ReviewWidening the scope of policies to address climate change: directions for mainstreaming
Introduction
There is ample evidence now that anthropogenic climate change poses serious threats to development (IPCC, 2007). Despite international agreement, laid down in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1992) that dangerous human interference with the climate system should be prevented, climate policy faces many challenges (see amongst others Barrett, 1998, Victor, 2001). One of them is that many climate-relevant decisions continue to be taken in different policy areas with little or no regard to climate change. Both mitigation of and adaptation to climate change require actions in many sectors of society, but climate change concerns are so far hardly integrated in the decision-making in those sectors. Most analyses of post-2012 climate policy so far have focussed on the design and stringency of the post-2012 agreements within the UNFCCC or alternatives to the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol (see e.g. Aldy et al., 2003, Höhne, 2005). This paper1 aims to assess the inter-linkages between climate change policy and a number of other policy domains and the opportunities and challenges for mainstreaming climate change therein (Huq et al., 2004, Huq and Reid, 2004). The policy domains of poverty reduction, rural development and agriculture, disaster management, energy security, air quality and trade and finance are examined for such inter-linkages.
The contention in this paper is that the effectiveness of climate change policies can be enhanced by mainstreaming climate change in other policy areas. Establishing appropriate linkages between functionally linked issues enhances the opportunities for problem solving and can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of policy making. Realisation of this potential, this paper argues, requires climate policy makers to widen their scope and go beyond the UNFCCC framework. This paper, hence, explores the possibilities to widen climate change policy by providing possible directions for mainstreaming and establishing institutional and organizational inter-linkages between climate change policy and a number of relevant policy areas (Asselt et al., 2005; Bouwer and Aerts, 2006). The paper in this way contributes to the discussions on a post-2012 climate regime.
The aim of a mainstreaming strategy, as part of climate policies, is to capture the potential in other policy areas and sectors for implementing climate-friendly and climate-safe development pathways (Munasinghe, 2002). It would help to enhance the climate change regime by increasing policy coherence, minimising duplications and contradictory policies, dealing with trade offs and capturing the opportunities for synergistic results in terms of increased adaptive capacity and lower emissions. It may also help to make climate change policies more acceptable to both industrialised and developing countries (Davidson et al., 2003, Gupta, 1998, Gupta and Hisschemöller, 1997). The importance that countries for example attach to health and air quality can result in addressing climate change indirectly, but only if these policy activities are well aligned.
It is however also clear that a mainstreaming strategy comes with challenges of its own. We identify four main problems. Firstly, during recent decades, the number of international (environmental) treaties and the institutional density on the international level increased dramatically. This has taken up a large part of the political manoeuvring space. Given the existence of different regimes, with their own rules, dynamics, culture and ambitions, improving policy coherence and mainstreaming climate change into them may lead to friction. Climate change is often only one of many issues that need to be addressed and a risk of mainstreaming overload arises. Secondly, existing international policy frameworks are usually not designed to promote mainstreaming and the organisational structures with their vested interests complicate this further. This often results in a lack of cooperation, coordination and joint decision-making on different levels, hindering any mainstreaming strategy. Thirdly, there is the issue of communication and understanding. Different communities operate on different spatial and time scales, have different priorities and speak different languages. This is especially the case for climate change: a long-term problem characterised by intrinsic uncertainties. And fourthly, it needs to be acknowledged that climate change is not always synergetic with other policy areas. Between climate change and energy security of supply for example, clear trade-offs can be identified for coal-producing countries. Improving on institutional inter-linkages help dealing with these trade-offs (OECD, 2005, Kok et al., 2006).
This paper aims to strike a balance between the opportunities and limitations that a mainstreaming strategy has on offer for future climate policies. In the analysis, a distinction is made between climate change adaptation (Section 3) and mitigation (Section 4), as the interactions are notably different for both elements of climate policy. In these sections, the following issues are subsequently addressed. It starts with an analysis of what the potential synergies and trade-offs between climate change and other policy areas are. Although in some areas, modelling exercises are available to arrive at quantitative estimates of synergies (particularly in the field of air quality and climate change mitigation) in most there is insufficient quantitative information to pursue the same level of precision. Subsequently, we identify policy options for mainstreaming. Although, we recommend directions for mainstreaming, to go deeply into this for every policy area is beyond the scope of this paper. This has two main reasons. The paper would become overly expansive and the general message, that there is a considerable underused cost-effective potential for climate change mitigation and adaptation that can be exploited through mainstreaming, would be lost in detail. Furthermore, in mitigation but particularly in adaptation, it is highly context dependent, whether a particular recommendation can be carried out and would be effective. To conclude, this paper suggests ways forward on the institutional level to make better use of the possible synergies between climate change and the other areas (Section 5), and ends with a discussion of the conclusions (Section 6).
Section snippets
Approach
The approach in this paper is to start from development and societal priorities of countries and sectors to identify opportunities for widening the scope of climate change policy. So, this paper looks for opportunities realising such primary objectives as poverty alleviation, improving health, food and energy security, while also realising climate benefits. By aligning development and climate objectives, mainstreaming climate change adaptation and/or mitigation can help to “make development
Widening climate change adaptation efforts
Adaptation to climate change comprises all efforts to reduce vulnerability to the impacts of climate change (IPCC, 2001b). Vulnerability is a function of exposure, sensitivity to impacts and the inability to cope or to adapt. This section discusses the material inter-linkages, possible measures and policy options for mainstreaming climate adaptation in poverty reduction, rural development and agriculture, and disaster management.
Widening climate change mitigation efforts
Mitigation of climate change includes all anthropogenic efforts that reduce greenhouse gas emissions or enhance their sinks (IPCC, 2001a). Greenhouse gas emissions arise from almost every thinkable economic activity through the use of fossil fuel-based energy or changes in land use. This section will discuss the material inter-linkages, possible measures and policy options for mainstreaming climate change mitigation in security of energy supply, air pollution and health, and trade and finance.
Institutional and organisational inter-linkages
This section examines the institutional and organisational inter-linkages to identify ways in which the impacts of international institutions and organisations can be enhanced. International organisations have to satisfy the demand for coordination in areas where the actions of individual countries do not lead to the best outcome for everyone. In trans-boundary environmental issues, international treaties have mushroomed over the past decades (Raustiala and Victor, 2004). The institutional
Discussion and conclusions
Currently, the potential of mainstreaming climate change adaptation and mitigation remains under-exploited. This paper has identified and assessed potential directions to widen the climate regime by mainstreaming climate change adaptation and mitigation in a number of policy areas. Implementing this strategy could enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the climate regime. As it is clearly going beyond what is currently discussed and agreed upon within the UNFCCC, a mainstreaming strategy
Acknowledgements
This research was originally supported by the Netherlands Research Programme on Climate Change, Scientific Assessment and Policy Analysis. The complete report, on which the article is largely based is “Beyond Climate: Options for broadening climate policy” and is available via www.mnp.nl. We thank Harro van Asselt, Stefan Bakker, Cees van Beers, Frank Biermann, Laurens Bouwer, Joyeeta Gupta, Jan van Heemst, Bert Metz, Jan Verhagen and three anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier
Marcel Kok has a background in public policy and environmental sciences. He works as a senior policy analyst on global sustainability issues at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. The main focus of his work is on development and climate issues, vulnerability and governance.
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Marcel Kok has a background in public policy and environmental sciences. He works as a senior policy analyst on global sustainability issues at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. The main focus of his work is on development and climate issues, vulnerability and governance.
Heleen de Coninck's background is in atmospheric chemistry and climate change. As a scientific researcher at the unit Policy Studies of the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN), she focuses on international climate policy. She also pursues a PhD in the field of international technology-oriented agreements for climate change at the Institute of Environmental Studies of the Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam (IVM).