Governance traps in climate change politics : reframing the debate in terms of responsibilities and rights

Newell, Peter and Bulkeley, Harriet and Turner, Karen and Shaw, Christophe and Caney, Simon and Shove, Elizabeth and Pigeon, Nicholas (2015) Governance traps in climate change politics : reframing the debate in terms of responsibilities and rights. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 6 (6). pp. 535-540. ISSN 1757-7780

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Abstract

There is a strong sense of malaise surrounding climate politics today. This has been created at least in part by factors such as the chasm between the scale of action required and the adequacy of current political commitments, stalemate in global negotiations, the low price of carbon, and a growing sense of indifference among the publics of some developed countries about the threat posed by climate change. Within the policy community these issues are generally treated as different problems each to be overcome on their own terms. Yet, we argue, suggested solutions to these problems hold much in common—namely a focus on identifying agency, whether the capacity of institutions to act or the behavior of individuals. What is often missing from such accounts of climate politics is a recognition that the problems of how agency is attributed, what we might term governance traps, are structural in nature. Governing climate change therefore requires that we study the conditions through which these challenges arise and which in turn serve to frame agency in particular ways. We suggest that examining the ways in which notions of responsibilities and rights are currently being framed within climate politics provides one way into these dynamics. This opens up the critical questions that need to be addressed ahead of the critical Conference of the Parties meeting in Paris in November 2015

Item Type:
Journal Article
Journal or Publication Title:
Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change
Additional Information:
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Newell, P., Bulkeley, H., Turner, K., Shaw, C., Caney, S., Shove, E. and Pidgeon, N. (2015), Governance traps in climate change politics: re-framing the debate in terms of responsibilities and rights. WIREs Clim Change, 6: 535–540. doi: 10.1002/wcc.356 which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.356 This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.
Uncontrolled Keywords:
/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/2300/2306
Subjects:
?? global and planetary changeatmospheric sciencegeography, planning and development ??
ID Code:
76123
Deposited By:
Deposited On:
21 Oct 2015 05:05
Refereed?:
Yes
Published?:
Published
Last Modified:
18 Dec 2023 01:31