BUTTERFLY MONITORING SCHEME (BMS) PLA DE SEGUIMENT DELS ROPAL

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Integrated Climate Governance (ICG) and
sustainable development.
J. David Tàbara Institute of Environmental
Science and Technology Autonomous University of
Barcelona Joandavid.tabara_at_uab.cat
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(No Transcript)
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• Actions aimed at developing adaptive capacities
  at the individual or local level may have
  negative impacts on mitigation.
• Responses to climate problems will create new
  problems in new situations. Flexible,
  context-based, and multi-level adaptive
  processes, tools and methods are needed.
• We need to go beyond framing policy-making from a
  problem-solution perspective to looking at it
  as embedded in social-ecological systems
  processes and feedbacks.

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A new global approach to climate appraisal and
action is needed

• To appraise both climate risks and opportunities.
  
• To deal with and integrate mitigation and
  adaptation.
• To support the making of robust climate
  strategies at different governance levels.
• To deal with synergies and trade-offs between
  multiple policy domains, sectors and scales.

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In a way that

• Prevents problem shifting from one policy domain
  to another.
• Supports fast transformations in individual
  practices and institutions.
• Contributes to avoiding total socioecological
  system breakdown.

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Such an approach...

• Is VERY urgent.
• Is still missing.
• Requires new partnerships, new framings, new
  mindsets and new spaces for interaction between
  science, policy making and the public.
• Must go beyond representation (e.g. of impacts
  and trends) and support transformation.
• Is possible, not impossible.

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Integrated Climate Governance

• Background research projects
• MATISSE Tools and Methods for Integrated
  Sustainability Assessment (ISA). On tools and
  methods to support transformative sustainability
  assessments from transition-based perspective.
• www.matisse-project.net
• ADAM Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies.
  Supporting EU climate Policy. On requirements for
  innovative climate appraisals.
  www.adamproject.eu
• IRG-project. Integrated Risk Governance. On large
  scale risks that exceed current coping
  capacities.
• www.irg-project.org

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Integrated Climate Governance

• Is both
• A heuristic device to analyse and identify
  existing gaps and potentialities in current
  practices related to climate and sustainability
  appraisals.
• A normative integrative concept aimed at
  providing potential for innovation in climate and
  sustainability research, policy practice and
  communication.

Knowledge coordination and transformation
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Integrated Climate Governance

• Can be defined as an approach which
• Deals both with adaptation and mitigation.
• Combines a plurality of legitimate but divergent
  interest and sources of knowledge.
• Conceives climate change from a multi-scale,
  multi-level, multi-domain and transition-oriented
  perspective to support sustainable development.

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Integrated Climate Governance

• With the explicit goals of
• Assessing both climate risks and opportunities.
• Designing and implementing transformative policy
  instruments and targets.
• Supporting communication, agent engagement and
  transformation, and developing context-based
  climate capacities in a social learning mode.

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Integrated Climate Governance
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The main sources for social learning and
innovation

• Do not derive from the practices that occur
  within each of these three domains but from the
  interactions between them e.g. through new
  institutions.
• Such interactions should be held a different
  levels and deal with critical questions such as
  equity in global resource use and pollution.

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On dualistic languages, power and cultural
frameworks...

• From a transition and social-ecological systems
  perspective, the conceptual distinction between
  economic, social and economic domains is rather
  useless to adequately understand the current
  sustainability challenges in a relational,
  systemic and integrated manner.

Economic
?
?
?
?
Ecological
Social
?
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?
?
?
?
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On power and choices of sustainability criteria

• Ecoefficiency practices alone do not challenge
  the current power regimes but tend to reinforce
  them and are insufficient to deal with climate
  change.
• To avoid rebound effects and meet the climate
  challenge, ecoefficiency and sufficiency (limits)
  needs to be combined at different levels of
  governance
• SUSTAINABILITY ECOEFFICIENY SUFFICIENCY

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New tools and methods for ICG

• Should not only focus on problem
  representation but support agent and
  institutional transformation.
• Should not only ask what is the problem? but
  most importantly who is the problem?
• Urgently need to support communication and help
  develop a new integrative non-dualistic language
  for transformative narratives and capacities.

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New tools and methods for ICG should assess
both stocks AND flows of social-ecological
systems states and dynamics

• - Structures and rules (S)
• - Energy and resources (E)
• - Information and
• knowledge systems (I)
• - Accumulated change (C)
• Zi system size (limits)

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Requirements and implications for ICG at
regional and local level
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I) Integrated Climate Governance demands above
all, institutional innovation, not just more
tools and methods

• 1. More assessment tools, more information
  and communication and more policy measures is
  not enough if these still follow current BaU
  framings.
• 2. New institutions are needed to enhance,
  integrate and coordinate interaction and REFRAME
  current practices, means and goals within and
  between science, policy and the public.

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II) To meet the challenges of ICG a more complex
institutional landscape is needed which

• 1. Promotes greater engagement of local and
• regional actors.
• 2. Facilitates coordination of different levels
  of
• action.
• 3. Finds synergies and overcomes trade-offs and
• contradictions between mitigation and
  adaptation.
• 4. Takes into account the diversity of social-
• ecological context conditions.

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III) Achieving climate goals and capacities may
constitute one of the best ways to achieve
sustainable development and avoid relativism

• 1. Excessive social constructivism is a problem
  in sustainable development policies.
• 2. Lack of legitimate institutions and
  appraisal processes for knowledge integration
  prevents decisive action in urgent matters
  related to sustainability -and reinforce existing
  power regimes.
• 3. Climate change policy may provide the best
  change for setting transformative appraisal
  targets at different levels of action.

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IV) ICG policy instruments need to incorporate
robust knowledge about social-ecological systems

1. Knowledge about the state and quality of existing
   stocks and flows of social-ecological systems
   resources needs to be incorporated in the making
   of policy measures.
2. Policy instruments should be devised to address
   multiple constraints to support long-term
   transition goals in multiple domains.
3. Should support long-term transformative options
   and goals at individual and institutional levels.

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• The goals and means of ICG will never be
  predetermined, but will emerge as a result of
  social learning.

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• The goals and means of ICG will never be
  predetermined, but will emerge as a result of
  social learning.

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Conclusions

• ICG is possible not impossible.
• Research and practice in ICG is urgent.
• Climate change perhaps offers one of the best
  chances to reframe international relations, and
  in Europe, to ensure sustainable development in
  the long term. Such reframing entails moving away
  from the present market-based global competition
  towards a more sustainable development / climate
  global cooperation.

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Thank you for your attention