| 1. |
- Bastos Lima, Mairon G., et al.
(författare)
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Large-scale collective action to avoid an Amazon tipping point - key actors and interventions
- 2021
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Ingår i: Current Research in Environmental Sustainability. - : Elsevier BV. - 2666-0490. ; 3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The destruction of the Amazon is a major global environmental issue, not only because of greenhouse gas emissions or direct impacts on biodiversity and livelihoods, but also due to the forest's role as a tipping element in the Earth System. With nearly a fifth of the Amazon already lost, there are already signs of an imminent forest dieback process that risks transforming much of the rainforest into a drier ecosystem, with climatic implications across the globe. There is a large body of literature on the underlying drivers of Amazon deforestation. However, insufficient attention has been paid to the behavioral and institutional microfoundations of change. Fundamental issues concerning cooperation, as well as the mechanisms facilitating or hampering such actions, can play a much more central role in attempts to unravel and address Amazon deforestation. We thus present the issue of preventing the Amazon biome from crossing a biophysical tipping point as a large-scale collective action problem. Drawing from collective action theory, we apply a novel analytical framework on Amazon conservation, identifying six variables that synthesize relevant collective action stressors and facilitators: information, accountability, harmony of interests, horizontal trust, knowledge about consequences, and sense of responsibility. Drawing upon literature and data, we assess Amazon deforestation and conservation through our heuristic lens, showing that while growing transparency has made information availability a collective action facilitator, lack of accountability, distrust among actors, and little sense of responsibility for halting deforestation remain key stressors. We finalize by discussing interventions that can help break the gridlock.
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| 2. |
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| 3. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
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Leading by example? EU citizens’ preferences for climate leadership
- 2022
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- For global problems like climate change, strong international agreements are difficult to achieve. Alternative solutions might therefore be necessary. In this paper, we study the support for climate leadership in seven European countries. Climate leadership means that an individual country takes the lead by decreasing its carbon emissions above its level of commitment in the current EU agreement and with the intention of inspiring other countries to do likewise. Overall, we find that at realistic cost levels, a majority of people oppose their country taking the lead, and most do not expect that taking the lead will result in other countries following suit. The lack of support is caused by expectations that such leadership will result in other countries behaving as free riders. We do, however, find evidence of preferences for conditional leadership: People are more positive about their country taking the lead if assured that other countries will follow. These preferences are stronger among those who identify as leftwing. Moreover, citizens in smaller countries are more pessimistic that other countries would follow their country’s lead and more sensitive to the response of other EU countries.
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| 4. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
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The Climate Decade: Changing Attitudes on Three Continents
- 2020
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- We examine how attitudes and willingness to pay (WTP) for climate policies have changed over the past decade in the United States, China, and Sweden. All three countries exhibit an increased willingness to pay for climate mitigation. Ten years ago, Sweden had a larger fraction of believers in anthropogenic climate change and a higher WTP for mitigation, but today the national averages are more similar. Although we find convergence in public support for climate policy across countries, there is considerable divergence in climate attitudes and preferences within countries, particularly the United States. Political polarization explains part of this divergence.
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| 5. |
- Carlsson, Fredrik, 1968, et al.
(författare)
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The climate decade: Changing attitudes on three continents
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. - : Elsevier BV. - 0095-0696 .- 1096-0449. ; 107
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Using identical surveys a decade apart, we examine how attitudes and willingness to pay (WTP) for climate policies have changed in the United States, China, and Sweden. All three countries exhibit an increased willingness to pay for climate mitigation. Ten years ago, Sweden had a larger fraction of believers in anthropogenic climate change and a higher WTP for mitigation, but today the national averages are more similar. Although we find convergence in public support for climate policy across countries, there is considerable divergence in both WTP and climate attitudes within countries. Political polarization explains part of this divergence.
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| 6. |
- Elliott, Jasmine, 1989, et al.
(författare)
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If money talks, what is the banking industry saying about climate change?
- 2022
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Ingår i: Climate Policy. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1469-3062 .- 1752-7457. ; 22:6, s. 743-753
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Major banks are facing increased public pressure to reduce financing for fossil fuel projects. In this decade of action for the UN Sustainable Development Goals (with a focus on SDG 13 - climate action), all sectors, including the financial sector, are urged to recognize the ways in which they impact these goals and how they can best contribute to their realization. But how are the top 10 most active banks in financing the fossil fuel industry responding to this pressure? Using qualitative textual analysis of these banks' annual reports and a proposed categorization of how banks are talking about climate change, we highlight how these banks see their role in reducing climate impacts through their financing and whether their response has evolved since the Paris Agreement. We find that while these banks are stating an increasing number of climate change actions since the introduction of the Paris Agreement, there are few clear commitments in relation to their financing of fossil fuels. This absence of commitments in the annual reports may reflect an absence of critical reflection on their responsibility for financing climate change. Key policy insights Climate-related financial disclosures should target banks' climate impact regarding their client financing; most importantly this should be done in a clear, contextualized way so that regulators and the public can hold the banks accountable based on their disclosures. Effective policies need to explicitly consider how banks should measure and reduce climate impacts in a way that is comparable, aligned with the Paris Agreement, and in relation to banks' credit financing operations to clients (not only from the direct operations of a bank, as has been the focus of banks' commitments against climate change to date). Legislation mandating human rights and environmental due diligence with explicit considerations in relation to climate change is an example of a policy that would require banks to consider a broader scope of their impact assessment and disclosure reporting which could potentially establish clearer claims for remedies by impacted communities.
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| 7. |
- Fischer, Carolyn, et al.
(författare)
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The Legal and Economic Case for an Auction Reserve Price in the EU Emissions Trading System
- 2020
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Ingår i: The Columbia journal of European law. - 1076-6715. ; 26:2, s. 1-28
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- When it first launched in 2005, the European Union emissions trading system (EU ETS) expected to see carbon dioxide prices of around €30/ton and be a cornerstone of the EU's climate policy. The reality was a cascade of falling prices, a ballooning privately held emissions bank, and a decade of muted incentives for investment in the technology and innovation necessary to achieve long-term climate goals. The European Commission responded with various administrative measures, including postponing the introduction of allowances (“backloading”) and using a quantity-based criterion for regulating future allowance sales (“the market stability reserve”). While prices have now begun to recover, it is far from clear whether these measures are sufficient to adequately support the price of carbon dioxide into the future. In the meantime, governments outside the EU ETS have begun turning away from carbon pricing and adopting overlapping regulatory measures that reinforce low prices. Unfortunately, however, this further undermines confidence in market-based mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Other carbon markets have responded to such by introducing an auction reserve price that sets a minimum price in allowance auctions, thus avoiding the unexpectedly low price outcomes experienced in the EU ETS. Opponents of instituting such an auction reserve price in the EU ETS express two main concerns. First, they fear that a minimum auction price would interfere with the quantity-based nature of the market. Second, they argue that a reserve price would be tantamount to a tax, thus triggering a burdensome decision rule requiring unanimity among EU Member States that would be difficult to overcome. This Article reviews the economic and legal arguments for and against an auction reserve price. Our economic analysis concludes that an auction reserve price is necessary to accommodate overlapping policies and for the allowance market to operate efficiently. Our legal analysis concludes that, inasmuch as an auction reserve price is not a “provision primarily of a fiscal nature,” nor would it “significantly affect a Member State's choice between different energy sources,” no legal barriers stand in the way of the introduction of an auction reserve price into the EU ETS. We then describe two ways by which a reserve price could be introduced into this system.
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| 8. |
- Harring, Niklas, 1979, et al.
(författare)
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COVID-19: Large-scale collective action, government intervention, and the importance of trust
- 2021
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Ingår i: World Development. - : Elsevier BV. - 0305-750X .- 1873-5991. ; 138:February 2021
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article we apply a large-scale collective action framework on the spread of the COVID-19 virus. We compare the pandemic with other large-scale collective action problems – such as climate change, antimicrobial resistance and biodiversity loss – which are identified by the number of actors involved (the more actors, the larger the scale); the problem’s complexity; and the spatial and temporal distance between the actors causing and being affected by the problem. The greater the extent of these characteristics, the larger the scale of the collective action problem and the smaller the probability of spontaneous collective action. We argue that by unpacking the social dilemma logic underlying the spread of the COVID-19 virus, we can better understand the great variation in policy responses worldwide, e.g., why some countries are adopting harsher policies and enforcing them, while others tend to rely more on recommendations. We claim that one key factor is trust and, more precisely, reciprocal trust, both horizontally among people and also vertically between people and their governments – and vice versa. Citizens must trust that the recommendations they receive from the public authorities are correct, that these are in their (or the collective’s) best interest, and that most others will follow the recommendations. Simultaneously, government authorities must trust that their citizens will transform the recommendations into collective action. When this situation is present, we argue that governments enjoy a large degree of collective action capital, which potentially open up for a wider palette of policy options.
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| 9. |
- Jagers, Sverker C., 1967, et al.
(författare)
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On the preconditions for large-scale collective action
- 2020
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Ingår i: Ambio. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 0044-7447 .- 1654-7209. ; 49:7, s. 1282-1296
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The phenomenon of collective action and the origin of collective action problems have been extensively and systematically studied in the social sciences. Yet, while we have substantial knowledge about the factors promoting collective action at the local level, we know far less about how these insights travel to large-scale collective action problems. Such problems, however, are at the heart of humanity's most pressing challenges, including climate change, large-scale natural resource depletion, biodiversity loss, nuclear proliferation, antibiotic resistance due to overconsumption of antibiotics, and pollution. In this paper, we suggest an analytical framework that captures the theoretical understanding of preconditions for large-scale collective action. This analytical framework aims at supporting future empirical analyses of how to cope with and overcome larger-scale collective action problems. More specifically, we (i) define and describe the main characteristics of a large-scale collective action problem and (ii) explain why voluntary and, in particular, spontaneous large-scale collective action among individual actors becomes more improbable as the collective action problem becomes larger, thus demanding interventions by an external authority (a third party) for such action to be generated. Based on this, we (iii) outline an analytical framework that illustrates the connection between third-party interventions and large-scale collective action. We conclude by suggesting avenues for future research.
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| 10. |
- Johansson, Markus, 1985, et al.
(författare)
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A risk framework for optimising policies for deep decarbonisation technologies
- 2021
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Ingår i: Energy Research and Social Science. - : Elsevier BV. - 2214-6296 .- 2214-6326. ; 82
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Massive resource infusion and coordination between state and market actors are needed to develop and diffuse deep decarbonisation technologies. This makes wise policy design imperative. Policy-makers are confronted with a plethora of diverging views on which policies are preferable for a low carbon transition, and which interventions, such as R&D funding, information, environmental taxes, or bans, should be employed to achieve necessary and sufficient technological transformation. Focusing on market and technological investment risks, we offer a conceptual framework that explains why no silver bullet policy or single theoretical approach exists in regard to decarbonisation. Our framework highlights that policies need to be designed with these risks in mind and aids in the key task of matching problems and policies, thereby also facilitating judicious use of resources to optimise climate benefits from resources spent.
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