CLIMATE CHANGE

GOVERNANCE
Lecture 2
15 Feb 2024
C.C Governance
• Kooiman’s (1993:4) idea that “... governing refers to the totality of interactions, in which public as well as
private actors participate, aimed at solving societal problems or creating societal opportunities; attending
to the institutions as contexts for these governing actions; and establishing a normative foundation for all
those activities.”
• Climate change and its impacts threaten the natural resource-based livelihoods of South Asia, putting
poor and marginalized communities at risk.
• Issues such as governance of adaptation at different levels remain poorly studied in the context of South
Asia.
• Technocratic, top-down, and aid-driven strategies dominate climate change governance without focusing
on values or the societal relevance of climate change risk reduction options.
• The River systems of the Brahmaptura, the Ganga, and the Indus, which benefit from melting snow in the
lean season, are likely to be particularly affected by the decrease in snow cover”.
• To respond proactively, the GoI launched several efforts to manage and mitigate the impacts of changing
Himalayan river systems. Indian central government cancelled a series of dams that were set for
implementation near the River Ganga’s glacial headwaters.
• A decision was also made to make the first 100 km of the Ganga’s Himalayan flow an Ecologically
Sensitive Zone upon which the GoI will not allow large development projects.
• There are residents who believe that no matter what may happen to the regional or even the
global ecological balance, the Ganga will remain resilient due to the strength of her divine
powers.
• The wealth of scientific data compiled by the IPCC indicates that the coming years will witness a
rise in global temperatures and a proliferation of dust and black carbon deposits that can impact
the integrity of glacial bodies and their ecosystems.
• Immerzeel projected an annual increase in temperatures of about 0.06°C from 2000 to 2100. This
increase amounts to a 0.6°C rise in Himalayan temperatures per decade. The trends indicate that
warming in the Himalayan mountains and the Tibetan plateau may be three times greater.
• Several scholars have called for the acceleration of climate change mitigation and governance
efforts that align with residents’ needs and capacities.
Governance of Climate Adaptation

• The governance of climate adaptation involves the collective efforts of multiple societal actors
to address problems, or to reap the benefits, associated with impacts of climate change.
• Governing involves the creation of institutions, rules and organizations, and the selection of
normative principles to guide problem solution and institution building.
• Although much adaptation is likely to be very local and by private parties, coordination among
households, organizations, and regions will also be need to achieve key collective objectives,
such as flood protection, through adaptation. This means that adaptation requires governance.
• Governing is seen as directed behavior, involving government and nongovernment parties,
aimed at (re)solving a problem, or at reaping the opportunities that a problem presents.
• Adaptation is usually described as something that needs to occur at the local or regional level,
perhaps with some facilitation or assistance from higher levels.
Problem Choices
• One of the most difficult choices confronting governors relates to which
problems to address among all those that concern the public (Dror 1971), how to
define, and ultimately how they should be governed.
• Decision makers often find themselves drawn to particular problems and
problem framings because they appear to fit with the way in which they are
confronting other problems. This raises new issues.
• Adaptation has variously been framed as a problem of minimizing risks and
sensitivity of people and nature to expected climate impacts, or as a problem of
developing the capacity to cope with just extreme weather events.
• It might also be framed in terms of competitiveness between governments,
where early adapters are able to gain some form of economic advantage over
late adapters.
Level Choice
• Massey et al. (2015) imply that although every policy will in one form or another
manifest itself at the lowest possible level, perhaps affecting individual citizens, the
level at which the policy is designed and implemented will have an impact on its
possible effectiveness and distributional impact.
• Should policy makers take a “wait and see” approach, waiting for better scientific
assessments; for impacts to become manifest; for other countries to take a lead
they can follow?
• Jordan et al. (2010) state that identifying an optimal intervention sequence is
fraught with difficulty, particularly in a multidimensional domain such as adaptation
to climate change that may affect many quite distinct sectors of society and nature.
• Timing and sequencing dilemmas revolve around issues such as risk taking, profit
making, and legitimacy.
Modes of Governance
• The main choice here is between creating and imposing a set of enforceable
social norms hierarchically, i.e., through the instrument of regulation,
allowing them to emerge and disseminate via market-based instruments in
markets, or relying on flatter and more network-based modes in which trust-
based incentives play a more important role.
• The governance of adaptation requires monitoring, planning, regulation,
decision making, and distributive systems, dispute resolution, and juridical
review.
• Societal consensus on the public interest is based on approved laws, rules,
and plans and is nowadays often combined with a deontic (a rule and norm-
based) concept in which plans, decisions, etc. are judged by their ethical
content and a rights-based approach.
• There is a revival of elements of both a utilitarianism approach, such as
aggregating individual preferences and the use of a cost-benefit analysis,
as well as a dialogical approach in which the public interest is a result of a
deliberative process among concerned stakeholders and affected parties.
• The first type involves “... the distribution of services and benefits to
particular segments of the population”. Regulatory policies involve “...
conflicts between two groups or coalitions of groups, with one side
seeking to impose some sort of control on the other side”. Finally,
redistributive policies involve “... the deliberate efforts by government to
shift the allocation of wealth, income, property, or rights among broad
classes or groups of the population”.
Deliberative Governance
• The design and negotiation of much of the climate change adaptation policies and
programs are outside the reach of ordinary citizens. This situation is especially true
in the rural South where international agencies heavily influence and fund climate
change adaptation policies and interventions.
• There has been an increasing recognition that climate change adaptation programs
also need to be locally relevant. Integrating local values, perceptions, and
knowledge in their design and implementation is important for several reasons.
• Not considering local contextual factors might result in unanticipated policy effects
which could lead to increased vulnerabilities of the most marginalized.
• Local people have an intimate knowledge of their own vulnerabilities through their
physical and mental experiences and their own understanding of the causes of
their vulnerabilities
• In the analysis of the National Adaptation Plan in Bangladesh; such programs might
fail to address critical questions on who participates, how is participation
orchestrated, and whose knowledge and expertise are privileged.
• Such issues resonate with the context of several other countries in the global South
that are characterized by elite-dominated bureaucracies and low downward
accountability of functionaries and politicians.
• Gastil and Black (2008) propose a framework with a set of principles for effective
deliberation. They distinguish the analytic process, which outlines the functional
components and steps of deliberation such as “ create information base,” “prioritize
key values,” “identify solutions” and the social process, through which deliberation
occurs.
• Knowledge production and use are inherently political, especially when a high degree
of complexity, uncertainty, and strong economic and political interests come into play.
Nepal
• The process initiated in Nepal was an action research project
implemented over a period of 2 years which culminated in a series of
deliberative dialogues on vulnerabilities that gathered together farmers,
policy-makers, experts, and civil society representatives.
• Examined the extent to which deliberation practices supported the
development of a shared problem framing with a focus on fairness and
competence.
• Dhanusa District: marginal farmers, operating landholding of less than 0.5
ha, represent 50 percent of landowners. Access to groundwater in the
region is highly unequal due to monopolistic markets, lack of access to
electricity, and high diesel prices that disadvantage tenant farmers.
• The research team first conducted focus group discussions with men and women
farmers separately about social and climate change.
• The objective of these public dialogues was to engage a deliberation whereby the
participants could discuss their views and perceptions of vulnerability,
acknowledge and respect others’ views, and engage in a constructive dialogue.
• Findings: The first topic selected by both the group of men and women farmers
was on migration—a phenomenon affecting not only daily lives but also, as shown
in the films, farming, local collective action, access to irrigation water, and
monetization of the dowry system.
• The failure of agriculture has been one of the major driving factors of long-term
male out-migration in India and overseas, creating new forms of vulnerabilities for
women left behind through increased workload and new responsibilities.
• They state that there is no water in public canals because “the river is dammed
upstream and they [the government] do not allow water to come downstream” and
blame the government for neither providing tube wells nor electricity for pumping.
• They also stress the lack of response they received from district-line government
agencies and local government bodies when they filled in applications to get funding
to build a concrete dam for irrigation.
• They point to a defunct government system which does not adequately consider the
voices of the poor people, raising issues of distributive justice and representation.
• What farmers coined as “the failure of agriculture” goes beyond crop failure. It has
resulted from a combination of factors from increased wages for laborers and labour
shortage due to male out-migration, to lack of irrigation, market access, and increased
costs of inputs and diesel. Farmers clearly used the videos to put forward their claims
and requests to the government.
Implementation Choices
• Should adaptation be implemented in the classical environmental policy
format of top-down steering with one central authority, or can there be
multiple centers of authority to decide how best adaptation action could be
taken at various levels?
• Should governments follow a deterrence or compliance approach to ensure
that policy goals are met? What sanctions, if any, should there be for
noncompliance?
• From a top- down perspective, the clarity of goals and the administrative
strength of policy instruments are considered to be important requirements.
By contrast, the bottom-up approach accepts that goals are ambiguous and
implementation “gaps” are the norm rather than the exception.
Challenges & Design Principles
• (from article)
Dimensions of change

• Depth of Change: Depth refers to the level of change: superficial change means improving
current practices without altering underlying assumptions, whereas in-depth change aims to
radically change these practices by altering values, frames, and logics underlying the system.
• Watzlawick, Weakland, and Fisch (1974) were among the first to introduce the distinction
between first-order and second-order change. First-order change occurs within existing
mind-sets. It aims to do things better within the existing logic, which itself remains
unchanged.
• Second-order change breaks through mind-sets and opens them up for discussion by
reframing problems and practices and understanding them from a different perspective.
• Bartunek and Moch (1987) added the concept of thirdorder change. This refers to the
development of the capacity of the people involved to reflect on the schemata underlying
the system, of which they themselves are part.
• Transformation or higher order change is advocated to break through mind-sets by
stimulating actors to critically reflect on existing assumptions, challenge prevailing
norms and interests, and learn to deal differently with climate change adaptation.
• Scope of Change: Scope generally refers to the scale of that which is to be changed:
a broad scope generally refers to large-scale, system-wide change, whereas a
narrow scope addresses specific elements or subsystems that require change.
• From the climate change perspective, a narrow scope is associated with
incremental adaptation where only parts of the system change for example, a
household or neighbourhood.
• Transformational change aims to alter regulatory, legislative, or bureaucratic
regimes; financial institutions; and technological or biological systems.
• Speed of Change: Most scholars emphasise that transformational change is a
long and expensive process: “the process may include moments of insights and
a relatively sudden shift in views, perceptions, and attitudes; however, there is a
long way to go until ideas are translated into rules, procedures, technologies,
and structures, and until a new order is established”.
• Despite these long time horizons, most scientists, policy-makers, and activists
concerned about the impacts of climate change and its assumed irreversible
character call for rapid responses.
• Pelling, O’Brien, and Matyas (2014) add an interesting nuance to this perceived
impatience by arguing that incremental change to adapt to climate change can
result in short-term achievements, but can also avoid more deeply rooted
change and consequently delay transformation.
Feasibility of Transformational Change
• Vermaak (2013) argues that the depth and the scope of change are at odds
with each other; one way is to go for scope by organising a large-scale, first-
order change; the second is to go for depth by organizing a small-scale, third-
order change.
• First, because in-depth change requires people to challenge existing cultures,
dominant rationalities and habitual practices, which cannot be enabled
through rolling out a largescale intervention over the whole organisation in a
standardised way.
• Governance systems are very prone to institutional pressure that reflects
existing power relations.
• It is easier for individuals to adopt and change, but not for societies as a whole.
Continuous Transformational Change
• “differentiation between incremental and transformative adaptation, although indistinct,
is important since it affects how we approach adaptation, how we integrate it into
planning and policy, and how we allocate adaptation funding in both developed and
developing countries,” this distinction blocks the development of meaningful governance
interventions to adapt to climate change.
• Suggestion is to go beyond this dichotomy, following Burnes who states that “small-scale
incremental change and large-scale radical-transformational change will need to be
rejected in favour of a third kind which lies between these two, and which is continuous.”
• Continuous change has proven to be particularly relevant for organisations and networks
that operate in ambiguous high-velocity environments. These dynamic environments
force organisations to have the capability to change as rapidly as the environment.
• In order to survive, organisations cannot afford periods of stability and relatively slow
planned change trajectories.
Amplifying small wins

• The intervention strategy sensemaking is about recognising patterns of continuous

adjustments and making them more salient through stories, framing, and translation.
• Governance actors can use their own resources, like access to (social) media,
speeches, or policy programmes. The idea is that other people become informed and
inspired by these stories about successful climate change adaptations, and start
adjustments in their practices or create conditions to encourage other people to do so.
• The intervention strategy coupling is about organising connections between, for
example, experiments at a regional level and developments on a national or global
level, between widespread local experiments, or between various adaptation practices
in different policy domains. The intervention stimulates social learning across
boundaries by deliberately bringing people from different configurations into contact
with one another.
• The strategy of integrating is about connecting the new experiences
with adaptive practices to the existing institutions.
• To upscale innovative adaptations and to prevent them from losing
their connection with existing configurations and then fading away, it
is necessary to integrate innovative practices into the activities and
resources of existing organisations, without losing its transformational
strengths.
Delta Programme
• In an ideal situation of sensemaking, the Delta Programme would have
started with identifying what small-scale, in-depth changes were already
ongoing that fit into its ambitions and policy goals. However, it decided to
immediately install a new programme structure.
• Initially, it also overlooked the emerging informal regional networks of
stakeholders concerned with the effect of climate change.
• Due to political pressure of local authorities, regional subprogrammes were
set up, governed by dual steering committees consisting of a policy director of
one of the involved national departments and stakeholders from the regional
networks. During the whole period, the Delta Commissioner in person put a
lot of efforts in sensemaking in terms of telling the story of the Dutch Delta
Programme both in the Netherlands and abroad.
• The emergence of innovative integrating concepts enhanced connections between
key decisions. For example, the new policy concept of multi-layered safety connected
flood safety norms (first key decision) to the spatial adaptation as a flood risk strategy
(second key decision).
• By the end of 2014, the programme delivered the Delta Decisions that formed the
start of a new phase of programming, more focused on implementation. This raised
the question of the optimal integrating strategy. For several policy-makers, the bypass
structure was only of temporary value and implementation could be best established
by integrating the programme within the traditional line organisation.
• Another group of stakeholders resisted this default solution, arguing that reducing
such a complex issue as climate change adaptation to a simple policy plan problem
that can be implemented in the traditional administration would not result in the
envisioned transformational change.
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDRxfuEvqGg
Activity

• Look for effective Climate Change Governance Models