Climate Change Governance: Mapping the Terrain

Abstract

The world of regulation, in general, and that of environmental regulation, in particular, has undergone major transformation over the last four decades. From the traditional state-centered “command and control” (C&C) regulation of the 1970s to market-based instruments (still marshaled by states) that characterized the turn of the century and then to the various types of new governance mechanisms that are in vogue today.1 The novel approaches to governance – referred to in the literature as new governance, regulatory capitalism or soft law – which are based on legally non-enforceable norms, authored, controlled and monitored by various state, quasi-state and non-state actors, have emerged as a result of both a shift in the way norms are produced and a widespread discontent with the efficacy of conventional models of regulation. The grand failures of international climate change negotiations, which are rooted in deep structural discrepancies among nations rather than ad-hoc disagreements, require a fresh and innovative thinking that would pave the way to overcoming traditional state politics and facilitate progress on the climate change front. One option that should be explored is the new governance schemes that have evolved over the last two decades. This article seeks to better understand the theoretical underpinnings of the regulatory tools embedded in the notion of new governance and explore their implications on climate change regulation. Part II of the article discusses the many facets of the notion of regulation. It argues that the study of regulation, and particularly that of climate change governance, should go beyond traditional state or even transnational regulation to encompass hybrid regulatory forms which blur the distinction between the public and the private and destabilize the boundaries between the global, the national and Climate Change Governance: Mapping the Terrain 234 CCLR 2|2011