The assessment literature on climate change solutions to date has emphasized technologies and options based on cost-effectiveness analysis. However, many solutions to climate change mitigation misalign with such analytical frameworks. Here, we examine demand-side solutions, a crucial class of mitigation options that go beyond technological specification and cost benefit analysis. To do so, we synthesize demand-side mitigation options in the urban, building, transport, and agricultural sectors. We also highlight the specific nature of demand-side solutions in the context of development. We then discuss key analytical considerations to integrate demand-side options into overarching assessments on mitigation. Such a framework would include infrastructure solutions that interact with endogenous preference formation. Both hard infrastructures, such as the built environment, and soft infrastructures, such as habits and norms, shape behavior and as a consequence offer significant potential for reducing overall energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. We conclude that systemic infrastructural and behavioral change will likely be a necessary component of a transition to a low-carbon society.
Suggested Citation: Creutzig F, Fernandez B, Haberl H, Khosla R, Mulugetta Y, Seto KC. 2016. Beyond Technology: Demand-Side Solutions for Climate Change Mitigation, Annual Review of Environment and Resources, Vol. 41. pp 173-198
Although not for the reason most climate watchers anticipated, the 15th Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the fifth Meeting of the Parties (CMP-5) to the Kyoto Protocol at Copenhagen marked an important moment in the history of the climate negotiations. Despite considerable political pressure, a much-anticipated legally binding instrument did not emerge from Copenhagen. But Copenhagen was remarkable nevertheless. Never before had an international negotiation attracted 125 heads of state and government, and expended as much political capital, yet failed to deliver in quite so spectacular a fashion. And never before had outcomes been this dramatically misaligned with popular expectations. There are many lessons to be learned from the Copenhagen experience, both substantively and in terms of process.
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1. In summary, a top-down approach takes as its starting point the science around climate changeand consequent constructions of concentration thresholds and emission targets, while a bottom-up approach privileges economic and institutional issues around implementation. Exploring themiddle ground requires serious attention to both aspects.This Special Issue contains some useful insights on the middle ground. Werksman argues thatthe ‘force of international law does not derive from the threat of enforcement … but from … agovernment’s express intent to comply.’ What, in turn, constitutes a government’s ‘intent tocomply’? Dai suggests that an important part of the answer lies in exploring the linkages betweendomestic action and international regimes. Her key insight is that domestic action itself can be aratchet mechanism when enabled by a suitably designed international regime.
2. Two examples illustrate this point. First, an international regime could create a system requiringnational governments to compile information. Such a system could play a catalytic role instimulating national policy action by forcing bureaucracies to generate information and place itin the public domain. Second, even weak international regimes empower beneficiaries of compliance(such as renewable energy industries) and victims of non-compliance (such as populations inlow-lying coastal areas) to exert pressure on their national governments. The impact of theseconstituencies, however, will inevitably be mediated by national, political, social and geographicalconfigurations. Notably, in both these examples the capacity for change derives from domesticaction, but is enabled and amplified by a suitable international regime. From this perspective, itis at least as important to strengthen the ratchet mechanism of domestic action enabled by aninternational regime, as it is to focus on the starting point of commitments or pledges.
This paper examines the intersections of caste and gender in the context of migration, industrial work and urban spaces. Drawing upon fieldwork in two cities in North India—Delhi and Ludhiana, it explores what inter-state migrant workers articulate about identities, work, and urban/rural spaces. Migration narratives display a strong undertone of negotiating with traditional village-level hierarchies of caste and gender. In several accounts, while prima facie, the process of migration is strongly represented as a means of breaking away from traditional hierarchies, the intersections of caste and gender underlie the narratives, and these traditional identities often provide context and meaning(s) to how the migration process is envisaged. Migrating for industrial work—from how it is envisioned to how work in the urban context is seen—is not independent of these identities; rather they are reinforced and reconstituted in varied ways. The accounts are also marked by prioritization of particular identities over another in specific contexts—such as the workplace and the urban neighborhood—which I argue, offers valuable insights for understanding workers’ agency and politics.
Linguistic nationalism has, for long, been considered a measure to check Hindi domination in the Indian Union. This paper seeks to explore how, paradoxically, linguistic nationalism can often fuel antagonisms between groups that have negotiated space and politics through multiple cultural registers. Using the case of a recent Kannada film, Sarkari Hi Pra Shaale Kasaragodu, the paper illustrates how multilingualism and pre-existing federalisms could be under threat from contesting chauvinisms.
Over the last four decades, courts in India have developed a rich jurisprudence on environmental issues. The large body of environmental case-law reflects the judiciary’s predominant approach to environmental grievance redressal – directing regulatory institutions to take action against persistent violations and injustices, expanding the scope of environmental regulation and recommending special environmental adjudicatory mechanisms to make environmental justice more accessible. However, apart from a few judgments there has been less judicial attention, and resultant executive action, to strengthen existing structures and processes for effective redressal against administrative arbitrariness or inaction. This paper focuses on an often overlooked aspect of environmental grievance redressal, viz., the effectiveness of existing redressal forums. Such assessments of the National Green Tribunal (NGT) are already emerging. But, here the authors evaluate the effectiveness of a set of much older environmental redressal forums viz., the Appellate Authorities constituted under the Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974 (the Water Act) and the Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1981 (Air Act) on two broad dimensions – ability to deliver good quality decisions and accessibility.
Suggested Citation: Shibani Ghosh, Sharachchandra Lele and Nakul Heble, ‘Appellate Authorities under Pollution Control
The widespread use of antibiotics plays a major role in the development and spread of antimicrobial resistance. However, important knowledge gaps still exist regarding the extent of their use in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), particularly at the primary care level. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies conducted in primary care in LMICs to estimate the prevalence of antibiotic prescriptions as well as the proportion of such prescriptions that are inappropriate.
Ghatbarra village, located in Sarguja district of the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh is home to Gondtribals, recognized under the Schedule V of the Constitution of India. Their home lies in HasdeoArand forest area, considered to be one of the last remaining contiguous patches of forests outside the legally recognized Protected Area (PAs) in Central India. The Gram Sabha (village assembly) of Ghatbarra and nineteen other villages has communicated their position to constitutionally oppose coal mining in the area back in 2015. Today, with a Supreme Court matter dealing with the validity of the ‘forest clearance’ affecting the village and the High Court case on the cancellation of forest rights pending decision, Ghatbarra is set to become a case in point in the near future.
In January 2016, the district level authorities revoked the Community Forest Rights (CFR) granted to this village as per due process of law. The reason cited was that the exercise of these rights was coming in the way of coal mining operations in the area. Even as the final decision on a petition challenging this revocation is pending in the Bilaspur High Court, this paper seeks to examine two legal questions that arise out of the case. First, is the cancellation of conferred forest rights legally permissible as per the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA, 2006)? Second, can the use of forestland for mining be approved under the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980, without recognizing or compensating for the pre-existing rights of the tribal communities living in and dependent on the forests?
Emerging economies are witnessing the large-scale movement of internal migrants. While the popular discourse on internal migration imagines migrants from villages flooding into the large metropolis, scholarship is increasingly emphasizing the existence of multiple migration pathways, as well as the emergence of more dispersed patterns of urbanization. To root these discussions in particular geographies, this paper introduces the concept of ‘migrant-intensity’ as an empirical way of understanding the places that experience migration in the most profound and transformative ways—where the challenges and opportunities inherent in transience and mobility are most apparent. Analyzing census data from India and Indonesia, we show that ‘migrant-intensity’—a measure of in- and out-migrant concentration—is highest in a diverse set of non-metropolitan spaces, including secondary and tertiary cities and ‘rurban’ geographies. We argue that migrant-intensity as an empirical tool can advance scholarship on complex migration patterns by identifying the places at the crossroads of migrant pathways. Moreover, it can help planners and policymakers to address unique challenges, opportunities and constraints of migrant-intensive places.
The 2015 Paris Agreement represents a historic achievement in multilateral diplomacy. After years of deeply discordant negotiations, Parties harnessed the political will necessary to arrive at a climate change agreement that strikes a careful balance between ambition and differentiation. The Paris Agreement contains aspirational goals, binding obligations of conduct in relation to mitigation, a rigorous system of oversight, and a nuanced form of differentiation between developed and developing countries. This article will explore the key building blocks of the Paris Agreement—ambition and differentiation—with an eye to mining the text of the Agreement for its interpretative possibilities and underlying politics.
