Cindy Isenhour

The Devil in the Deal: Trade Embedded Emissions and the Durban Platform

Several commentators have expressed concern that the Durban Platform does not include more specific language about the need for equitable mitigation efforts. Meanwhile, other commentators have argued that the differentiated approach adopted by the Kyoto Protocol set up an opposition between the developed and developing nations; resulting in an impasse which has prevented the achievement of adequately ambitious, agreeable and binding mitigation commitments. In this commentary I propose that the political impasse is not due to the equity track per se, but rather to the territorial and production-based accounting system upon which it was built. Under the UNFCCC, parties are required to provide inventories of GHG emissions within their national borders. There are several problems with this method, but most important given the argument here, is that the production-approach has resulted in a significant misrepresentation of the total climate impact of developed nations. Because GHG emissions are not confined by geopolitical borders, it is important to understand the climate impact of contemporary consumption and trade, regardless of where emissions are produced. I argue that supplementing production-based accounting with a consideration of the emissions embedded in trade has the potential to provide a more agreeable and politically viable path for closing the ambition gap and ensuring equity.

Model-based reasoning to foster environmental and socio-scientific literacy in higher education

The American public’s environmental, scientific, and civic literacies are generally low. While environmental science courses often recognize the human dimensions of environmental problems and solutions, they typically treat such phenomena as matters of opinion and rarely engage with social scientific ways of knowing. Recently, there has been a push in higher education to advance broader scientific literacy, but little attention has been paid to helping students gain an understanding of how socio-scientific evidence and claims are generated. Our work here aims to develop the knowledge framework that facilitates the integration of knowledge across biophysical and social science domains. In this research brief, we report on a project in which an interdisciplinary team developed a model of climate adaptation and mitigation to help teach undergraduates about the coupled human-climate system. The research team found this process to be integral to both thinking and learning about a system with biophysical and social variables. This project is unique in that we then used this model to develop not just curricula but also a framework that can be used to guide and assess interdisciplinary instruction at the collegiate level. This framework allows learners to make sense of complex socio-environmental issues and reason with scientific information from the social and biophysical sciences.

Introduction: Moving Beyond the 'Rational Actor' in Environmental Governance and Conservation

In this brief introduction, we examine the themes and issues that link the three papers in this special section. In each case, neoliberal conservation practices appear to be predicated on a certain kind of individual subject with certain kinds of motives and behaviours-the rational actor. Taken together, these three papers challenge three assumptions of rational actor models, including that individuals are self-interested and attempt to maximise their own benefits, that they only respond to economic incentives, and that economic markets are free, mutual, and rational. Together these articles promote greater attention to how individuals are conceptualised in conservation efforts, and suggest alternative ways to think through conservation projects.

Why achieving the Paris Agreement requires reduced overall consumption and production

Abstract Technological solutions to the challenge of dangerous climate change are urgent and necessary but to be effective they need to be accompanied by reductions in the total level of consumption and production of goods and services. This is for three reasons. First, private consumption and its associated production are among the key drivers of greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, especially among highly emitting industrialized economies. There is no evidence that decoupling of the economy from GHG emissions is possible at the scale and speed needed. Second, investments in more sustainable infrastructure, including renewable energy, needed in coming decades will require extensive amounts of energy, largely from fossil sources, which will use up a significant share of the two-degree carbon budget. Third, improving the standard of living of the world’s poor will consume a major portion of the available carbon allowance. The scholarly community has a responsibility to put the issue of consumption and the associated production on the research and policy agenda.

Trading Fat for Forests: On Palm Oil, Tropical Forest Conservation, and Rational Consumption

The longstanding butter vs margarine debate has recently become more complex as the links between margarine, industrial palm oil plantations, and tropical deforestation are made increasingly clear. Yet despite calls for consumers to get informed and take responsibility for tropical deforestation by boycotting margarine or purchasing buttery spreads made with sustainably-sourced palm oil, research in multiple contexts demonstrates that even the most aware, engaged, and rational consumers run into significant barriers when trying to reduce their environmental impacts. This paper supplements important critiques of neoliberal conservation at the site of extraction or intended conservation (Carrier and West 2009; Igoe and Brockington 2009; Bόscher et al. 2012), with empirical research from the other end of the commodity chain. It argues that programs which place faith in the ability of rational consumers to influence conservation outcomes through their choices on the market, neglect significant structural constraints and overestimate the efficacy of market choices. While careful to recognise the importance of civic pressure for policy legitimacy, this article also contributes to a special section on rational actors, calling into question the dominant ideology of free and rational choice that undergirds so many market-based conservation programs.

The politics of climate knowledge: Sir Giddens, Sweden and the paradox of climate (in)justice

There is a widespread assumption that most people will not effectively respond to climate risk until they personally experience its negative effects. Yet this assumption raises some interesting questions in the Swedish context. The majority of Swedes say that they have not experienced the negative effects of climate change, but they are among the worlds citizens most concerned about and active on the issue. These observations raise the questions – why do many Swedes act progressively if they do not feel environmental risks “closer to home”? Is there something exceptional about Swedish environmental ethics, political culture or governance structures? This paper explores these questions, using the Swedish case to challenge essentialising concepts such as “Giddens’ paradox” which, too often, equate risk perception with self-interest, neglect concern for climate justice and depoliticise climate knowledge. This research suggests that concern for climate justice, rather than self-interest, proves to be a more powerful motivator for climate action in the Swedish context and potentially beyond.