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Abstract
International support for democracy and climate action (mitigation; adaptation; addressing climate loss and restoring damage) are two distinct spheres: motivations, purposes, activities and the relevant literatures exist independently of one another. This article challenges this separation by investigating the scope for policy complementarities that potentially could further both democracy support’s objectives and climate action. Findings that address possible future scenarios where global warming exceeds safe limits or where democracy and democratisation are threatened by climate change impacts are worth exploring. The article’s provisional findings are mixed but provide grounds for believing that democracy support and democratisation potentially could gain from taking support for climate action into consideration and that climate action might benefit too.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Edward Page, Mark Beeson and journal referees for helpful comments on earlier versions.
Notes
1. ‘Mitigation’ is human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases. Germanwatch, Global Climate Risk Index, 7 calls a country’s energy-related CO2 emissions reduction its ‘climate protection performance’. ‘Adaptation’ is a positive adjustment in natural or human systems in response to climatic stimuli or their effects. Klein et al., “Inter-relationships,” 75 call it ‘direct damage prevention’. Damage but not losses may be reversible. ‘Compensation’ means restoring whole through transferring an equivalent value: usage here does not necessarily imply international liability.
2. Klein et al., “Inter-relationships.”
3. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Fifth Assessment Report.
4. ‘Tipping points’ signify when additional, perhaps modest changes in the external or internal forcing of climate change directly or indirectly lead to a large and possibly irreversible abrupt internal response in the climate system, perhaps producing a significant self-sustaining positive feedback loop. See Russill and Nyssa, “The Tipping Point Trend,” 336–344. A review of expert opinion by Kriegler et al., “Imprecise Probability Assessment” deduced conservative lower bounds for the probability of triggering at least one of the main physical triggers of 0.16 for medium global warming (2–4o C) and 0.56 for global mean temperature change above 4oC relative to 2000 levels. While physical and biological referents should not be conflated, the World Bank, Turn the Heat Down, xviii, warns that the danger of crossing critical social system thresholds will grow as a 4oC increase in temperature approaches and no certainty exists that adaptation to that increase is possible.
5. ‘Democracy promotion’ – various approaches to spreading democracy but in most understandings excluding military action – is now often called ‘democracy support’, to emphasise consensual assistance to democracy building over harder power assaults on autocracies. It remains controversial, but objections and limitations are not discussed here.
6. Burnell, “Democracy.”
7. Hence Germanwatch’s annual ranking of countries’ climate protection performance leaves the top three places empty: even the performance of top performers is inadequate. See Burck et al., The Climate Change Change Performance Index.
8. Ibid. Germanwatch’s country comparisons are consistent with rankings found elsewhere, such as in the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center’s, Fossil-fuel CO2 Emissions, for fossil fuel CO2 emissions. In November 2013 Japan abandoned a proposed 25% cut for a projected 3.1% increase in its CO2 emissions by 2020 over 1990 levels.
9. For instance, much hangs on how far new mitigation initiatives are weighted against past emission trends, and whether policy implementation deviates from policy declarations – as found by Held et al., Climate Governance, for countries like Mexico and Ethiopia.
10. Bättig and Bernauer, “National Institutions.”
11. Lockwood, “What can Climate-adaption Policy?” 665.
12. Sen, Poverty and Famines.
13. Brooks et al., “The Determinants of Vulnerability.”
14. Bussell, Institutional Capacity for Natural Disasters. Britain’s prime minister declared ‘money is no object’ for helping people affected by February 2014’s exceptional floods, although previously his government had reduced central government spending on flood defences and warned of further cuts in such spending. See http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/feb/12/david-cameron-environment-agency-job-losses-ea.
15. For example, Plattner, “Reflections on Governance”; and Stockemeyer, “Regime Type and Good Governance.”
16. For example Nordås and Gleditsch‚ “Climate Change and Conflict”; German Advisory Council on Climate Change, Climate Change; and Salehyan, “From Climate Change to Conflict?”
17. Brooks et al., “The Determinants of Vulnerability,” 162.
18. Salehyan, “From Climate Change to Conflict?” 319.
19. Examples are Shearman and Smith, The Climate Change Challenge; and Beeson, “The Coming of Environmental Authoritarianism,” respectively.
20. This comports with evidence that democracy has a clear advantage in ‘weak sustainability’ (short-term adaptation) for ecological performance vis-à-vis autocracy, while no regimes exhibit ‘strong sustainability’ (fundamental behavioural and lifestyle changes that might be needed). See Wurster, “Comparing Ecological Sustainability.”
21. According to 49 academics, analysts and policy makers reported in Grevi et al., Empowering Europe’s Future, 107–108, coping with climate change consequences will be the third highest issue on the international agenda 2013–30.
22. Hobson, “Addressing Climate Change.”
23. Chen and He, Foreign Aid, 6–7.
24. Page, “Distributing the Burdens,” says a mix of contribution to the problem, the principle of beneficiary pays and ability to pay, combines theoretical coherence and practical relevance for identifying countries that should take the lead in bearing the financial burdens of preventing dangerous climate change.
25. Germanwatch, Global Climate Risk Index measures death toll and economic losses. See also Freedom House (a US non-profit organisation whose freedom surveys are widely used as proxy for democratic trends), reported in Puddington, “The Freedom House Survey.”
26. dara, Climate Vulnerability Monitor.
27. Germanwatch, Loss and Damage.
28. The Climate Change and African Political Stability (ccaps) programme at the Robert S. Strauss Center, University of Texas at Austin, http://strausscenter.org/ccaps/research, maps adaptation aid patterns against countries where climate change threatens sustainable development and political stability. It aims to inform US government democracy and governance aid programmes through research on constitutional design and conflict management.
29. See Held et al., Climate Governance, 19.
30. Personal communication from nimd Programme Manager, April 15, 2013. nimd partners around 150 parties in over 20 countries.
31. Hubli and Schmidt, Approaches to Parliamentary Strengthening.
32. Ibid., 25. Similarly, Faust, Leiderer and Schmitt, “Financing poverty alleviation” describe a case of ‘extrinsic goal conflict’ between donors’ two objectives of democracy and poverty alleviation, in Zambia.
33. Mittag, “Perspectives on Civic Engagement,” surveys modalities.
34. hbs, “Debatte.”
35. Sen, Poverty and Famines.
36. See, for example, United Nations Development Programme, Towards Transformational Change.
37. See Mittag, “Perspectives on Civic Engagement.” On Africa, see Madzwamuse, Climate Governance in Africa.
38. unu–wider, web announcement of live webcast, “Aid and Our Changing Environment,” June 4, 2013, [email protected].
39. undp, Human Development Report [hdr] 2011, 92. Diverging estimates are the results of narrow definitions citing climate adaptation and broader definitions capturing any development aid designed to reduce vulnerability to climate shocks. The unfcc in 2010 established a (Cancun) Adaptation Framework with a fundraising goal of $100 million before 2014, and in 2013 announced a ‘Warsaw international mechanism for loss and damage’ under the Adaptation Framework.
40. Easterly, The Elusive Quest, is illustrative.
41. Djankov et al., “The Curse of Aid.”
42. Lockwood, “What can Climate-adaption Policy?” 664.
43. usaid, Climate Change.
44. In September 2011 United Nations Human Rights Council (unhrc) resolution 18/22 affirmed that human rights obligations, standards and principles have the potential to inform and strengthen international and national policy making in the area of climate change, promoting policy coherence, legitimacy and sustainable outcomes. See unhrc, Resolution.
45. For example, Singer, “Changing Values,” 159 says ‘our behaviour is culpably violating the basic human rights of people in the developing world’.
46. German Advisory Council on Climate Change, quoted in Hobson, “Addressing Climate Change,” 987.
47. undp, Democratic Governance.
48. usaid, Climate Change, 1.
49. undp, hdr 2002.
50. undp, hdr 2007/2008.
51. undp, hdr 2011, 66.
52. undp, Towards Transformational Change, 88.
53. usaid, Democracy.
54. Ibid.
55. usaid, Climate Change, 10, 19.
56. Ibid., 15–17.
57. Ibid., 4, 16.
58. Klein et al., “Inter-relationships,” 747.
59. undp, hdr 2007/2008, 188.
60. Carothers and de Gramont, Development Aid Confronts Politics.
61. Chen and He, Foreign Aid, 10 observe poor cooperation in climate capacity-building projects.
62. Ibid., 1.
63. Analogous reasoning can be found in Caney, “Just Emissions,” 277–280. Caney counters suggestions that a just distribution of greenhouse gas emissions must delink from a general theory of global distributive justice covering issues like trade, if something is to be done. He notes that issue-linkage can actually facilitate policy initiatives, and break deadlocks; even when one policy domain cannot affect decisions taken in others it can take them into account.
64. Klein et al., “Inter-relationships,” 747.
65. Figures for 2012. Puddington, “The Freedom House Survey,” 53.
66. For example Ferraro et al.’s simulation in “Weakened Tropical Circulation” claims that injecting particles into the stratosphere to reflect solar radiation away from the Earth would cause significantly reduced rainfall in tropical areas.
67. And as Adjer et al. “Are there Social Limits?” argue, issues of values and ethics, risk attitudes, knowledge and culture construct (mutable) societal limits to adaptation too.
68. Klein et al., “Inter-relationships,” 769–770.