Climate Risk Governance Research Articles

The depoliticization of climate disasters: Unpacking the entanglement of satellites with parametric climate risk insurance

Satellites permit (near) real-time visibility of a wide range of environmental conditions, across large areas, and to diverse audiences. In climate risk management, this technology is becoming entangled with parametric insurance technology. In areas with large uninsured populations and scarcity of environmental data, satellite-based parametric insurance is increasingly promoted as an efficient way to provide coverage against extreme weather events. Satellites can facilitate payouts for events like tropical cyclones using environmental proxies (e.g., wind speed) and demographic data, bypassing traditional post-disaster assessments. Using qualitative methods, we investigate how the entanglement impacts the understanding, management and governance of climate disasters. We find that both technologies reduce on-the-ground complexities through how such disasters are perceived, anticipated, and governed. The entanglement intensifies the depoliticization of climate disasters and further compromises climate justice. This development in climate risk governance is crucially relevant to consider in the ongoing Loss and Damage Finance negotiations.

Exploring the influence of financial development on climate physical risk: insights from China

ABSTRACT Introduction: Currently, extreme weather events and natural disasters are occurring frequently, and countries around the world are facing a variety of physical climate risks. More and more countries are attempting to embed financial tools into the process of climate risk governance. However, the financial strength of developing countries is insufficient to enhance regional resilience to physical climate risks. Moreover, existing literature mainly focuses on the impact of financial development on greenhouse gas emissions, neglecting its crucial role in adaptation. Discussion: The present study enriches people's understanding at the national level of whether and how financial development is affected by physical climate risks. Additionally, it provides significant reference for financial reforms and physical climate risk governance in other countries and regions from the perspectives of inclusive finance and green finance, utilizing econometric methods. Conclusion: (1) Financial development effectively facilitate the governance of physical climate risk. (2) Green finance and inclusive finance intensify the negative effect of financial development on physical climate risk. (3) Financial development can governance physical climate risk by bolstering technological innovation. (4) Financial development significantly promotes physical climate risk governance only in regions with large populations, resource abundance, well-developed insurance sectors, and strong governmental intervention.

Decarbonization policy and high-carbon enterprise default risk: Evidence from China

Studying the impact of decarbonization policy on high-carbon enterprise default risk is of great importance to improve climate risk governance. However, the relationship between decarbonization policy and default risk has not been examined to date. Adopting data from Chinese A-share listed enterprises from 2000 to 2020, this paper examines the issue by using a difference-in-differences model. The results indicate that decarbonization policy significantly increases high-carbon enterprise default risk, which is more pronounced among small-sized enterprises and those in the growth period. The results of mechanism analysis show that the decarbonization policy increases the default risk of high-carbon enterprises by increasing debt cost and decreasing profitability. Furthermore, these effects are negatively moderated by low-carbon technology innovation and digital transformation. These findings can help governments, high-carbon enterprises, and investors to address default risk triggered by decarbonization policy.

Is renewable energy technology innovation an excellent strategy for reducing climate risk? The case of China

In this era of global warming the importance of climate risk cannot be understated, and finding ways to reduce climate risk is a topic worthy of study. In this paper, we innovatively examine the role of renewable energy technology innovation on climate risk in China. In addition to their linear relationship, we also investigate the asymmetric and heterogeneous impact, detect the impact channels, and find that (1) increased renewable energy technology innovation can effectively alleviate the climate risk situation. Accordingly, the development of renewable energy technology innovation can make a significant contribution to CR abatement. (2) Pronounced impacts of renewable energy technology innovation on climate risk can be observed in the higher quantiles (75th and 90th) of climate risk. (3) Renewable energy technology innovation is a powerful weapon for eradicating climate risk in provinces with a higher level of government fiscal expenditure. And (4) renewable energy technology innovation has an impact on climate risk by facilitating energy consumption efficiency, which is a necessary mediator. These conclusions inspire us to put forward several corresponding policy implications for better climate risk governance and renewable energy technology innovation development.

Study on the Progress in Climate-Change-Oriented Human Settlement Research

Since the 20th century, the escalating impact of climate risks has led to a heightened global focus on climate-change-oriented human settlement research (hereafter referred to as CCHSR). This paper presents an econometric analysis of 6830 research papers published from 1975 to 2023 (first two months) to investigate the characteristics, key issues, and research trends in CCHSR, to provide valuable insights and recommendations for future research. We used CiteSpace, bibliometric software that constructs a knowledge-mapping analysis of annual publication volume, source publications, and country distribution; this study examines the characteristics of the literature sources in CCHSR. It also explores the literature distribution through an analysis of co-citation and collaboration. The study identifies the key topics of current research through a keyword clustering analysis, including extreme climate risk response, environmental safety and sustainability enhancement, and machine learning technology application. The study identifies three research trends for future investigations by analysing keyword emergence, including climate risk governance implementation, artificial intelligence technology application, and settlement security and resilience enhancement. Finally, the study presents recommendations for priority CCHSR in three areas: theoretical system development, mechanism strategy design, and technology implementation.

Governing Wildfire Risk in Canada: The Rise of an Apparatus of Security

This article argues that the governance of wildfire risk in Canada is increasingly oriented toward governance through a security apparatus. As climate change complicates wildfire “problems” in fast-expanding wildland–urban interface areas, fire managers and other actors increasingly seek a shift toward a fire-permitting, risk-based fire management style, even as the balance between private and public responsibility for wildfire protection gets renegotiated. This approach, typified by FireSmart, is characterized by a gradual, geographically uneven shift from state-centered fire suppression toward a multiplicity assembled around an expectation of security and the promise of economic freedom. These multiple shifts, we argue, reflect a characteristic approach to governing through the Foucauldian “apparatus of security,” a mechanism of power that seeks security through economic freedom and indirect governmental intervention. Central to the emerging apparatus of wildfire security are three core rationalizing discourses focused on the valorization of the individual’s capacity for wildfire management and protection, the negotiation of limits of state and public institutions in wildfire management, and the invitation to live resiliently with wildfires by embracing biophysical contingency. At stake is the complex politics through which the very ideas of wildfire risk, responsibility, and security are being, and can be, reconstituted. Our analysis furthers the poststructural geographies of wildfires and climate risk governance in Canada and beyond.

Climate Shocks and Local Urban Conflicts: An Evolutionary Perspective on Risk Governance in Bhubaneswar

In this paper, we explore the complex entanglements between ongoing land conflicts and climate shocks, and their implications for risk governance paths and evolution. We focus on ways in which concepts of shock and conflict can be incorporated into social–ecological systems thinking and applied to risk governance practice in a southern cities context. Through a qualitative inquiry of two slum redevelopment projects in Bhubaneswar city in India, we trace the origin and evolution of conflict around land tenure and eviction in informal settlements, as well as its interaction with local manifestations of climate shocks. Climate policies, as responses to climate shock and intended to mitigate climate risk, are observed as constructed, interpreted, framed, and used strategically by formal actors to further urban development objectives, while the local knowledge systems, risk perceptions, and adaptations are ignored in practice. This study helps to re-think the complexities of climate risk governance in southern urban spaces where multiple risks overlap and interact within the diverse realities of informality and vulnerability. A singular focus on one type of risk, on the formal order to manage that risk, is likely to overlook other risks and opportunities. Hence, shocks are likely to produce more unanticipated effects, conflicts function as the unobserved middle term, and the formal policies and plans to mitigate climate risk contribute to the creation of new risk.

Democracy in a deluge: Epistemic agency of marginalized voices in Oaxaca's storm governance

Despite repeated calls for grassroots participation in climate policy making, the epistemic agency of marginalized voices remains little understood. While local knowledge is increasingly regarded as an antidote to top-down climate expertise, it is often not heard, or ends up reinforcing dominant framings of risk. The concept of civic epistemologies (CEs), often understood as the sociocultural norms by which societies authorize knowledge claims, can provide insights into the epistemic agency of marginalized actors in climate governance, but has rarely been applied to such concerns. At the same time, such questions affect how scholars conceptualize CEs, which have seldom been examined where civics are fragmented or marginalized. In this article, I argue that understanding CEs as “expectations of democracy” can indicate how they authorize climate expertise in such settings. I illustrate this argument by examining hurricane governance in Puerto Escondido, Mexico, where vulnerable fishers constitute a sociopolitically and economically excluded part of a fragmented civic that shapes the production of risk expertise. Here, fisher expectations that the government will behave corruptly, and government expectations that fishers prefer to remain socioeconomically separate from the state reify biophysical approaches to risk. This analysis contributes to understanding why many attempts to include marginalized voices in climate policy fail to achieve their anticipated outcomes, expanding understanding of how CEs mediate epistemic agency in contested political contexts. Furthermore, examining CEs as expectations of democracy can inform upon conditions under which political-epistemic orders change, revealing opportunities for intervention in climate risk governance.

Improving Coherence between Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction through Formal and Informal International Lawmaking

Abstract Resolutions and other key documents adopted in the last few years by the international community provide that greater coherence and integration between law and policies on climate change adaptation (cca) and disaster risk reduction (drr) can lead to more efficient use of available resources, and more effective action in reducing human vulnerabilities and exposure to climate and disaster risks. Moving from the analytical background provided by the ‘informal international law’ theory (in-law), the purpose of this study is to evaluate how the combination of formal and informal law-making processes affects the coherent implementation of different normative instruments defining the current global agenda on climate risk governance. Normative developments in three different institutional contexts (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction – ‘Sendai system’; and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement) will be assessed, in light of recent developments on the drafting, endorsement and implementation of relevant normative instruments. The analysis will be corroborated by references to the effects that greater synergies between these frameworks can generate at the regional and domestic levels, as demonstrated by evidence collected in three different countries (Fiji, the Philippines, and Dominica) between 2019 and 2021.

A community-based approach to mainstream human-nature interactions into coastal risk governance: A case of Katrenikona, India

Coastal rural communities, being intricately associated with their ecological settings, are often highly vulnerable to climate change. Amongst the many approaches of reducing the coastal vulnerabilities and achieving climate change adaptation, a potential solution is to improve risk governance through integrated coastal zone management. The coastal risk governance signifies not only the actions of the state but also of other stakeholders, especially the local communities. Community-based approaches have also for long been advocated for effective adaptation and mitigation against climate adversities. While human-nature interactions can significantly influence disaster risks, this research makes an attempt to understand various decisions and choices that a coastal rural community makes based on such interactions to mitigate and manage the climate-induced adversities. Through structured interviews, this research first identifies the significant domains that reflect on the prevailing human-nature interactions, after which the choice modelling technique is utilized to comprehend the community priorities for better climate risk governance, with a specific focus on coastal rural settlements of Katrenikona (Andhra Pradesh, India). The application of this methodology resulted in the formulation of a baseline for local coastal governance, which can be useful for informing various levels within local governments. The baseline consists of an assessment of the different community resilience domains derived based on the prevailing interactions of local communities with their surrounding ecological elements and measured by indicators of local coastal governance. The concept and method for measuring coastal risk governance based on community preferences are potentially replicable, and it can help to track the progress towards longer-term coastal management and local climate adaptation goals. At the same time, it can be turned into a self-evaluation tool to assist the local governments in reflecting on pertinent pathways involving community actions for effectively managing various climate risks and ecological impacts.

Projected increases in population exposure of daily climate extremes in eastern China by 2050

Climate extremes pose severe threats to human health, economic stability and environmental sustainability, especially in densely populated areas. It is generally believed that global warming drives increase in frequency, intensity and duration of climate extremes, and socioeconomic exposure plays a dominant role in climate impacts. In order to promote climate risk governance at regional level, the historical and projected trends in the population exposure to climate extremes are quantified in eastern China using downscaled climate simulations and population growth scenarios. The frequency of temperature extremes (tx35days) is projected to more than double by 2050 in nearly half of prefecture-level cities in eastern China, leading to an 81.8% increment of total exposure under SSP2-4.5 scenario. The increasing trend is also detectable in the frequency of precipitation extremes (r20mm) in eastern China, and the exposure increment is projected to be 22.9% by 2050, with a near equivalent contributions of both climate change and population growth. Spatially, temperature exposure mainly grows in southern Hebei, western Shandong and inland Guangdong provinces, while precipitation exposure raises principally in southeast coastal areas of China. Based on the historical baseline and projected amplification of population exposure, we identify some hotspot cities such as Guangzhou, Shanghai, Dongguan and Hangzhou that response to climate change dramatically and confront greater potential risk of climate extremes in the coming future.

Use of Climate Change Projections for Resilience Planning in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In this study we use three different methodologies, document and compare temperature and precipitation projections for the city of Rio de Janeiro (RJ) over the 21st century. It aims to access in what way the differences and similarities of those methodologies and their outcomes, support the incorporation of climate risks in urban planning and improve effective urban climate change governance. We compared the projections for RJ from the Eta Regional Climate Model from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research nested in two Hadley Center Global Climate Models (GCMs) (Eta-HadCM3 method and Eta-HadGEM2-ES method) and 33 GCMs simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparing Project Phase 5 multi-model dataset (Urban Climate Change Research Network - UCCRN method). The three methods showed increasing temperatures for RJ in the end of the century. Precipitation projections span from a 13% decrease to a 12 % increase, when using UCCRN method or reduce between 0.4% and 0.5%, when using Eta-HadGEM2-ES method. However, the middle range of the projections from UCCRN and the Eta-HadGEM2-ES projections are similar. The three methods project an increase of warm days and nights and a decrease of cold days and nights. Nevertheless, although the directions of change are the same applying the three methods, the magnitude differs when considering warm and cold nights. Hence, city stakeholders are better informed when we apply different methods as it gives them the opportunity to consider the level of risk, they are willing to bear in the future. We observed that defining climate change projections on the city scale based on clear communication and an interactive process between scientists and stakeholders can be used to inform citywide adaptation strategies and sector-specific uses, as well as, promote urban climate risk governance.

Portrait of a climate city: How climate change is emerging as a risk in Bergen, Norway

Climate change is dramatically shifting the way cities interpret and live with their local climate. This paper analyses how climate change is emerging as a matter of concern in the public spheres of Bergen, and interprets how this concern is affecting Bergen’s identity, with implications for the city’s climate risk governance. Historically, Bergen has a strong identity as Europe’s rainiest city, manifested in its cultural and social life. In the past 15 years, Bergen’s identity has been shifting from a ‘weather city’ to a ‘climate city’. This paper draws on ethnographic research, interviews and document analysis to map this shift as co-produced by certain social and natural events and processes; told as narratives of change. This identity shift is creating surprising hybrid representations of climate that are locally meaningful, shaped as much by Bergen’s cultural weatherworld as by incoming ideas of climate change. These representations influence Bergen’s attitudes towards climate risk governance, and may extend influence to global scales via climate city networks. This identity shift also moves the timeframe of risk governance. As a weather city, risks were implicit to the city’s heritage and peoples’ lived experience. But as a climate city, risks are predicted, to foresee and prevent impacts. Critically employing co-production as an analytical lens can help us understand the multiple facets to cities’ climate risk governance, including the role of culture and identity.

Narratives of change and the co-development of climate services for action

After the Paris Agreement, the transition towards a carbon free society necessitates new forms of collaboration between climate science and society. In my article, I argue that the increasing participation of disciplines from the humanities represent a cultural turn in climate risk governance. At the example of my anthropological case study at the Northern German coastline, I show that the co-development of place-based climate services for action means a challenge to the science-based definition of climate change and the resulting problem-solving strategies. Climate change materializes in form of extreme weather events, changes in the seasons and sea level rise. Local narratives represent these changes, expand the problem definition of climate change and express the multiple entanglements of weather, climate and society. Past flood disasters and interactions with the sea are presented in different configurations of time and space that put emerging forms of climate services into context. Narratives of change serve as a localization device and as starting point for the co-development of climate services for action. Collaborations between science and humanities on the one hand, and between researchers and local actors on the other are an open-ended process. In form of a field report, I identify diverse narratives of change and first steps towards the co-development of new forms of climate services. At the example of a scenario workshop, I describe local visions of climate risk governance, with climate researchers as facilitators and moderators of public forums motivated for action. This essay provides an anthropological insight into this process and details the procedures of emerging collaborations, making use of field notes, anthropological self-reflection and narrative theory.

The role of place-based narratives of change in climate risk governance

In this introduction, we situate the topic of this Special Issue on ‘narratives of change’ in the scholarly literature about how we inform climate risk governance, including through climate services. We argue that many places experience a persistent mismatch between predominantly science-based and technical framings of climatic risk on the one hand, and the place-based understandings of climate extremes and responses of people living in these places on the other. We introduce the case studies presented in this issue and highlight their common focus on ‘narratives of change’ as one missing link in climate governance. Narratives of change address the past, present and future of a specific place understood as a weather-world, adding a cultural dimension to climate change experienced as a succession of weather and seasons. We focus on memories of extreme weather events and how people coped with them, in order to improve climate governance under future climatic change. We argue that attention to local narratives expands the scope of issues covered by climate information and improves its integration into social and cultural life. We offer up seven lessons for why it is important to incorporate narratives in climate governance and suggest some creative methods for doing so. Post-normal science, art-science cooperation, and the inclusion of the humanities mark the difference that the individual contributions make to the literature about climate governance and democratic decision-making.

The discoveries of citizens running around

Three years ago, the autonomous citizen science project Meet je Stad (Measure your City) formed a community in Amersfoort that developed its own instruments to measure climatic change locally. Like many citizen science projects, this initiative faces challenges to being considered a legitimate and credible way of extending climate research, or as a source of robust information for local climate risk governance. In this article, we will provide a social history of this project, of its activities, motivations and forms of organizations. We will focus on their practices, their connection to academic science, and their guiding narratives of change. These narratives are concerned with both changes to the climate and social changes to what is considered a legitimate way of scientifically studying the climate. In this article we argue that autonomous citizen science avoids some of the pitfalls that caused the legitimation crisis of climate science and is a useful expansion of risk governance in the context of societal change.

Moving beyond engineering supremacy: Knowledge systems for urban resilience in Canada’s Metro Vancouver region

Drawing on multi-disciplinary literature (socio-ecological resilience, disaster management, and urban planning) this article seeks to uncover what are the knowledge systems that underpin existing flood management regimes and how they enable or constrain learning for future flood risks (sea level rise). The article is situated in a case study of flood and climate risk governance in Canada’s Metro Vancouver region. Drawing on 60 interviews with emergency managers, engineers, planners, and elected officials, and a regional survey of resilience practitioners, we identify distinct knowledge systems used for managing urban resilience. We find that technical hazard- and engineering-based knowledge that has maintained its supremacy over the past decades is being increasingly challenged through knowledge co-production. We find that formalized and shadow spaces for learning and collaborative problem-solving break down barriers and enable a collective search for flood resilience solutions across governance levels.

Is adaptation a local responsibility?

• Adaptation planning and policy are increasingly seen as robust means to respond to climate change. • The mantra that adaptation is local does not necessarily hold true given the multi-level nature of climate risk governance. • Unclear division of responsibility among adaptation actors hinders effective implementation of adaptation. • More attention needs to be paid on the issue of scale in determining the most effective level to implement adaptation. Adaptation is now firmly embedded in the societal discourse regarding the management of climate risk. In this discourse, adaptation planning and implementation at the local level are seen as particularly important for developing robust responses to climate change. However, it is not clear whether the mantra that adaptation is local holds true given the multi-level nature of climate risk governance. Using a multi-method approach, this paper examines the extent to which adaptation should be framed as a local issue and, specifically, the role of local government in adaptation relative to other actors. In so doing, the paper first explores the extent to which the local framing of adaptation is embedded in the international adaptation literature. This is followed by a specific case study from Southeast Queensland, Australia, which focuses on the critical examination of the processes of responsibility shifting and taking among actors involved in coastal adaptation planning. Results indicate the assumption that adaptation is local remains widely held in adaptation science, although counter arguments can be readily identified. Interviews with adaptation actors revealed unclear divisions of responsibility for climate change adaptation as a significant constraint on actors’ willingness to implement adaptation. Furthermore, attributing responsibility for adaptation to local actors might not necessarily be a robust strategy, due to the existence of particularly strong constraints and value conflicts at local levels of governance. Greater appreciation by researchers and practitioners for the interactions between local actors and those at higher levels of governance in shaping response capacity may contribute to more equitable and effective allocations of responsibilities for adaptation action.

Ecological Viability or Liability? Insurance System Responses to Climate Risk

ABSTRACTClimate change is a phenomenon of the Earth system, which is characterized by thresholds and non‐linear change. This analysis considers the adequacy of insurance (in its broadest sense) responses to climate risk. This paper provides novel critiques of insurance system responses to climate change and of the attendant political economy perspective on the relationship between insurance and climate change. A complex adaptive systems (CAS) analysis suggests that ecologically effective (i.e. strong) mitigation is the only viable approach to manage medium‐ and long‐term climate risk – for the insurance system itself and for human societies more widely. In contrast, we find that even the most substantial insurance system responses to date are generally adaptive and weakly mitigative. This analysis extends an earlier political economy perspective that explains the limitations of insurance system responses to climate change, but provides little guidance to the ecological implications of such responses. As such, this paper raises questions about the ongoing viability of the insurance system, and hence about the many aspects of human societies globally reliant on the insurance system as their primary risk governance tool. We conclude that the CAS approach provides new insights, which could prompt insurance system evolution in support of effective climate risk governance. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.