Climate change as the ‘new’ security threat: implications for Africa

Once it was an environmental issue, then an energy problem, now climate change is being recast as a security threat. So far, the debate has focused on creating a security ‘hook’, illustrated by anecdote, to invest climate negotiations with a greater sense of urgency. Political momentum behind the idea of climate change as a security threat has progressed quickly, even reaching the United Nations Security Council. This article reviews the linkages between climate change and security in Africa and analyses the role of climate change adaptation policies in future conflict prevention. Africa, with its history of ethnic, resource and interstate conflict, is seen by many as particularly vulnerable to this new type of security threat, despite being the continent least responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions. Projected climatic changes for Africa suggest a future of increasingly scarce water, collapsing agricultural yields, encroaching desert and damaged coastal infrastructure. Such impacts, should they occur, would undermine the ‘carrying capacity’ of large parts of Africa, causing destabilizing population movements and raising tensions over dwindling strategic resources. In such cases, climate change could be a factor that tips fragile states into socio‐economic and political collapse. Climate change is only one of many security, environmental and developmental challenges facing Africa. Its impacts will be magnified or moderated by underlying conditions of governance, poverty and resource management, as well as the nature of climate change impacts at local and regional levels. Adaptation policies and programmes, if implemented quickly and at multiple scales, could help avert climate change and other environmental stresses becoming triggers for conflict. But, adaptation must take into account existing social, political and economic tensions and avoid exacerbating them.     

Climate Leviathan

Abstract: While there is much justifiable attention to the ecological implications of global climate change, the political implications are just as important for human well‐being and social justice. We posit a basic framework by which to understand the range of political possibilities, in light of the response of global elites to climate warming and the challenges it poses to hegemonic institutional and conceptual modes of governance and accumulation. The framework also suggests some possible means through which these responses might be thwarted, and political stakes in that construction of a new hegemony—which, to avoid suggesting we know or can yet determine the form it will take, we call “climate X”.     

Comparing Climate Change Policy Adoption and Its Extension across Areas of City Policymaking

Public policies increasingly address complex problems such as climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation that require forging connections across existing areas of policy activity. Despite the emerging prominence of these types of policymaking challenges, more research is needed to understand policy responses to them. In this paper, I use survey responses from 287 cities and a hurdle model to comparatively examine the factors that underlie the adoption of climate change mitigation and adaptation as issues influencing city policymaking and their extension across areas of city policymaking. I find evidence that while social change, crisis, and conditions supporting nascent coalitions were associated with adoption, extension across areas of policymaking was associated with the city?s prevailing political economy as well as the resources for expanding communities of interest. In the process, I offer empirical evidence for existing similarities and differences in cities? considerations about climate change mitigation and adaptation; particularly that the number of policymaking areas influenced by mitigation was associated with financial factors while the number influenced by adaptation was associated with socioeconomic ones.     

Compelled to Compete: Rendering Climate Change Vulnerability Investable

The imperative for vulnerable populations to adapt to greater environmental variability is increasing in lockstep with the onset of wide-ranging climate change impacts. However, while critical adaptation research emphasizes the necessity of addressing the underlying drivers of vulnerability to climate change, mainstream approaches to adaptation stress economic growth as a prerequisite for climate responses. Accordingly, capital-intensive adaptation measures promote competitiveness to spur economic growth in the Vietnamese Mekong Delta, where more than 18 million people face environmental hazards such as seawater intrusion, flood, drought and cyclones. This study evaluates competitiveness as a mandate for effective climate change adaptation. It finds that adaptation can advance either competition or vulnerability reduction, but it cannot logically or pragmatically pursue both.     

Politicized moral geographies: Debating biodiversity conservation and ancestral domain in the Philippines

Research in political ecology has paid inadequate attention to the multifaceted cultural politics surrounding discourses of environmental conservation in the developing world. Specifically, it has tended to neglect the rich politicized moral geographies integral to conservation debates. This paper, then, makes the case for thinking about conservation as an envisioning process sensitive to these politicized moral geographies as well as their linkages to political and economic processes. After a brief critique of political ecology, the paper sketches a theoretical approach in which environmental conservation is understood as a process of envisioning social relations, moral discourse and socionatural place. The approach is used to explain two contrasting visions of conservation based on the notions of integrated protected areas management and ancestral domain which are prominent today in the Philippines. The conclusion reiterates the call for a discursive political ecology alive to the politicized moral geographies that condition conservation trajectories.     

Questions of Symmetry: Programme Experiences Featuring Northern Borderland Development

In the North European border region between the Nordic countries and northwestern Russia, much of cross–border development continues to be steered by public authorities and channelled through programmes which are dominated by public actors–even though the participation of private partners such as businesses and various non–governmental organisations is strongly encouraged. This article examines one case of Northern European peripheral cross–border development by focusing attention on institutionalised co–operation programmes. This chosen approach brings to the fore some of the persistent obstacles and challenges of these development initiatives. Particular attention is paid to institutional conditions of and for collaboration, including administrative and legislative systems or economic and governance mechanisms, social structures, institutional systems and general living conditions across national boundaries. Symmetry between the participating countries' institutional environments is perceived as a necessity for the construction of balanced interdependence as well as the increasing involvement of a variety of actors (e.g. private partners) in the creation of a functional borderland.     

Neoliberalism in (Regional) Theory and Practice: the Stronger Communities Action Fund in New Zealand

Neoliberalism is a term most often used by those working in the field of political economy, including human geographers, to refer to the new political preference for market mechanisms as a way of ensuring social and economic wellbeing. To date, however, analysts of neoliberalism have focused on the decline of the national economy, and on the erosion of universalist conceptions of social welfarism. Much less attention has been paid to the complex and contested processes through which new spaces, socialities and subjectivities are being constituted. Through a case study of the Stronger Communities Action Fund, this paper examines these new spaces, socialities and subjectivities of social policy, including the shift towards heterogeneous conceptions of community, the rise of community based expertise, and the centring of ‘etho‐politics’. It concludes that neoliberalism is a more contradictory phenomenon than is often recognised. If analysts continue to portray neoliberalism as a monolithic project, and to emphasize what has been lost, rather than examining the complex trajectories of the new, they are much less likely to be sensitive to the different political possibilities offered in the current context.     

Ambivalent desires: State formation and dispossession in the face of climate crisis

In this paper, we analyze the politics, experiences and dynamics of state formation in a particular context of climate crisis. Through the study of the implementation of state-led adaptation and mitigation projects in two rural localities of northern Colombia, we interrogate the ways in which these interventions shape the everyday lives of those who happen to be located in the targeted areas. We found that, in spite of the different goals and particular configurations of the adaptation and mitigation interventions, these climate projects engendered the same contradiction. They promised a resilient and environmentally sound future, but the path towards that future has not been available to everyone. Furthermore, we show that the subjects of climate interventions do not embrace state promises in the same way. Local expectations, desires and engagement with the state are ambivalent and heterogeneous, and cannot be taken as a given. This paper develops these ideas by way of three arguments. First, we argue that exclusion, dispossession and marginality are inherent to the promises of climate mitigation and adaptation in the cases we study in the Colombian Caribbean. Secondly, the goals of state-led adaptation and mitigation programs we study are at odds with the material and social conditions of the areas of implementation. And thirdly, paying attention to the dynamics of state formation in the Colombian Caribbean in relation to climate change challenges common binaries opposing state absence/presence, failure/success, and retreat/return.     

“Sometimes Climate Adaptation is Politically Correct”: A Case Study of Planners and Politicians Negotiating Climate Adaptation in Waterfront Spatial Planning

Today, spatial planning is expected to deliver climate adaptation and to manage, merge and balance various societal interests and priorities. To what extent proactive shaping of change is enabled by spatial planning practice is less explored. This paper illustrates how the ideals and ambitions of climate adaptation are manifested in waterfront spatial planning via a case study of Norrköping, Sweden. Based on interviews with spatial planners and politicians responsible for strategic urban development planning, our study identifies a divergence in ambitions, approaches and positions. In local development plans, the position taken has less to do with climate risk severity than with an area's perceived political and economic attractiveness. When perceived attractiveness is low, precautionary climate adaptation serves as a pretext not to develop, whereas high perceived attractiveness leads to negotiated pragmatism allowing continued waterfront exploitation. We also identify a fragmentation in spatial planning, with weak interplay between municipal comprehensive planning and local development plans, resulting in ad hoc, case-by-case planning. Furthermore, different planning actors are organizationally compartmentalized, creating unfortunate intra-sectoral silos. We conclude that the integrative, proactive and reflexive potentials of spatial planning to deliver climate adaptation have yet to be realized.     

Multiple Partial Couplings in the Multiple Streams Framework: The Case of Extreme Weather and Climate Change Adaptation

In this paper, I draw insights from a detailed case study of adaptation policymaking to develop a novel interpretation of John Kingdon's original work that shows how policy entrepreneurs can couple the problem, policy, and political streams through multiple partial couplings. Researchers and policymakers often assume that extreme weather opens a window to adopt policies aimed at adapting to long‐term climate change. However, empirical evidence shows that crises can redirect attention to urgent, short‐term goals. Using the Multiple Streams lens in an abductive case study, I investigate how these competing forces interact to influence the policy process. By unpacking Kingdon's familiar “streams” metaphor and elaborating his overlooked concept of partial couplings, I illustrate how the policy entrepreneurs' strategy of issue linking explains Australia's adoption of the 2007 Water Act, one of the world's first major adaptation policies, at the height of its decade‐long Millennium Drought. Employing this novel theoretical understanding offers new insights into this important case. I conclude by developing tentative hypotheses for testing in future studies.     

基于城市适应的外来民工群岭南文化融入剖析

在珠三角地区,外来民工因数量庞大而逐渐成为相对独立的社会群体。作为迁移者,外来民工异地打工的同时,自身原有的文化基因会与迁入地的文化产生交融和碰撞,这种文化冲融伴随着外来民工城市适应的全过程。笔者首先通过走访,明晰外来民工对岭南文化的基本感知点:生活商业化、观念开放化、人情淡漠化和行事务实化,进而以此构筑外来民工基于经济、社会、文化的城市适应研究视点,采用问卷对外来民工的岭南文化认知和适应范式进行调研,剖析外来民工群基于城市适应的岭南文化融入特征。     

Dancing to the Rhythms of the Fossil Fuel Landscape: Landscape Inertia and the Temporal Limits to Market‐Based Climate Policy

This article makes a contribution to the critique of market‐based mechanisms for climate and energy policy. It explores the environmental effectiveness of market instruments by engaging a broadly conceived “fossil fuel landscape”, or the material, social, and political inertia of fossil energy dependence, as a factor delimiting policy outcomes. The argument is developed through a focus on the idea of economic efficiency as a key ideological construct underlying market‐based policy, and draws on examples from two different market instruments, namely the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, and the Flemish tradable green certificate scheme. I argue that an understanding of the shortcomings of these, and similar, policies requires acknowledgment of the political and socio‐economic power that emanates from the temporal dynamics of fossil fuel capitalism, which are reproduced when economic efficiency becomes the key focus of climate policy.     

Limits to Climate Change Adaptation: Case Study of the Australian Alps

Climate change is occurring and not being mitigated, motivating adaptation but adaptation strategies can have biophysical, economic, technological, and social limits. We review publicly available documents to assess how successful current and proposed adaptation strategies may be for the Australian Alps, including likely limits and potential collaborations and conflicts among stakeholders. Conservation managers, the tourism industry, and local communities have implemented or are proposing a range of adaptation strategies in the region. Some stakeholder strategies complement each other (e.g. invasive species control, fire management), while others are potential sources of conflict (water and electricity for snowmaking, year‐round tourism). Economic costs and biophysical constraints are the most important limits to these adaptation strategies. These types of limits and conflicts between different stakeholders on adaptation strategies are likely to occur in other regions and demonstrate that adaptation may only provide partial and short term solutions to the challenges of climate change.     

Ethiopian students' relationship with their environment: implications for environmental and climate adaptation programmes

Historically the voices of young people have been excluded from research and debates about how to respond to environmental degradation and climate change. To include the perspectives of young people in the climate change and adaptation debate, we conducted a Photovoice and draw-and-write project with 29 school students in Ethiopia, through which students were given a platform to explore their social representations of the environment. Thematic analysis of our findings suggested that young people have a deep appreciation of the moral, health-related and economic importance of the environment, a commitment to preserving it and a sense of responsibility and agency in relation to contributing to this preservation. Students saw environmental degradation as reversible, through a combination of commitment by themselves, local government and the global community. We conclude by discussing ways our findings might best be taken up in school-level programmes to strengthen youths’ existing social networks for the consolidation of ‘green’ identities, action and activism.     

Frozen ground in the sub‐arctic region and its biological significance

Abstract

Climate change is increasingly discussed in apocalyptic terms, a spectre-invoking crisis discourse that simultaneously legitimises society-wide action, while de-politicising this very political issue. This paper examines the depoliticisation of climate change adaptation in Kenya, a country which has been recently praised as a developing country with a progressive adaptation policy. Using examples from fieldwork in Kenya, it focusses on Kenya's recently adopted National Climate Change Response Strategy (NCCRS), and argues that Kenya's adaptation discourse is driven by particular imaginaries, specifically: adaptation as a ‘universal apocalypse’, and adaptation as a technical-economic problem. These function as deliberate anti-political strategies, aimed at obscuring the highly charged realities of adaptation. For Kenya's current political elite adaptation is predominantly a matter of reducing the perceived risks to economic growth, and enhancing opportunities to gain revenue from international funding sources. This is achieved through a discursive construction of a particular vision of adaptation, and against a backdrop of a capitalist strategy for growth. The paper concludes that a critical and political interpretation of the NCCRS and similar adaptation strategies is necessary to keep equity and justice at the centre of the climate debate, and to dispel the myth of adaptation policy making as a rational and disinterested process.     

Advocacy Coalitions Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier: Globalization and Canadian Climate Change Policy

With its emphasis on shared beliefs and the advocacy use of knowledge within policy subsystems, the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) is ideally suited to the study of environmental policy. Yet the ACF has generally been applied in a domestic context. This article argues that the twin phenomena of economic globalization and the internationalization of environmental affairs are blurring the distinction between some policy subsystems and the international arena. Thus, advocacy coalitions should be understood as operating increasingly along "the domestic-foreign frontier." In the case of Canada's efforts to develop a coherent climate change policy, the boundaries between political levels have been blurred as local and provincial actors come to understand themselves as players in a global game. This dynamic is exacerbated by Canada's unique constitutional division of authority, which delegates significant autonomy to the provinces on natural resource and energy issues.     

The People's Climate March: Environmental populism as political genre

Contemporary political ecological research on populism has demonstrated how authoritarian and strongarm tactics come to be hitched to reductive symbolic representations of “the people,” often with disastrous environmental impacts. Advocates of “left-populism” argue that such research can give the erroneous impression that “populism” and “authoritarianism” are essentially synonymous. Skeptical of formalist arguments, Gramscians argue that populism, as a quite variegated and fundamentally spatial phenomenon, must be viewed historically, in situ. But all three arguments share a quick assessment of populism, without always attending to its embedded multiplicity. Bringing together insights from Stuart Hall and Lauren Berlant, this article seeks to expand geographical understandings of the dynamic forms and styles of environmental politics by proposing thinking of populism as a political genre. This theoretical schema helps to cut through formalist versus historicist debates while directing attention to the affective scenes through which populism is performed. In order to demonstrate the utility of examining populism's genre and scenes, I examine political essays written surrounding the 2014 People’s Climate March. Essays debated activist expectations concerning political subjectivity, tactics, scales of action, signifiers, and aesthetics for best confronting global inequality and the climate crisis alike. Through contesting the meaning of “the people” and “populism,” divergent leftist political interpretations both repeated and tweaked generic populist forms. By examining the performative construction and contestation of “the people” through languages and spaces of climate action, I advocate a humble yet still critical political ecological approach to understanding contemporary populism.     

By the soil divided: The roots of geographical variation in English social conservatism

Using English data, we show that geographical variation in measures of social conservatism in the 19th and 21st centuries is strongly associated with variation in measures of social conservatism in the 17th century. Our statistical model includes a range of 19th-century and 21st-century economic and demographic characteristics, so the inter-temporal persistence in social conservatism is not to be explained by persistence in these characteristics. The association is still present when we fit a model with instrumental variables for the measures of 17th-century social conservatism, which suggests that the association is not a consequence of persistence in unobserved heterogeneity across locations. Rather, there does appear to be some inter-generational transmission of attitudes. A great deal of attention has been paid to the volatility of the British electorate in recent years, but our results show that the continuity in the country's political geography should not be overlooked.     

Who cares in Nicaragua? A care regime in an exclusionary social policy context

In Latin American countries with historically strong social policy regimes (such as those in the Southern Cone), neoliberal policies are usually blamed for the increased burden of female unpaid work. However, studying the Nicaraguan care regime in two clearly defined periods — the Sandinista and the neoliberal eras — suggests that this argument may not hold in the case of countries with highly familialist social policy regimes. Despite major economic, political and policy shifts, the role of female unpaid work, both within the family and in the community, remains persistent and pivotal, and was significant long before the onset of neoliberal policies. Nicaragua's care regime has been highly dependent on the ‘community’ or ‘voluntary’ work of mostly women. This has also been, and continues to be, vital for the viability of many public social programmes.     

The ‘joyous entry’ of Archduke Maximilian into Antwerp (13 January 1478): an analysis of a ‘most elegant and dignified’ dialogue

In the historiography of ‘joyous entries’ in the medieval Low Countries, much attention has been paid to the ways in which the iconographic programmes of these inauguration ceremonies served the dialogue between the Burgundian dukes and their subjects on the one hand, and between urban interest groups on the other. Analyses of the various theatrical performances organised on town squares and other public urban spaces allow us a glimpse of the balance of power and of the participants’ ambitions and strategies in a certain historical and geographical context. An in-depth analysis of a contemporary account of Maximilian's joyous entry into Antwerp (13 January 1478) adds a new perspective to historiography by showing how the public urban spaces functioned as complex social products, which gave extra meaning to the interaction between the duke and urban groups while simultaneously mirroring the socio-economic and political structure of urban society.