplinarity. Throughput legitimacy criteria address process accessibility, transparency, reflexivity, conflict management, and accountability. Output legitimacy criteria cover efficacy, accessibility, understandability, and dissemination.

The article provides a pathway for SPIs to foster both knowledge-based and participatory decision-making, by providing scholars and practitioners an evaluative tool to bridge the potential tensions between expertise and democratic representation in environmental governance.

Interlinked water and climate impacts are increasingly crossing borders via global supply chains. A recent wave of supply chain regulations, based on human rights and environmental due diligence (HREDD), has emerged with the goal of holding companies accountable for adverse impacts throughout their supply chains. We develop an analytical framework to theorize how key factors grounded in domestic contexts shape how companies put HREDD in practice, focusing on water and climate risks. Our framework distinguishes between knowledge and transparency; domestic policies; and actor constellations and power. We apply this framework to study how large agricultural producers in Brazil (mal-)adapt to increasing water scarcity and climate change impacts, contributing to local water conflicts. Subsequently, we analyze how multinational companies have addressed these domestic factors in their HREDD systems. Our study provides a nuanced understanding of current trends and challenges of transnational business governance to effectively target cross-scalar climate and water risks.

Tipping points in the Earth system could be passed within the Paris Agreement's temperature goal range (1.5°C–2°C). Tipping processes are a feature of complex Earth system dynamics that present major governance challenges not addressed by existing global governance institutions. The common governance toolkit is a poor match for dealing with tipping processes, especially non-linear change, and radical intertemporality. To support the development of effective responses to anticipated, rapid state changes in the Earth system, there is an urgent need for new interdisciplinary research programs focused specifically on tipping-point governance. We distinguish two domains of action in a multi-phase framework - prevention and impact governance - and identify key research areas and questions that need to be addressed. These include developing governance principles, identifying actors and institutions that should be involved or need to be created, and determining the appropriate temporal and spatial scales for governance efforts.

If international environmental agreements (IEAs) are to remain relevant over time, the institutional capacity to adjust them to changing circumstances, referred to here as adaptability, is an important asset. Yet, while some IEAs include various adaptability features, others do not. This paper develops the concept of affinity, defined as the varying sense of connection between negotiating countries, and argues affinity is a major driver of adaptability variation. Two rationales may explain why negotiators include adaptability provisions in IEAs. When affinity is low, negotiators likely use adaptability as a safeguard in case cooperation does not go according to plan or to gather more information about other signatories before further cooperation. By contrast, when affinity is high, they can use adaptability as a springboard for long-term expansive cooperation. I test both hypotheses on a sample of 1137 IEAs and find that adaptability is negatively associated with affinity, supporting the safeguard rationale.