Timing matters: analyzing climate policies and adaptive resilience

Policy making under scarcity: reflections for designing socially just climate adaptation policy

What explains the choice of corporate political strategy in environmental politics? Drawing on recent models of actor strategy formation in political economy, this article argues that basic material interests of firms are translated into strategies in the context of institutional environments. I advance a typological model that posits how distributional effects—positive versus negative—and perceived regulatory pressure—low versus high—interact in leading firms to adopt one of four ideal-type strategies: opposition, hedging, support, and non-participation. This article examines the model through the case of corporate strategies in the making of the European Union’s Emission Trading Scheme. The article contributes to theory-building on business strategy in environmental politics by offering a probabilistic explanatory model, and it flags hedging strategies as an increasingly prevalent form of business behavior.

Assessing the impact of climate and air quality policies on future emissions in Korea through quantification of control and co-control effects

Resilience thinking – an approach for understanding and managing change – is increasingly central to climate change adaptation law and policy. Yet the influence of adaptation law and policy on the distribution of climate impacts is often overlooked in studies of socio-ecological resilience to climate change. This article demonstrates how environmental justice scholarship helps to address this gap in the literature relating to adaptation law and resilience. Drawing on existing literature, the article identifies four principles to promote resilience and justice through climate adaptation laws. Climate adaptation laws must (i) prepare for, and respond to, change; (ii) address the distributive effects of climate change and adaptation; (iii) promote participation in adaptation processes; and (iv) cross sectors and scales. Each criterion can be implemented in part through existing legal processes, but might also be further supported by incremental law reform. Developing both resilience and justice dimensions will enhance the effectiveness of adaptation laws in addressing climate impacts.

Why carbon leakage matters and what can be done against it

There is little research on how the economic crisis has affected the EU’s climate and energy policies. Addressing this research gap, this article argues that the economic crisis has not fundamentally changed the broad trajectory of EU energy and climate policy. Broad policy objectives and the preferences of EU member states have remained stable. However, within these broad parameters the main impact of the economic crisis has been on the EU energy and climate discourse that, in turn, has influenced the EU decision-making process and policy outcome in two ways, both of which have led to a certain decline of ambition in EU climate policy. First, it has changed the hierarchy of priorities of EU policy-makers to paying more attention to economic problems rather than climate change, renewables or energy efficiency. Secondly, the crisis has strengthened the concerns of cost implications of climate measures. While both developments impede an ambitious climate policy, we also found evidence that measures which are designed to stimulate economic recovery may also facilitate policy reform and further integration in the field.

Editorial: Governing the EU's climate and energy transition through the 2030 Framework

Adaptation to climate risks involves complementarities between vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and resilience. In this study focused on anticipatory adaptation as social dynamics and social construction, we assess county-level adaptive capacity and resilience to inland flood risks. This is done through the application of temporal models, spatial differentials of risk, and economic impulse-response dynamics in the US Upper Midwest over the last 20 years. Empirical results for anticipatory adaptation suggest that social capital attributes and a variety of mitigation measures play a critical role in alleviating flood risks. In addition, counties with higher levels of adaptive capacity rebound more quickly from sudden climate-induced events. Effective and proactive local adaptation planning and policy combined with a region-wide understanding of anticipatory adaptation and temporal matches, spatial differentials, and impulse-response dynamics can help minimise disaster loss and make disaster-prone communities more resilient to future events.

This paper checks the literature on the political economy of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate policy. It starts by highlighting the need for a better understanding of the political economy of DRR and climate policy in order to design and implement effective policies. It then reviews the existing literature on the political economy of DRR and climate policy, identifying the factors that have been found to influence the design, implementation, and outcomes of DRR and climate policy. Finally, it concludes the implications of this review for future research and policy. The paper argues that further research is needed to improve our understanding of the political economy of DRR and climate policy, and to inform the development of effective policies. Keyword :Adaptation, Mitigation, Climate Policy, Climate Change, Disaster Risk Reduction, Governance, Political Economy, Sustainability.

Elected politicians and civil servants are key in developing climate policy. The articles in this special issue investigate factors that induce politico-administrative actors to adopt climate policies and dismantle anti-climate policies to advance decarbonisation. Politico-administrative actors have predominantly expanded climate policy and raised policy ambition in recent decades. However, economic crises and weakening public support may cause dismantling of climate policy and hamper policy ambition. Against this backdrop, articles in this special issue also study factors that propel climate policy dismantling. Together, the contributions show that interactions between politico-administrative actors and publics, organised interests, and international organisations shape climate and anti-climate policy change.

Carbon taxes and tariffs, financial frictions, and international spillovers

BackgroundHospitals are the biggest users of the health system budgets. Policymakers are interested in improving hospital efficiency while maintaining their performance during the economic crisis. This study aims at analysing the hospitals’ policy solutions during the economic crisis using the resilience system capacities framework.MethodThis study is a systematic review. The search strategy was implemented on the Web of Science, PubMed, Embase, Scopus databases, and Econbiz search portal. Data were extracted and analysed through the comparative table of resilience system capacities framework and the World Health Organization (WHO) health system’s six building blocks (i.e., leadership and governance, service delivery, health workforce, health systems financing, health information systems, and medicines and equipment).FindingsAfter the screening, 78 studies across 36 countries were reviewed. The economic crisis and adopted policies had a destructive effect on hospital contribution in achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC). The short-term absorptive capacity policies were the most frequent policies against the economic crisis. Moreover, the least frequent and most effective policies were adaptive policies. Transformative policies mainly focused on moving from hospital-based to integrated and community-based services. The strength of primary care and community-based services, types and combination of hospital financing systems, hospital performance before the crisis, hospital managers’ competencies, and regional, specialties, and ownership differences between hospitals can affect the nature and success of adopted policies.ConclusionThe focus of countries on short-term policies and undermining necessary contextual factors, prioritizing efficiency over quality, and ignoring the interrelation of policies compromised hospital contribution in UHC.

It is critical to ensure climate and energy policies are just, equitable and beneficial for communities, both to sustain public support for decarbonisation and address multifaceted societal challenges. Our objective in this article is to examine the diverse social outcomes that have resulted from climate policies, in varying contexts worldwide, over the past few decades. We review 203 ex-post climate policy assessments that analyse social outcomes in the literature. We systematically and comprehensively map out this work, identifying articles on carbon, energy and transport taxes, feed-in-tariffs, subsidies, direct procurement policies, large renewable deployment projects, and other regulatory and market-based interventions. We code each article in terms of their studied social outcomes and effects, with a focus on electricity access, energy affordability, community cohesion, employment, distributional and equity issues, livelihoods and poverty, procedural justice, subjective well-being and drudgery. Our analysis finds that climate and energy policies often fall short of delivering positive social outcomes. Nonetheless, across country contexts and policy types there are manifold examples of climate policymaking that does deliver on both social and climate goals. This requires attending to distributive and procedural justice in policy design, and making use of appropriate mechanisms to ensure that policy costs and benefits are fairly shared. We emphasize the need to further advance ex-post policy assessments and learn about what policies work for a just transition.

Climate change is a complex and contentious public issue, but the risk-management options available to us are straightforward and have well-characterized strengths and weaknesses.

Effective Community Engagement Approaches for Climate Change Adaptation in the Philippines