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842. Global Sustainability, Climate Change and Finance Policy: A South African Perspective
- Author:
- Penelope Hawkins and Olaf Weber
- Publication Date:
- 09-2015
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
- Abstract:
- One of the most important and topical discussions within the global multilateral arena is the challenge of meeting the world’s climate finance needs in order to reduce carbon emissions to sustainable levels and support adaptation strategies. The mobilization of finance is key in supporting the transition away from traditional high-carbon or business-as-usual economic pathways toward low-carbon, climate-resilient economic systems. A conference, Global Sustainability, Climate Change and Finance Policy, organized by the Centre for International Governance Innovation and the South African Institute for International Affairs and held in Johannesburg from July 1 to July 3, considered aspects of the debate.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Economics, Environment, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
843. When CO2 Goes to Geneva: Taxing Carbon across Borders — Without Violating WTO Obligations
- Author:
- Maria Paniezi
- Publication Date:
- 11-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI)
- Abstract:
- Carbon taxes become relevant for international trade when they are coupled with border tax adjustment (BTA) legislation for imported products. BTAs are intended to level the playing field between domestic and foreign products, but such tax schemes, if not designed properly, can be found to violate a country’s international commitments before the World Trade Organization (WTO). This paper argues that environmentally conscious governments can impose a WTO-compatible BTA to offset domestic CO2 legislation, and that federal governments need to engage in coordinated efforts to harmonize treatment of high CO2 emitters domestically, since domestic industries will not bear the burden of environmental regulation alone.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Environment, International Trade and Finance, and World Trade Organization
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
844. Global Patent Pledges: A Collaborative Mechanism for Climate Change Technology
- Author:
- Bassem Awad
- Publication Date:
- 11-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Abstract:
- Access to and timely diffusion of green technologies required for adaptation and mitigation are among the major challenges faced by the international community. The role of the patent system has become the subject of increased attention in climate change discussions on technology transfer. New mechanisms for collaborative innovation are required to foster the green technology sector.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Economics, Environment, Markets, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
845. Stephen Allen. The Chagos Islanders and International Law
- Author:
- Peter H. Sand
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- The tale of the Chagos Archipelago (British Indian Ocean Territory, BIOT) raises a wide spectrum of transnational legal questions, all across the fields of human rights, environment and disarmament. Last-born of the Empire’s colonies, the BIOT was established – and systematically depopulated – for the sole purpose of accommodating a strategic US military base during the Cold War years in 1965–1966. The territory has since generated extensive litigation in the national courts of the United Kingdom (UK) and the USA as well as proceedings in the European Court of Human Rights and an arbitration under Annex VII of the Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Stephen Allen, senior lecturer at the University of London’s Queen Mary College, has long followed and commented on legal developments in the Chagos cases as an observer. The focus of his attention remains the plight of the native Chagossians, a small Kreol-speaking people of African and Malgasy origin, whose exile (mainly to Mauritius, the Seychelles and the UK) has lasted for more than 40 years.
- Topic:
- Environment, Human Rights, Imperialism, International Law, History, Courts, Disarmament, and Displacement
- Political Geography:
- Britain, United States, Europe, and Chagos Islands
846. Severing the Innovation-Inequality Link: Distribution Sensitive Science, Technology and Innovation Policies in Developed Nations
- Author:
- Amos Zehavi and Dan Breznitz
- Publication Date:
- 04-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
- Abstract:
- Innovation is essential to economic growth. However, it appears that the ways in which we pursue innovation policies have aggravated inequality. Inequality is an increasingly contentious political issue in both wealthy and emerging economies. Yet, it is becoming clear that use of traditional state instruments to alleviate inequality by redistributive means, is no longer sufficient. For those reasons, in this paper we consider other state instruments that are rarely associated with distributive goals. Specifically, we inquire whether we can successfully devise and employ Distributive-Sensitive Science and Technology and Innovation Policies focused on disadvantaged groups of users and consumers of technology. Following an exploratory theoretical approach, the paper first develop four types of such programs, and then utilize a comparative approach to analyze existing programs that fit into these categories, first, in Israel, and then, in the United State, Germany, and Sweden. We conclude by arguing that although these programs are currently driven primarily by economic efficiency concerns and not by distributive ones, they show the promise of our approach of utilizing innovation policy to reach social policy goals.
- Topic:
- Development, Environment, Science and Technology, Inequality, Economic Growth, and Innovation
- Political Geography:
- Israel, Germany, Sweden, and United States of America
847. AUra's Openings
- Author:
- Anna Tsing
- Publication Date:
- 01-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- AURA: Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene
- Abstract:
- This opening essay has two purposes: first, to offer a small introduction to the papers by Lien, Swanson and myself that follow; and, second, to introduce Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene (AURA) as a program for studying human-disturbed landscapes. I am in debt to Lien and Swanson for showing me catachresis as a feature of Anthropocene research. Catachresis helps me as I grope for language to describe AURA as an impossible program: a program dedicated to confusing disciplinary boundaries and to describing the challenges of life within the ruins created by modernization’s vast “improvements.” Following their guidance, I allow salmon to lead the way, saving AURA and landlocked landscapes for the sections that come after. Consider Swanson’s description of the strange Hokkaido device called an “Indian water wheel.” Hokkaido fisheries expert Ito Kazutaka visited Oregon’s Columbia River in 1886 and observed water wheels used to capture salmon; when he returned home, he combined the American technologies he noted with a Honshu-style (i.e., central Japanese rather than Hokkaido-based) fishing weir to create what he called the Indian water wheel. And what was “Indian” about this hybrid? Ito meant Native American, unselfconsciously commemorating the indigenous people whose access to salmon was interrupted by frontier-conquest technologies such as the water wheel. Certainly, “Indian” is catachresis. It usefully makes us pause. Japanese salmon are enacted in historically shifting hybrids of U.S. and Japanese frontier technologies recalled through the indigenous displacement they have in common. (In this regard, it seems useful to note that the water wheel was eventually outlawed in Oregon because it also killed off too many salmon.) Inappropriate language appropriately startles us. Connection, comparison, and displacement are wound together in forging modes of being both human and salmon; this is the condition of our times.
- Topic:
- Environment, Water, Fishing, and Anthropocene
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Norway
848. Wreckage and Recovery: Exploring the Nature of Nature
- Author:
- AURA: Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene
- Publication Date:
- 01-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- AURA: Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene
- Abstract:
- These papers formed part of the December 2013 workshop, “Wreckage and Recovery: Living with Change.” The workshop, held in Oslo, was a collaborative effort between the University of Oslo’s program in Technology, Information, and Knowledge (TIK), its Anthropos and the Material program, and Aarhus University Research on the Anthropocene (AURA). The call for papers targeted Nordic anthropologists and science studies scholars and was composed by Tina Talleraas, Sylvia Lysgård, and their associates at TIK. By pairing “wreckage” with “recovery,” the workshop set terms that stymied radical declarations of environmental disaster. Still, I’ll admit that I was surprised that among the ten papers presented, not one described “wreckage.” A majority of the papers were ethnographic and historical accounts of efforts at “recovery,” and, in general, the recovery turned out to be at least as problematic as the wreckage it aimed to address. A few papers described resource use and extraction, but they showed negotiation and mitigation, rather than ruin. To the extent this consensus suggests a “comfort zone” for anthropology and STS, I find it cause for concern. Is wreckage off limits? I come back to this question at the end of this introduction. For the moment, my job is to discuss what we offer, not what we miss. The four papers chosen for this working paper highlight the strengths in the workshop as a whole: these are sophisticated analyses of how “nature” comes into being. Rather than setting up a passive backdrop for human activity, the workshop papers described everyday practices, mobilizations, and contests through which natural objects emerge, at least tentatively, within world-making projects.
- Topic:
- Environment, Natural Disasters, and Nature
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
849. Enhancing Climate Change Resilience in Fragile States
- Author:
- Katharina Nett
- Publication Date:
- 09-2015
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Development and Peace
- Abstract:
- Climate change is increasingly perceived as a threat to human security and a challenge to the problem-solving capacity of states and societies, particularly in fragile states. While there is substantial literature on climate change adaptation in conflict-affected contexts, much less attention has been paid to how to enhance resilience in contexts of fragility and low state capacity. This paper argues that in order to effectively address the complex, in- tertwined risks resulting from the interplay of state fragility and climate change, a compre- hensive approach to resilience is needed that encompasses both climate change adapta- tion and state-building. An analysis of the climate change adaptation strategies and instru- ments of the UNFCCC and the EU shows that while there are some promising first ap- proaches, donors and international organisations working in the field of climate change adaptation need to build their adaptation strategies on a thorough understanding of the fragile context and take more action to adjust their policy instruments to the special needs of fragile states.
- Topic:
- Security, Climate Change, Environment, Governance, Fragile States, and Resilience
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
850. Alliance, Trade, Climate, and China
- Author:
- Graeme Dobell
- Publication Date:
- 09-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Comparative Connections
- Institution:
- Pacific Forum
- Abstract:
- The Obama administration and the Abbott government stood together in the new military coalition in Iraq and joined in the trade push for a Trans-Pacific Partnership. Australia’s Defence White Paper, about to be released, will be a strong and detailed statement of support for the alliance with the US. Yet, the discussion of the US-Australia relationship often turned into a debate about China. The notable political difference between Obama and Abbott in the past 12 months was over climate change. The US president highlighted the policy difference in a speech during the G20 Summit that Abbott hosted in Brisbane. The other divergence between Australia and the US was over China’s creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. After initially sharing US fears about the bank, the Abbott government eventually decided to abandon the US and Japan and became a founding member.
- Topic:
- Climate Change, Diplomacy, Environment, International Cooperation, Alliance, and Trade
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, North America, and United States of America