Earth System Governance最新文献

The killing of animals purportedly for conservation generates trade-offs between species conservation and animal protection. Using an Integrative Governance framework, we explain the relationships between these interlinked biodiversity and animal governance systems regarding such “conservation killing” within and between the African and European Unions. Misaligned discourses and institutions, and conflicting power dynamics between actors limit relationships. However, integration has grown moderately, particularly in the EU, due to actors’ shared interest in (“native”) wildlife health and welfare, and through the paradigm of One Health, which stresses the interconnection of animal, environmental and human health. Nevertheless, sustainable conservation practices must also meet societal ethical expectations. Conservation killing falls short in this regard, despite recent growing attention to animal welfare. We suggest greater integration between the governance systems is unlikely to ameliorate this as both are grounded in capitalist anthropocentric structures, which reduce animals to commodities. Transformative governance, instead, entails including animals as actors whose interests warrant protection in order to promote just conservation practices.

Energy communities equip citizens with democratic control over their energy assets, help them capture value locally and create a green, just and decentralized energy system. Such energy communities have grown, replicated their experiences and have been institutionalized in diverse settings. In short, there are plenty of empirical examples of energy communities that have scaled. In this article we explore how varied governance contexts contribute to the scaling of community-based energy governance and in effect the actor constellations of diverse institutional settings. Through a comparative case study analysis based on semi-structured interviews and document analysis, we examined 3 distinct cases: Courant d’Air in Belgium, Coopernico in Portugal and Zuiderlicht in The Netherlands. Each case illustrates a different type of scaling journey and a varied governance context - suggesting that multiple pathways towards scaling exist. Our results show that the mixing of cooperative, state and market logics can potentially result in trade-offs between the democratic potential of energy communities and the efficiencies other logics offer to the energy transition. We argue that an institutional logics framework allows for a clearer understanding of the impact governance settings have on the scalability of energy communities as well as the composition of these countries' energy systems.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) – the creation, enhancement, and upscaling of carbon sinks – has become a pillar of national and corporate commitments towards Net Zero emissions, as well as pathways towards realizing the Paris Agreement's ambitious temperature targets. In this perspective, we explore CDR as an emerging issue of Earth System Governance (ESG). We draw on the results of a workshop at the 2022 Earth System Governance conference that mapped a range of actors, activities, and issues relevant to carbon removal, and refined them into research questions spanning four intersecting areas: modeling and systems assessment, societal appraisal, policy, and innovation and industry. We filter these questions through the five lenses of the ESG framework and highlight several key ‘cross-cutting’ issues that could form the basis of an integrated ESG research agenda on CDR.

Shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) and shared policy assumptions (SPAs) are lauded as a common basis for climate scenario research across disciplines, yet they lack essential legal and governance elements that are indispensable when assessing future development pathways. This article sets out to address this shortcoming by explaining the interrelated but distinct features of law and governance and their downplayed roles in climate scenario research. We explore the extent to which legal and govsternance features are included in the current SSP and SPA development process and then suggest that the substance of legal and governance features in climate scenario frameworks could be enriched in four ways, by: 1) identifying the nuances of legal and policy objectives; 2) assessing the effectiveness of institutions and instruments; 3) integrating the assessment of the flexibility and adaptability of legal and governance systems into the projection of long-term pathways; and 4) responding to the urgent need to integrate climate and energy justice while still cautiously considering normative principles to be opportunities and challenges. We further argue that future climate scenario frameworks should consider law and governance at multiple scales and in distinct contexts to improve the usability, applicability, and reliability of the integrated pathways. Finally, in order to project future risks, this article suggests improvement regarding the processes, including inter- and transdisciplinary inclusion that can potentially be considered when furthering climate scenario frameworks that enhance understanding of the complex, uncertain future and the long-term consequences of certain decisions.

The overwhelming scientific consensus points towards the growing frequency and intensity of climate-induced shocks to the global food system. Historically, public food stockholding – the acquisition, storage and distribution of food stocks – has been an important policy tool used by governments to guard against production shocks by stabilizing supply and prices. However, current global trade rules severely restrict the ability of governments to use public food reserves. World Trade Organization (WTO) rules must be reformed to allow greater scope for governments to build and operate food reserves, in order to respond to emerging food security challenges caused by climate change.

Mini-lateral ‘clubs’ occupy an increasingly prominent place in the international environmental governance landscape. Yet few studies have looked at how differences between clubs influence the results they produce. This paper aims to fill this gap in understanding by testing hypotheses on how different clubs' membership constellations and leadership (connected to large events) affect ambitions in outcome documents of the G7 and the G20. It tests those hypotheses by employing text and data analytic techniques to compare stated ambitions in environmental documents of G7 and G20 over the past two decades. The analysis reveals that the G7’s language is generally stronger than the G20; and that strategic leadership connected to large events may contribute to raising those ambitions. These findings highlight the importance of mini-lateral clubs as forms of environmental governance and, more generally, illustrates the use of text mining in environmental governance research.

Agriculture is the main land use and one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss. In particular, intensive farming practices have contributed to biodiversity loss, which is why many governments have implemented agri-environmental schemes (AES). Farmer collaboration at landscape level is important to achieve effective AES. The Dutch government opted for such an approach and decided that only farmer collectives were entitled to take part in AES. In this paper, we evaluate 36 Dutch farmer collectives. Through the lens of professionalisation, we investigated which characteristics of professionalisation enable farmer collectives to work towards an effective AES in terms of collaboration at landscape level. We used spatial concentration of conservation measures as a measurement of an effective AES and, based on expert judgement, selected five characteristics of professionalisation that directly impact AES effectiveness. We applied a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) in order to explore which of these characteristics singly or in combination contribute most to spatial concentration. We found that different combinations of characteristics of professionalisation enable farmer collectives to work towards spatial concentration. First, we found that working on the maintenance and development of qualifications of participants is for most farmer collectives important to work on more spatial concentration. Second, the combination of having a strategy for agrobiodiversity in combination with working on the qualifications of the field workers is important. And when the network capability or the presence and use of enabling systems are missing, the qualifications of the field workers is important. Based on our findings, we conclude that the qualifications of participants and fieldworkers (i.e., regional coordinator, ecologist and field officer) are the most important characteristics of professionalisation to contribute to spatial concentration at the moment.

As investors and financial intermediaries, private banks are increasingly confronted with climate change concerns. But to what extent do banks identify as the changemakers driving climate alignment forward? To advance this question, this paper analyzes the South African banking sector with a specific focus on Standard Bank and Nedbank as exemplary case studies. Relying on the concept of ‘climate mainstreaming’, we critically assess the banks' annual reports and compare their self-portrayal with publicly available sources on the bank's business practices, chiefly provided by non-governmental organizations and media. We find that Nedbank pushes a holistic narrative of climate change as an inevitable business opportunity. Standard Bank, in turn, relies on a ‘narrative of balance’ between climate change and other profit-oriented investments to safeguard its stakes in the fossil industry. In so doing, this paper sheds light on greenwashing practices within disclosure specifically and the lack of binding corporate regulation more generally.

Science-Based Targets (SBTs) are being developed for companies to contribute to global sustainability goals, including for ‘nature’. The literature has not yet explored multiple understandings of SBTs. We adopt an interpretive approach, using Q methodology to explore framings of SBTs amongst 22 scientists and practitioners engaged in SBT development. Results show two distinct framings: ‘we need science-based targets to help economic systems move towards global sustainability’ and ‘the system itself is unsustainable and needs to change – science-based targets can help’, with areas of agreement and disagreement. They lean towards reformist or radical discourse, at times weaving them together. What kinds of ‘transformation’, if any, are SBTs capable of driving? Conceptualising SBTs as a boundary object, we suggest that sustainability transformations involve paradoxical tensions, including where actors appeal to the powerful to drive change, but this inhibits the most radical discourses. We conclude with potential implications for sustainability science and governance.