10 research outputs found
Artificial intelligence for sustainability
No full textDr. Vikrom Mathur, Zaheb Ahmad, Angelina ChamuahLiteraturverzeichnis Seite 19-2
AI for all : 10 social conundrums for india
No full textUrvashi Aneja, Vikrom Mathur & Abishek Reddy K. ; Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, Tandem Researc
International norms and domestic change: implementing the SDGs in India
No full textThe Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a set of 17 goals and 169 targets around which international and national development efforts are expected to coalesce. They can also be thought of as a cluster of interrelated ‘norms’ that prescribe pathways for global poverty alleviation and sustainable development. The widespread nod from member states to the final SDG document can be seen as a point of global normative convergence around the post2015 development agenda. However, such convergence at the inter-governmental level does not guarantee the successful achievement of the SDGs; the success and failure of the SDGs will ultimately be decided at the national level by whether and how member states follow through on their international commitments
Technological innovation and the future of work: a view from the South
No full textFil: Albrieu, Ramiro. CEDES. Centro de Estudio de Estado y Sociedad, Área de Economía. Centro de Implementación de Políticas Públicas para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC); ArgentinaFil: Aneja, Urvashi. Tandem Research; IndiaFil: Chetty, Krish. Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC); SudáfricaFil: Mathur, Vikrom. Tandem Research; IndiaFil: Rapetti, Martín. CEDES. Centro de Estudio de Estado y Sociedad, Área de Economía. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET). Centro de Implementación de Políticas Públicas
para la Equidad y el Crecimiento (CIPPEC); ArgentinaFil: Uhlig, Antje. Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ); AlemaniaA global narrative about technological change and the future of work is
emerging. It states that technological innovation will be pervasive across the
world, and the impacts on labor markets will be deep but largely transitory.
Will the future of work look the same everywhere? On the one hand, evidence
points to developing countries lagging behind in terms of technological
diffusion and the re-skilling of their current and future workers. This could
exacerbate development gaps with respect to advanced countries as has
happened in previous technological "revolutions". On the other, structural
factors that are country-specific -such as demographics, factor endowments,
gender gaps- may cause new technologies to have different impacts on labor
markets. We believe that the menu of policy options that the G20 is
developing should ideally start with country-specific diagnoses taking into
account these structural factors. However, given that this may be unreachable
in the short run, we recommend to start monitoring the trends in
technological adoption and skills development in each G20 country. For this,
more and better data is needed
Uncertain knowledge : cultures, institutions and resilience: adapting to climate change in the Tonle Sap Lake of Cambodia
No full textThis thesis provides a sociological account of the relationship between scientific knowledge of the impacts of climate change and its use in the formulation of actions and policies for adaptation. Focusing on the Tonle Sap Lake, the research investigates interlinked institutional and epistemic processes by which knowledge for planning adaptation to climate change 'flows' from global sites of knowledge production to local sites of knowledge consumption in Cambodia. Transnational expert institutions act as knowledge brokers and '(re)localize' global climate change by downscaling global data to local scales, interpreting scientific data for policy use, and instructing national institutions on how to use the knowledge. The processes of localization do not merely produce impact data but in a social and semiotic sense achieve local climate change. Cambodian institutions, however, 'ignore' knowledge that is deconstructive of their institutional commitments and accompanying epistemologies. I use Cultural Theory to analyse how four different policy stories on adaptation are framed by varying nature-myths, spatial and temporal commitments and socially maintained ignorance, characteristic of different social solidarities. A complex terrain of agreements, disagreements and mutual rejections on adaptation policies, linked to control and access over fisheries resources, emerges in the national discourse. However, hierarchical perspectives achieve epistemic sovereignty and become hegemonic. I argue that resilience to climatic changes that are yet to occur and hard to characterize will be realized from the ability of institutions to switch between strategies characteristic of different social solidarities. The knowledge basis for strategy switching, however, needs to be situated and contextualized, and requires a qualitative understanding of how people currently live around the Lake, rather than be a 'downscaled' global scientific representation of climatic change. I draw upon and hope to contribute to a growing body of literature that takes anthropological insights from the study of "primitive religions" in the work of Mary Douglas and applies it to modern social-scientific problems.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo
National Contributions in a Global Agreement
No full textAfter two weeks of intense negotiations at the 21st Conference of the Parties
(COP 21) in December 2015 in Paris - the 196 Parties to the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed on the COP Decisions
and Paris Agreement. The UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, described the
Paris Agreement as a ‘monumental triumph for people and our planet1’. The
Paris agreement is a return to the ‘pledge and review’ approach of the early
days of global climate policy – middle ground between national pledges for
climate action within a global architecture of review and collaboration. For
the last twenty years, international climate change policy has been focused on
the search for a centrally negotiated multilateral climate treaty with all
countries as signatories. Yet since its inception, adapting the top-down
multilateral treaty model to the challenge of climate change has been a
Sisyphean task. The new approach has broken a deadlock and created a sense of
optimism – but trust and legitimacy in the regime still needs to be built to
ensure performance. The devil is the detail – right balance between top-down
measures and bottom-up flexibility are needed for specific challenges related
to ensuring equity, mobilizing finance, driving technological change and
ensuring climate resilient development. In this paper we enroll theoretical
insights from the work of Elinor Ostrom on polycentric governance, to see how
a durable, hybrid climate regime could emerge out of the Paris Agreement and
facilitate equitable and ambitious climate outcomes. The paper is divided into
four sections: we first examine the road to Paris –the lessons from the last
thirty years of climate policy for the future regime; next we review theory –
what are the theoretical insights from the work of Elinor Ostrom on
polycentric governance; we examine how the ‘hybrid’ architecture of the new
regime might play out in dealing with specific issues: setting ambition,
ensuring differentiation, legal form, mitigation and adaptation; and lastly
weanalyze the way forward – building trust and legitimacy and encouraging the
‘ground swell’ of actors
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose: Adaptation in the Paris Agreement
No full text Global climate policy till date has focused on building consensus around a differentiated roadmap for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Equally important yet receiving less attention is the need to support adaptation of the most vulnerable communities to the increasingly severe impacts of climatic changes. The Paris Agreement, negotiated at the 21st COP in December 2015, ‘stitches up’ national contributions on adaptation and mitigation into a global agreement. This article first reviews the adaptation components of the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) submitted by developed, emerging and least developed nations. Second, we examine how adaptation and the related themes of loss and damage have been dealt with in the Paris Agreement in terms of: global goal, legal form, review mechanisms and financing arrangements. Finally, we look at the possibility of evolving new arrangements and opportunities for strengthening global response to adaptation by drawing on references to human rights and climate justice in the Paris Agreement. We contend that the global response cannot be relegated to action by individual nations—partly and loosely supported by global financial and technological flows. The Paris Agreement has made significant steps in raising the importance of adaptation vis-à-vis mitigation in climate action but a lot of work remains to be done. In a sense, the top-down elements of adaptation action reflect long held negotiating positions and the skepticism of developed nations with respect to adaptation. For the post-Paris climate regime to be legitimate and earn the trust of developing nations, it must focus equally on adaptation and mitigation and address the special needs of vulnerable communities across the world. </jats:p
Environmental Governance in the Mekong - Hydropower Site Selection Processes in the Se San and Sre Pok Basins
No full text This report aims to highlight regional environmental governance in the Lower Mekong Basin. The emphasis on regional governance is not only motivated by the shared and interdependent natural resources and threat of transboundary impacts within the Basin, but also by growing economic interdependence, increasing population density and political interactions within and between the countries. The study has chosen hydropower as it represents a key sector in terms of environmental protection. Hydropower projects on the Mekong River and its tributaries have been viewed as one of the primary engines of economic growth for the countries of the Lower Mekong Basin: Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand, and Vietnam. Yet this is occurring against a backdrop of prevailing poverty, widespread dependence on natural resources and degenerating ecosystems. Recent experience shows a range of adverse social and environmental impacts from already completed hydropower projects, both directly (i.e. from the project activities) and indirectly (from economic activity or demographic change induced by the projects). This experience has led a variety of civil society groups to oppose the construction of infrastructure projects under current procedures. To address the issue of environmental governance, we conducted an empirical review using a ‘process tracing method’. Through this approach we followed the process of hydropower planning in an international tributary to the Mekong River, the Se San/Sre Pok sub-basins, where major hydropower development plans are currently being developed. Our research approach combined secondary sources with primary data from interviewing the people involved in decision-making on Mekong issues. Our research questions were: What are the historical patterns of hydropower site selection in the Lower Mekong Basin? What institutions and actors attempt to exercise what kind of governance for environmental purposes, and with what mandate? What have been the decisive factors for the process of hydropower site selection in the Se San and Sre Pok Basins? How does the social and ecological situation in the concerned areas affect the governance process? Our theoretical approach takes as its point of departure the debate on ‘environmental regimes’ and discusses whether emerging cooperation on environmental issues in the Lower Mekong Basin represents such a regime. Indeed, reading policy statements, the work on Mekong governance seems to be evolving towards a higher level of cooperation, and towards a more solidly based institutional platform for securing this cooperation. Establishing regimes of this sort in an international basin is, however, an utterly complex undertaking that requires both time and trust. Empirically, the study explores four different fields in as many chapters. Chapter 3 is an historical review, looking for patterns of regional environmental governance in relation to hydropower in relation to the overall Lower Mekong Basin, and ends with an assessment of the current status of environmental governance. Chapter 4 disentangles the various actors’ roles and responsibilities: a certain weight is placed on the role of the Mekong River Commission (MRC) – given its regional mandate and high environmental ambition – but also the Asian Development Bank (ADB), national governments and their institutions, bilateral donors, and international consultants are scrutinised as to their role in this process. Chapter 5, the key empirical chapter, describes and analyses the process of hydropower planning for the Se San/Sre Pok Basins from the early 1960s to today. An explicit attempt is made to follow the twists and turns of this process, and point out its critical junctures. It concludes in an assessment of this process from a governance point of view. Chapter 6, finally, contrasts the various actors’ policy ambitions with the empirical situation seen from a local perspective. In doing so, it displays wide gaps between what may appear as a comprehensive social and environmental approach on policy level, and the difficulties of respecting and including local perspectives. The study reaches a wide range of conclusions: it argues that the regional approach to environmental governance really is unavoidable, since many livelihood systems operate with small margins utilising resources faced with crossboundary concerns. MRC is the only institution with the Lower Mekong Basin governments as members and the only one with a regional mandate. The Agreement should be treated as a joint policy declaration, going beyond its obvious legal implications. MRC’s new ‘programme approach’ is promising, if its value can be conveyed to, and convince, national decision-making fora. It should also be moving forward towards a pro- active role in terms of conflict prevention. The study turns out to be fairly critical of hydropower interventions, given the standards the major actors claim to uphold, but rarely seem to respect in practice. If these standards were respected, it is questionable whether it would be possible to build more major hydropower stations. Currently, there seems, however, to be a break with former practices, and ‘new’ standards vis- à-vis environmental governance seem to be emerging. However, there are major interests vested in large-scale hydropower expansion, which may not be impressed by the new standards as pioneered by the World Commission on Dams (WCD) and subsequently adopted by MRC. The new round of hydropower planning/construction in the Se San/Sre Pok Basins presents an opportunity to view how genuine the new approach really is. The study concludes by outlining the steps needed for further developing a future ‘resource regime’ based on ideas of environmental governance – the development of which is deemed as the best available long term solution to problems of regional environmental governance in the Mekong region – and, in a normative sense, re-inserts the findings of this study into the broader development debate on resource management. </p
Anticipatory governance of solar geoengineering: conflicting visions of the future and their links to governance proposals
No full textThis article identifies diverse rationales to call for anticipatory governance of solar geoengineering, in light of a climate crisis. In focusing on governance rationales, we step back from proliferating debates in the literature on ‘how, when, whom, and where’ to govern, to address the important prior question of why govern solar geoengineering in the first place: to restrict or enable its further consideration? We link these opposing rationales to contrasting underlying visions of a future impacted by climate change. These visions see the future as either more or less threatening, depending upon whether it includes the possible future use of solar geoengineering. Our analysis links these contrasting visions and governance rationales to existing governance proposals in the literature. In doing so, we illustratewhy some proposals differ so significantly, while also showing that similar-sounding proposals may emanate from quite distinct rationales and thus advance different ends, depending upon how they are designed in practice
Development of the Regional Policy Process for Air Pollution in South Asia, Southern Africa and Latin America
No full textProjections indicate that large increases in emissions may occur in developing countries during the next twenty to fifty years if current development patterns persist. This paper describes the development of co-operation regarding air pollution issues in three sub-regions of three continents. Experiences gained through activities within a programme on Regional Air Pollution in Developing Countries are used to illustrate progress. The sub-regional process in South Asia developed through a series of meetings that led to the Malé Declaration. In southern Africa a policy dialogue led to the Harare Resolution targeted towards progress in the SADC region. A policy dialogue in Buenos Aires concentrated on issues related to regional harmonisation of legal frameworks in the Mercosur region. In all regions the link between scientific information required to support decision making has been emphasised. The sub-regional policy processes are analysed in relation to availability of required scientific information and compared to the process that led to protocol development in Europe
