Transcript Toward De-Centred Climate Governance in South Asia

Toward De-Centred Climate Change
Governance in South Asia
Navroz K. Dubash
Centre for Policy Research
Presented at IUCN Commission on Environmental Law
Conference on
Climate Change Law and Governance in South Asia
New Delhi
August 13-14, 2010
1
Stepping Back
• Climate Change governance
– Do we have climate change governance in
India/South Asia?
– Do we need climate change governance?
• If no, business as usual
• If yes …
– How should climate change governance be
conceptualized?
– What are the objectives of climate change
governance?
– How should climate change governance be
implemented?
2
Conceptualizing CC Governance
Why a Co-Benefits Framing?
• Co-benefits: Climate change co-benefits of
development actions
• Political acceptability and principle
– Historical responsibility and differentiated responsibility
• Regulating carbon is hard
– Requires a transmission mechanism to existing
governance framework
– Carbon markets unlikely to serve this need
• Sectoral approach
– Institutions are organized around sectors, not carbon
– Challenge is to integrate climate objectives into existing
institutions
3
Objectives of CC Governance
• Promoting mitigation and adaptation as part of a
multiple objective problem (co-benefits)
• Identify full range of co-benefits
– Do existing mechanisms capture the range?
• Accelerate implementation of co-benefits actions
– Climate as a political opportunity to better implement
what we should do anyway
• Identifying and costing climate (non co-benefits)
measures
• Dynamic: anticipating changing trajectories
– Mitigation
– Adaptation
4
Implementing CC Governance
Approach
• Beyond old school top-down command
and control regulation
• Expand the toolkit
• Multiple levels and institutions
• Role of procedures and information
• Role of socialization
5
Implementing CC Governance
Where are we now?
•
•
•
•
•
Stroke of the Pen Regulation
Top down
Command and control
Legislation or policy led
Eg. Vehicle standards, mandatory building
codes
– Note that these are not carbon based
6
Implementing CC Governance
Expanding the Toolkit
• Regulation and (environmental) governance
– Reflexive law
– Governance as learning through communicative
rationality
• Multilevel Governance
– Integration across scales
• Global Administrative Law
– Procedural safeguards as an instrument of
accountability
7
CC Governance as Multi-Level
• Ministries
• Urban and local bodies
– Municipalities
– Panchayats
• Regulators for electricity, water
• Professional associations and other such
“gatekeepers”
• Educational institutions
• Networks
8
Role of Procedures and
Information
• Force consideration of options by bureaucracies
– E.g. Carbon accounting for infrastructure
• Procedures as a “contingent opportunity structure”
– Create spaces for action
– Enabled by information
– E.g. Regulatory hearings
• Enables mobilization of interested parties
– “Beneficiaries of compliance” e.g.. Solar industry
– “Victims of non-compliance” e.g. Representatives of
flood prone areas
• Positive feedback with global climate change
regime
– reporting mechanism
9
Processes of Socialization
• From a “logic of consequences” to a “logic of
appropriateness”
• Institutions as site of socialization
– E.g. Associations of architects
• Importance of communicative rationality
– Webs of dialogue/circles of deliberation
– Model-mongers and norm entrepreneurs
• E.g.. Friedman: IT meets ET
• Shifts in epistemic communities
– E.g. From state-led electricity to electricity
markets to clean energy services
10
Concluding Thoughts
• Co-benefits should be more than laissez faire
• Approach: Harness and steer rather than
dictate or override
• Short run change will come by shifting
incentives
• Long run change will come through realigning goals and processes of socialization
• Need attention to
– Multiple levels
– Multiple institutions
– Multiple levers
11
Thank you
[email protected]
12
Conceptualizing CC Governance
What Approach in Practice?
• Sectoral approach: beyond mitigation and
adaptation
• Focus on leveraging and using institutions,
at multiple scales
• Broaden range of institutions, regulatory
levers and approaches
13