Archives: Journal Articles

International law seeks to ensure water security and to prevent or resolve conflicts leading to water insecurity. This relationship is based on a hybrid framework comprising binding and nonbinding instruments. The multi-scalar dimensions of water (in)security are recognized, but further engagement is required. The link between international law and water (in)security is considered primarily through the lens of international water law, which focuses on transboundary (surface) watercourses. Groundwater—the other main source of water and determinant of water (in)security—receives little attention. Further, the traditional state-centric approach, with its emphasis on sovereignty and cooperation, remains the dominant paradigm despite some attempts to redefine it. Several other branches of international law present opportunities for expanding international law’s engagement with the water security discourse. Finally, the climate change challenge requires a reconsideration of international law’s approach to water (in)security while considering the global dimensions of water.

Growing political pressure to find solutions to climate change is leading to increasing calls for multiple disciplines, in particular those that are not traditionally part of climate change research, to contribute new knowledge systems that can offer deeper and broader insights to address the problem. Recognition of the complexity of climate change compels researchers to draw on interdisciplinary knowledge that marries natural sciences with social sciences and humanities. Yet most interdisciplinary approaches fail to adequately merge the framings of the disparate disciplines, resulting in reductionist messages that are largely devoid of context, and hence provide incomplete and misleading analysis for decision-making. For different knowledge systems to work better together toward climate solutions, we need to reframe the way questions are asked and research pursued, in order to inform action without slipping into reductionism. We suggest that interdisciplinarity needs to be rethought. This will require accepting a plurality of narratives, embracing multiple disciplinary perspectives, and shifting expectations of public messaging, and above all looking to integrate the appropriate disciplines that can help understand human systems in order to better mediate action.

Delhi’s homeless migrants work daily wage jobs that provide temporary housing on worksites, but they often endure abuse from their contractors and employers and receive low to no wages. The city’s approximately 200 shelters allot 18 square feet per resident, which is far below the National Urban Livelihoods Mission’s Scheme of Shelters for Urban Homeless guideline of 50 square feet per person. Labourers in Yamuna Pushta use congested shelters because the nearby jobs determine their survival. In this context, the homeless labourers’ working and shelter conditions, the skills they possess, and the barriers they face to decent working conditions are examined.

National climate institutions are a missing element in climate mitigation discussions. Yet institutions translate ambition to current action, guide policy development and implementation, and mediate political interests that can obstruct mitigation efforts. The landscape of relevant institutions is usefully categorized around ‘purpose-built’ institutions, ‘layering’ of responsibilities on existing institutions, and unintentional effects of ‘latent’ institutions. Institutions are relevant for solving three climate governance challenges: coordination across policy domains and interests, mediating conflict and building consensus, and strategy development. However, countries do not have a free hand in designing climate institutions; institutions are shaped by national context into four distinct varieties of climate governance. We suggest how countries can sequence the formation of climate institutions given the constraints of national politics and existing national political institutions.

Discussions in climate governance have focused on national targets and climate policies. But a critical ingredient is relatively absent: climate institutions. Yet, formal institutions are essential if countries are to devise realistic low-carbon strategies, manage the complex politics of transitions, and coordinate across diverse ministries and actors.

To lay the ground for a more substantive discussion on climate institutions, we are pleased to share a special issue of Environmental Politics on the ‘Varieties of Climate Governance’, edited by Navroz K. Dubash.

Drawing on cases spanning eight countries – four developed and four developing – with an analytical overview, we examine the conditions under which climate institutions emerge, the forms they take, and the governance functions they serve.

All articles in this special issue are open access and freely downloadable through the links below.

Articles in the issue:

Introduction – Varieties of climate governance: the emergence and functioning of climate institutions, By Navroz K. Dubash
A hard Act to follow? The evolution and performance of UK climate governance, By Matthew Lockwood
Climate institutions in Brazil: three decades of building and dismantling climate capacity, By Kathryn Hochstetler
The development of climate institutions in the United States, By Matto Mildenberger
The limits of opportunism: the uneven emergence of climate institutions in India, By Aditya Valiathan Pillai & Navroz K. Dubash
Germany’s Federal Climate Change Act, By Christian Flachsland & Sebastian Levi
The evolution of climate governance in China: drivers, features, and effectiveness, By Fei Teng & Pu Wang
Swimming against the current: Australian climate institutions and the politics of polarisation, By Robert MacNeil
Institutionalising decarbonisation in South Africa: navigating climate mitigation and socio-economic transformation, By Emily Tyler & Kathryn Hochstetler

How do states respond to the challenge of climate governance? The Paris Agreement has led to heightened interest in domestic climate policies, but attention to underlying national climate institutional architectures has lagged behind. This literature gap deserves to be addressed, because climate change brings considerable governance challenges. Drawing on a collection of country studies, this paper outlines a framework to explain the path-dependent emergence of climate institutions, based on the interplay of national political institutions, international drivers, and bureaucratic structures. The resultant institutional forms suggest four varieties of climate governance, based on the extent of political polarisation and the narrative around climate politics in the country. The functioning of existing climate institutions indicates they have so far played a modest role in addressing climate governance challenges, but also illustrates their importance in structuring climate politics and outcomes, suggesting a substantial agenda for future research.

Scholars have long theorized on the limits of patronage politics and the possibility of counter-mobilization it produces against clientelist strategies. Analysing the recent win of the Aam Aadmi Party in the 2020 Assembly election in Delhi, this article shows that programmatic policies of welfare can help parties to circumvent this trap and avoid targeted patronage networks. We find that this broad-based appeal increases the social base of the party to even include those segments of voters who remain aloof to patronage-based exchanges. Additionally, we test the salience of majoritarian issues in the presence of universal welfare. We find that by locating themselves on issue positions of relative advantage, and reducing the ideological distance with their chief competitor, a policy-focussed party may capture not just ideology-agnostic, but also peripheral voters who might be opposed to the other challenger. Using a logistic regression model, we find that policy concerns catapulted AAP to victory, while its ideological distance from the BJP added to this. Our analysis has significance for understanding the underlying changes to patronage-based linkages, especially in the presence of heightened ethnic appeals that increasingly characterizes electoral contexts in the country.

Tools are needed to benchmark carbon emissions and pledges against criteria of equity and fairness. However, standard economic approaches, which use a transparent optimization framework, ignore equity. Models that do include equity benchmarks exist, but often use opaque methodologies. Here we propose a utilitarian benchmark computed in a transparent optimization framework, which could usefully inform the equity benchmark debate. Implementing the utilitarian benchmark, which we see as ethically minimal and conceptually parsimonious, in two leading climate–economy models allows for calculation of the optimal allocation of future emissions. We compare this optimum with historical emissions and initial nationally determined contributions. Compared with cost minimization, utilitarian optimization features better outcomes for human development, equity and the climate. Peak temperature is lower under utilitarianism because it reduces the human development cost of global mitigation. Utilitarianism therefore is a promising inclusion to a set of benchmarks for future explorations of climate equity.

The rise of the BJP in national and state politics is often associated with a representation skewed toward traditional elite groups and the marginalisation of groups associated with other parties, such as minorities and various dominant OBC groups. This article examines the transformation of the sociological composition of the Lok Sabha over time and seeks to assess its elitist character, by providing descriptive statistics on five socio-demographic and economic variables: caste, religion, gender, dynasticism, wealth and occupation. Data suggests that political representation in India has by and large always been skewed toward the elites, but the composition of these elites has changed over time. For instance, the recent surge in the representation of the upper caste in the Lok Sabha pre-dates the rise of the BJP in 2014, and the marginalisation of minorities and women is a long-standing phenomenon. Since 2014 however, the BJP has contributed to enhancing a particular form of elite – those rooted in local and regional business networks.