The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) Program, funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, holds important lessons for United States climate policy. A one-time infusion of funding given primarily to local governments to for the purpose of reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, the policy had important but uneven effects. Most recipients were able to show progress on energy efficiency goals to meet program requirements. But communities with pre-existing interest in and experience with climate and energy programs tended to multiply the effects of the funding, using it to launch long-term efforts or prove concepts in order to secure further funding and support. The dissertation shows the value of communities’ participation in voluntary policy initiatives related to climate and energy, as municipalities with even a small amount of related experience were better positioned to turn a one-time infusion of federal funding into long-lasting programs. At the same time, the program’s outcomes demonstrate the enduring power and influence of the federal government in achieving more widespread success, as municipalities that had not previously participated in climate and energy planning were generally unable to continue their work once federal funding was removed, even in the presence of local champions and demonstrated successes. The program also demonstrates that using federal grants-in-aid to accomplish policy goals has important limitations. Though EECBG grants often had a major impact on local policies, their uneven impact exposes the risk that grants-in-aid may further stratify local governments’ capacities in the policy areas to which they are applied. Rather than evening out the playing field, it is possible for such programs to increase the disparities between policy leaders and the rest. The dissertation points to the importance of tailoring federal programs to varying local needs and to the importance of building local differences into program evaluations.

Thesis (M.Phil. (Environmental Law and Management)) -- University of Limpopo, 2009 / In recent years, a lot has been said about global warming and climate change. Governments and Institutions have been congregating more frequently all over the world. The subject of global warming and climate change is believed to be a ticking time bomb, which can have catastrophic effects on the existence of the human race and other living organisms. This led me to think and ponder about all our coastal towns in South Africa. What would happen if the melting of the glaciers continues and the sea levels rise by over two meters? This surely is a recipe for disaster and hence a look at the Western Cape Province was really necessary to find out on the province and the country‟s preparedness. Climate change has been scientifically proven to be occurring and is being aggravated by industrialisation1. With South Africa being the 19th Green House Gas (GHG) emitter in the world, the government should definitely take action by either mitigating or adapting to these effects.2 Rightly so, something is being done not only at national level, but at a regional and international level. A number of treaties, conventions and protocols to do with climate change and its related effects have been passed and ratified by most countries. The most notable international protocol is the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change‟s (UNFCCC) Kyoto protocol. At a regional level, New Partnership for Africa‟s Development (NEPAD) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), have come in support of environmental initiatives like the Atmospheric Pollution Information Network for Africa (APINA). The Western Cape Province, in line with most of these agreements and national strategies, have come up with their own polices in trying to mitigate and/or adapt to climate change.

The Bush administration's decision to abandon the Kyoto Protocol can be explained by prospect theory. The change in federal climate policy between the Clinton and Bush administrations was due to the difference in domain that each president operated under. President Clinton operated under a domain of losses as he associated continued fossil fuel use with future socio-economic and environmental damages from climate change. This domain of losses increased President Clinton's risk tolerances and explains his pursuit of the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Conversely, President Bush operated under a domain of gains where he did not connect fossil fuel use with future damages, rather with continued economic growth. President Bush's domain of gains reduced his risk tolerance and resulted in his pursuit of fossil fuel intensive economic development policies. This paper defines the domain that Presidents Clinton and Bush operated under regarding climate change, the independent variable of this analysis. A total of 26 speeches on climate change by these presidents were coded to explicate domain according to two categories of beliefs. The single most salient variable is the decision makers beliefs about the perceived robustness of the current state of scientific knowledge on climate change. The second most important aspect of these decision makers beliefs revolve around the role of fossil fuels in economic growth. Once domain has been defined through the cognitive maps and each decision makers corresponding risk tolerance explicated, the dependent variable of policy preferences are analyzed. Two policy options are analyzed; the business as usual (BAU) option associated with the status quo, as well as a climate protection policy that is reflective of the emissions reductions associated with US compliance with Kyoto. These two policy options are evaluated in three case studies; the economy wide costs of compliance with Kyoto targets for greenhouse gas emissions, the public health impacts of greenhouse gas reductions, and finally against a component of the Kyoto Protocol that allows for international trading of permits to emit greenhouse gases.

xvi, 203 p. : ill. (some col.) / Global climate negotiations have been at a standstill for over a decade now over the issue of distributing the responsibility of mitigating climate change among countries. During the past few years, countries such as India and China - the so-called emerging economies that were under no obligation to mitigate under the Kyoto Protocol - have increasingly come under pressure to accept limits comparable to those for industrialized countries. These countries, in turn, have strongly resisted these pressures. My dissertation examines India's participation in these ongoing climate negotiations. Based on qualitative interviews with relevant Indian officials, textual analysis and participant observation, I tell the story of why and how this so-called emerging economy has been resisting a cap on its emissions despite being one of the most vulnerable countries to the consequences of climate change. I draw upon the literatures of environmental justice, international relations, postcolonialism and political ecology to develop my dissertation and adopt a self-reflexive approach in my analysis. The need for global cooperation to address global environmental issues has arguably provided greater bargaining power to countries formerly marginalized in the global political economy. Following the dynamics of North-South environmental politics, India's climate politics consists of utilizing this power to increase its access to global resources as well as to hold hegemonic industrialized countries accountable for their historical and continuing exploitation of the environmental commons. A key aspect of India's climate politics consists of self-identification as a developing country. Developed countries with higher cumulative and per capita emissions are seen to have the primary responsibility to mitigate climate change and to provide financial and technological support to developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Developing countries are seen to have a right to pursue development defined as economic growth. The climate crisis is thus seen by my respondents as an opportunity to address the unequal status quo between developed and developing countries. I suggest that this crisis also creates opportunities to redefine development beyond a narrow focus on economic growth. This may be enabled if the demand for justice in an international context is extended to the domestic sphere. / Committee in charge: Shaul Cohen, Chairperson; Alec Murphy, Member; Ted Toadvine, Member; Peter Walker, Member; Anita Weiss, Outside Member

The focus of this study is on understanding the multiple and interacting factors that hinder or enable municipal planned climate change adaptation, here called barriers and enablers respectively, and their implications for community based adaptation. To do this I developed a conceptual framework of barriers to and enablers of planned climate change adaptation, which informed a systematic literature review of barriers to planned community based adaptation in developing countries. In this framework barriers were grouped into resource, social and physical barriers. I then conducted empirical case study analysis using qualitative research methods in four South African municipalities to understand what barriers and enablers manifested in these contexts. In light of the reflexive nature of my methodology, my framework was adjusted based on my empirical findings, where contextual barriers were found to better represent the empirical results and subsumed physical barriers. I found my framework useful for analysis, but in the empirical cases, barriers and enablers overlaid and interacted so significantly that in reality it was often difficult to separate them. A key finding was that enablers tended to be more about the way things are done, as opposed to direct opposites of barriers. Comparison of barriers and enablers across the case studies revealed a number of key themes. Municipalities struggle to implement climate change adaptation and community based adaptation within contexts of significant social, economic and ecological challenges. These contextual barriers, when combined with certain cognitive barriers, lead to reactive responses. Existing municipal systems and structures make it difficult to enable climate change adaptation, which is inherently cross‐sectoral and messy, and especially community based adaptation that is bottom‐up and participatory. Lack of locally applicable knowledge, funding and human resources were found to be significant resource barriers, and were often underlain by social barriers relating to perceptions, norms, discourses and governance challenges. Enablers of engaged officials, operating within enabling organisational environments and drawing on partnerships and networks, were able to overcome or circumvent these barriers. When these enablers coincided with windows of opportunity that increased the prioritisation of climate change within the municipality, projects with ancillary benefits were often implemented. Analysis of the barriers and enablers identified in the literature and case studies, informed discussion on whether municipalities are able to implement community based adaptation as defined in the literature, as well as the development of recommendations for how municipal planned climate change adaptation and community based adaptation can be further understood and enabled in the future. These recommendations for practice and research include: (a) To acknowledge and understand the conceptual framings of municipal climate change work, as these framings inform the climate change agenda that is pursued, and hence what municipal climate change adaptation work is done and how it was done. (b) The need for further research into the social barriers that influence the vital enablers of engaged officials, enabling organisational environments, and partnerships and networks. (c) To learn from pilot community‐level interventions that have been implemented by municipalities, as well as from other disciplines and municipalities. (d) To develop top‐down/bottom‐up approaches to enable municipal planned climate change adaptation and community based adaptation, that benefits from high level support and guidance, as well as local level flexibility and learning‐by‐doing. (e) To develop viable mechanisms for municipalities to better engage with the communities they serve.

Notre recherche a consisté à poser la politique internationale du climat comme une politique publique et à montrer quelles étaient les dynamiques et les acteurs étant intervenus dans sa construction. Nous nous sommes en particulier attelé à mettre en exergue l'univers de sens ( "référentiel") à partir duquel les dispositifs de cette politique ont été élaborés, ainsi que la manière dont la dynamique d'opposition des intérêts propre aux négociations internationales s'y articulait. / Doctorat en sciences politiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

L'objectif de notre thèse vise à évaluer les résultats engrangés par les marchés du carbone. Afin de pouvoir explorer différents aspects des marchés du carbone à un niveau mondial et en raison de la diversité des instruments qui se cachent derrière ce vocable, nous avons choisi de réaliser une thèse par article. Sur base de nos analyses empiriques nous avons pu vérifier dans quelle mesure les avantages et les limites théoriques des marchés du carbone se sont réalisés en pratique. <p><p>Une hypothèse forte des marchés du carbone dotés d’un système de plafonnement est qu’ils permettraient de garantir le respect des objectifs climatiques. Cette hypothèse ne s’est pas révélée exacte. En générant plus d’un milliard de crédits, dont un nombre important de crédits issus de projets, et en ne parvenant pas à empêcher des défections, le système mis en place par le Protocole de Kyoto n’est pas parvenu à garantir le plafonnement des émissions dans les pays développés. Il en va de même pour les systèmes liés à Kyoto comme le système communautaire d'échange de quotas d'émissions (SCEQE).<p><p>Dans la plupart des configurations des règles ad hoc et peu transparentes ont nui à l’objectif environnemental. La comptabilité commune de différents gaz à effet de serre, malgré des incertitudes importantes sur les pouvoirs de réchauffement globaux a également été néfaste à l'intégrité du système. <p><p>Le lien à des mécanismes de projets trouvant leur légitimité dans une preuve de l’additionnalité souvent floue demeure problématique. Notre analyse a ainsi mis en avant la problématique de l'enregistrement de projets hydrauliques dont la décision de construction est antérieure aux marchés du carbone.<p><p>En théorie, le mécanisme d’échange a pour conséquence que les acteurs confrontés à des coûts de réduction faibles soient encouragés à réduire leurs émissions. Dans la pratique, notre analyse montre que peu d’acteurs connaissent leur coût de réduction marginal, empêchant dès lors la concrétisation de cet idéal d’une réduction au moindre coût. Nous avons aussi mis en avant le fait qu’un prix identique par tonne de CO2 réduite n’est pas adapté au soutien de technologies nouvelles, souvent plus onéreuses au début de leur cycle de développement. <p><p>Finalement, un des principaux mérites des marchés du carbone a peut-être été leur acceptabilité auprès des décideurs politiques et économiques. Il est manifeste que les marchés permettent d'internaliser le carbone à un niveau international sans passer par une difficile harmonisation des politiques fiscales. C'est clairement une des raisons de leur adoption rapide et dans de nombreux pays.<p><p>Les marchés du carbone ont aussi joué un rôle important en matière de sensibilisation aux changements climatiques. Ils ont permis de faire progresser la comptabilité carbone et la compréhension des technologies sobres en carbone. <p><p>L’effondrement récent du prix du carbone montre que ce nouvel instrument qui, en théorie, est efficace pour atteindre un objectif de réduction prédéfini, ne permet pas, dans la pratique, par manque d’ambition ou en raison d’erreurs dans la conception, de financer la transition vers une nouvelle économie sobre en carbone. Il apparaît dès lors nécessaire de réformer cet instrument mais aussi de développer progressivement des alternatives afin de ne pas uniquement faire reposer la réussite de l’atteinte des objectifs climatiques sur les seuls marchés du carbone et ainsi augmenter la résilience des politiques climatiques aux aléas de marchés financiers, par ailleurs eux-mêmes soumis à de nombreux tourments depuis 2008.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

1. Contextual outline of the PhD Research<p><p>Climate change is today often seen as one of the most challenging issue that our civilisation will have to face during the 21st century. This is especially so now that the most recent scientific data have led to the conclusion that the globally averaged net effect of human activities since 1750 has been one of warming (IPCC 2007, p. 5) and that continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming (IPCC, 2007 p. 13). This unequivocal link between climate change and anthropogenic activities requires an urgent, world-wide shift towards a low carbon economy (STERN 2006 p. iv) and coordinated policies and measures to manage this transition.<p><p>The climate issue is undoubtedly a typical policy question and as such, is considered amenable to economic scrutiny. Indeed, in today’s world economics is inevitable when it comes to arbitrages in the field of policy making. From the very beginning of international talks on climate change, up until the most recent discussions on a post-Kyoto international framework, economic arguments have turned out to be crucial elements of the analysis that shapes policy responses to the climate threat. This can be illustrated by the prominent role that economics has played in the different analyses produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to assess the impact of climate change on society.<p><p>The starting point and the core idea of this PhD research is the long-held observation that the threat of climate change calls for a change of climate in economics. Borrowing from the jargon used in climate policy, adaptation measures could also usefully target the academic discipline of economics. Given that inherent characteristics of the climate problem (e.g. complexity, irreversibility, deep uncertainty, etc.) challenge core economic assumptions, mainstream economic theory does not appear as appropriately equipped to deal with this crucial issue. This makes that new assumptions and analyses are needed in economics in order to comprehend and respond to the problem of climate change.<p><p>In parallel (and without environmental considerations being specifically the driving force to it), the mainstream model in economics has also long been (and still is) strongly criticised and disputed by numerous scholars - both from within and outside the field of economics. For the sake of functionality, these criticisms - whether they relate to theoretical inconsistencies or are empirically-based - can be subsumed as all challenging part of the Cartesian/Newtonian legacy of economics. This legacy can be shown to have led to a model imprinted with what could be called “mechanistic reductionism”. The mechanistic side refers to the Homo oeconomicus construct while reductionism refers to the quest for micro-foundations materialised with the representative agent hypothesis. These two hypotheses constitute, together with the conjecture of perfect markets, the building blocks of the framework of general equilibrium economics. <p><p>Even though it is functional for the purpose of this work to present them separately, the flaws of economics in dealing with the specificities of the climate issue are not considered independent from the fundamental objections made to the theoretical framework of mainstream economics. The former only make the latter seem more pregnant while the current failure of traditional climate policies informed by mainstream economics render the need for complementary approaches more urgent. <p><p>2. Overview of the approach and its main insights for climate policy<p><p>Starting from this observation, the main objective of this PhD is thus to assess the implications for climate policy that arise from adopting an alternative analytical economic framework. The stance is that the coupling of insights from the framework of evolutionary economics with the perspective of ecological economics provides a promising way forward both theoretically as well as on a more applied basis with respect to a better comprehension of the socioeconomic aspects related to the climate problem. As claimed in van den Bergh (2007, p. 521), ecological economics and evolutionary economics “share many characteristics and can be combined in a fruitful way" - which renders the coupling approach both legitimate and promising. <p><p>The choice of an evolutionary line of thought initially stems from its core characteristic: given its focus on innovation and system change it provides a useful approach to start with for assessing and managing the needed transition towards a low carbon economy. Besides, its shift of focus towards a better understanding of economic dynamics together with its departure from the perfect rationality hypothesis renders evolutionary economics a suitable theoretical complement for designing environmental policies.<p><p>The notions of path-dependence and lock-in can be seen as the core elements from this PhD research. They arise from adopting a framework which is founded on a different view of individual rationality and that allows for richer and more complex causalities to be accounted for. In a quest for surmounting the above-mentioned problem of reductionism, our framework builds on the idea of ‘multi-level selection’. This means that our analytical framework should be able to accommodate not only for upward but also for downward causation, without giving analytical priority to any level over the other. One crucial implication of such a framework is that the notion of circularity becomes the core dynamic, highlighting the importance of historicity, feedbacks and emergent properties. <p><p>More precisely, the added value of the perspective adopted in this PhD research is that it highlights the role played by inertia and path-dependence. Obviously, it is essential to have a good understanding of the underlying causes of that inertia prior to devising on how to enforce a change. Providing a clear picture of the socio-economic processes at play in shaping socio-technical systems is thus a necessary first step in order to usefully complement policy-making in the field of energy and climate change. In providing an analytical basis for this important diagnosis to be performed, the use of the evolutionary framework sheds a new light on the transition towards low-carbon socio-technical systems. The objective is to suggest strategies that could prove efficient in triggering the needed transition such as it has been the case in past “lock-in” stories. <p><p>Most notably, the evolutionary framework allows us to depict the presence of two sources of inertia (i.e at the levels of individuals through “habits” and at the level of socio-technical systems) that mutually reinforce each other in a path-dependent manner. Within the broad perspective on path dependence and lock-in, this PhD research has first sketched the implications for climate policy of applying the concept of ‘technological lock-in’ in a systemic perspective. We then investigated in more details the notion of habits. This is important as the ‘behavioural’ part of the lock-in process, although explicitly acknowledged in the pioneer work of Paul David (David, 1985, p. 336), has been neglected in most of subsequent analyses. Throughout this study, the notion of habits has been studied at both the theoretical and applied level of analysis as well as from an empirical perspective. <p><p>As shown in the first chapters of the PhD, the advantage of our approach is that it can incorporate theories that so far have been presented opposite, partial and incomplete perspectives. For instance, it is shown that our evolutionary approach not only is able to provide explanation to some of the puzzling questions in economics (e.g. the problem of strong reciprocity displayed by individual in anonymous one-shot situations) but also is very helpful in bringing a complementary explanation with respect to the famous debate on the ‘no-regret’ emission reduction potential which agitates the experts of climate policy. <p><p>An emission reduction potential is said to be "no regret" when the costs of implementing a measure are more than offset by the benefits it generates such as, for instance, reduced energy bills. In explaining why individuals do not spontaneously implement those highly profitable energy-efficient investments ,it appears that most prior analyses have neglected the importance of non-economic obstacle. They are often referred to as “barriers” and partly relate to the ‘bounded rationality’ of economic agent. As developed in the different chapters of this PhD research, the framework of evolutionary economics is very useful in that it is able to provide a two-fold account (i.e. relying on both individual and socio-technical sources of inertia) of this limited rationality that prevent individuals to act as purely optimising agents.<p><p>Bearing this context in mind, the concept of habits, as defined and developed in this study, is essential in analysing the determinants of energy consumption. Indeed, this concept sheds an insightful light on the puzzling question of why energy consumption keeps rising even though there is an evident increase of awareness and concern about energy-related environmental issues such as climate change. Indeed, if we subscribe to the idea that energy-consuming behaviours are often guided by habits and that deeply ingrained habits can become “counter-intentional”, it then follows that people may often display “locked-in” practices in their daily energy consumption behaviour. This hypothesis has been assessed in our empirical analysis whose results show how the presence of strong energy-consuming habitual practices can reduce the effectiveness of economic incentives such as energy subsidies. One additional delicate factor that appears crucial for our purpose is that habits are not fully conscious forms of behaviours. This makes that individuals do not really see habits as a problem given that it is viewed as easily changed.<p><p>In sum, based on our evolutionary account of the situation, it follows that, to be more efficient, climate policies would have to both shift the incumbent carbon-based socio-technical systems (for it to shape decisions towards a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions) and also deconstruct habits that this same socio-technical has forged with time (as increased environmental awareness and intentions formulated accordingly are not sufficient in the presence of strong habits).<p><p>Accordingly, decision-makers should design measures (e.g. commitment strategies, niche management, etc.) that, as explained in this research, specifically target those change-resisting factors and their key features. This is essential as these factors tend to reduce the efficiency of traditional instruments. Micro-level interventions are thus needed as much as macro-level ones. For instance, it is often the case that external improvements of energy efficiency do not lead to lower energy consumption due to the rebound effect arising from unchanged energy-consuming habits. Bearing this in mind and building on the insights from the evolutionary approach, policy-makers should go beyond the mere subsidisation of technologies. They should instead create conditions enabling the use of the multi-layered, cumulative and self-reinforcing character of economic change highlighted by evolutionary analyses. This means supporting both social and physical technologies with the aim of influencing the selection environment so that only the low-carbon technologies and practices will survive. <p><p><p>Mentioned references:<p><p>David, P. A. (1985), Clio and the economics of QWERTY, American Economic Review 75/2: 332–337.<p><p>IPCC, 2007, ‘Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis’, Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Solomon, S. D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Averyt, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 996 pp. <p><p>Stern, N. 2006, ‘Stern Review: The economics of Climate Change’, Report to the UK Prime Minister and Chancellor, London, 575 p. (www.sternreview.org.uk)<p><p>van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. 2007, ‘Evolutionary thinking in environmental economics’, Journal of Evolutionary Economics 17(5): 521-549.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

<p>Les contestations normatives relatives à la nature des transferts financiers Nord-Sud visant l’adaptation au changement climatique et à ses relations avec l’aide publique au développement (APD) se sont considérablement accentuées depuis 2009 lorsque les pays développés se sont conjointement engagés à fournir des ressources «nouvelles et supplémentaires » à hauteur de 30 milliards de dollars pour la période 2010-2012 et à mobiliser collectivement 100 milliards de dollars par an d’ici à 2020, en les répartissant de manière « équilibrée » entre l’atténuation et l’adaptation dans les pays en développement. Mouvements de solidarité internationale, organisations non gouvernementales de protection de l’environnement, représentants des pays en développement, et parfois institutions multilatérales de développement :nombreux sont les acteurs qui appellent à la mise en place d’un financement international de l’adaptation qui existerait séparément de l’aide, en représentant une forme de « compensation » liée à la responsabilité disproportionnée des pays développés dans l’occurrence du changement climatique.<p><p>Notre thèse se construit à partir d’un constat :celui de la déconnexion entre une hypothèse largement répandue dans la littérature académique (i.e. l’existence d’un financement international de l’adaptation qui serait distinct de l’APD – et original sous divers aspects) et la réalité observable (i.e. l’existence d’un tel financement ne se vérifie pas dans les faits). Comment expliquer cette déconnexion ?Telle est précisément la question que nous tentons d’élucider dans le présent document. Nous formulons l’hypothèse selon laquelle les discours opposant le financement international de l’adaptation et l’aide au développement sont le produit d’une vision particulière de ce que devrait être l’APD. L’ambition de notre recherche est dès lors de caractériser cette vision normative de l’aide et d’examiner ses manifestations dans une série de débats récurrents qui traversent la question du financement international de l’adaptation. Nous mettons en évidence le fait que ces discours renouvellent une vision de l’aide entre États souverains destinée à répondre aux injustices internationales et à alimenter un transfert de ressources régulier entre pays riches et pays pauvres. / Doctorat en Sciences / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished