Climate Governance Beyond the State

Abstract

When new Bush administration, announced in March 2001 that United States would abandon 1997 Kyoto protocol, governments, media, and environmental organizations all launched major protests. The statement by John Prescott (UK deputy prime minister) that Kyoto protocol is the only game in town was significant for these protests. (1) It is, however, only in a very limited sense that Kyoto protocol, or UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, can be conceived of as only game in town. In this article, we maintain that both will and capacity to govern atmosphere is diffused among several governors. Our understanding of climate governance is derived from more general approaches to global governance, leading us to suggest that global climate governance should refer to all purposeful mechanisms and measures aimed at steering social systems toward preventing, mitigating, or adapting to risks posed by climate change. Proceeding from such a conception, global (climate) governance must not be performed by states only; it is also a matter for other authorities--for example, nongovernmental organizations and epistemic communities. In line with this reasoning, we argue that private authority is an important form of climate governance and that several of climate-related measures taken by insurance industry ought to be viewed as instances of global climate governance. Further, emergence of insurance industry in climate politics raises questions not just about efficiency and equity of governance necessary for mitigating climate change, but also about much less debated governance required for adapting to climate change. Defining Global (Climate) Governance The absorptive capacity of atmosphere is a limited resource in sense that quantity and physical quality of emissions is a matter of great significance. The atmosphere is a common good and open to everyone's use--that is, no one can be denied right to utilize it. Accordingly, individuals, private industry, and states alike have traditionally used atmosphere to harbor their emissions. As early as 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius showed that there exists a physical limit to amount of emissions that atmosphere can absorb without causing serious changes to global climate. (2) Scientifically, there is today a fairly general agreement that we are approaching this limit with increasing speed. (3) What type of authority and government is required to reverse this trend? The answer is not straightforward because effective government over climate issue does not exist. Indeed, government does not exist over any transboundary issues. This is not to say that no action can or does take place. It only means that globally there is no government responsible for this action. Since international system lacks such government, concept of global governance has been suggested instead. (4) While government has only one form--that is, government is synonymous with governmental authority--governance can take on various forms. To many observers, state authority is still main form of governance, but it is increasingly asserted that state authority is not only game in town. Among others, Ole Waever has pointed out that because authority has shifted location, political map over last four centuries is no longer adequate. Instead of one level being most important point of reference, there is now a set of overlapping authorities. (5) The concept of global governance has emerged and is being developed as a way to comprehend these changes in present international political order. However, no consensus has emerged as to exact meaning of concept. In a recent attempt to structure various uses of global governance concept, Martin Hewson and Timothy Sinclair point to three different (competing and complementary) meanings, which, in fact, generate quite different research agendas. …