Suchergebnisse

This is the notes on contributors for IDS Bulletin 53.4: Reframing Climate and Environmental Justice.

This issue of the IDS Bulletin brings together a range of empirically grounded studies that add to – and challenge – contemporary debates on climate and environmental justice. Despite a growing focus on justice dimensions of climate and environmental change, we argue that there are still 'blind spots' in mainstream debates that warrant increased attention. In this brief introduction, we point to three in particular: first, a persistent failure to recognise diverse contexts and knowledges; second, a continuing failure to sufficiently appreciate the deep-seated contestations around climate and environmental justice; and third, the risks associated with 'recovery' and 'emergency' mindsets driving climate and environmental policy agendas. The articles in this collection illustrate and exemplify these issues in different ways and from a variety of methodological, philosophical, and interdisciplinary approaches and positionalities. We argue for a reframing of climate and environmental justice debates and suggest some key principles to make these 'hidden' aspects more visible in policy and practice.

This is the glossary for IDS Bulletin 53.4: Reframing Climate and Environmental Justice.

This paper analyses contrasting discourses of 'climate-smart agriculture' (CSA) for their implications on control over and access to changing resources in agriculture. One of the principal areas of contestation around CSA relates to equity, including who wins and who loses, who is able to participate, and whose knowledge and perspectives count in the process. Yet to date, the equity implications of CSA remain an under-researched area. We apply an equity framework centred on procedure, distribution and recognition, to four different discourses. Depending on which discourses are mobilised, the analysis helps to illuminate: (1) how CSA may transfer the burden of responsibility for climate change mitigation to marginalised producers and resource managers (distributive equity); (2) how CSA discourses generally fail to confront entrenched power relations that may constrain or block the emergence of more 'pro-poor' forms of agricultural development, adaptation to climate change, or carbon sequestration and storage (procedural equity); (3) how CSA discourses can have tangible implications for the bargaining power of the poorest and most vulnerable groups (recognition). The paper contributes to work showing the need for deeper acknowledgement of the political nature of the transformations necessary to address the challenges caused by a changing climate for the agricultural sector.

This paper aims to unpack the equity implications of 'climate-smart agriculture' (CSA). The CSA approach has gained considerable traction in recent years, but remains highly contested. One of the principal areas of contestation relates to CSA's contribution to social equity, yet equity is rarely defined in the CSA literature. To fill this gap, we apply an equity framework to four discourses that are commonly encountered in debates on the challenges and opportunities for applying CSA in different contexts and for different purposes. From this, we identify three important equity issues: First, distributive equity implies a need to acknowledge how CSA may transfer the burden of responsibility for climate change mitigation to marginalized producers and resource managers. Second, a procedural equity perspective reveals how CSA discourses generally fail to confront entrenched power relations that may constrain or block the emergence of more 'pro-poor' forms of agricultural development, adaptation to climate change, or carbon sequestration and storage. Third, to improve CSA outcomes, a focus on contextual equity means the need to pay more attention to the institutions that underpin the bargaining power of the poorest and most vulnerable groups, as well as a deeper acknowledgement of the political nature of transformations that are needed to address challenges around the agricultural sector in a changing climate.

Despite the growth in work linking climate change and national level development agendas, there has been limited attention to their political economy. These processes mediate the winners, losers and potential trade-offs between different goals, and the political and institutional factors which enable or inhibit integration across different policy areas. This paper applies a political economy analysis to case studies on low carbon energy in Kenya and carbon forestry in Mozambique. In examining the intersection of climate and development policy, we demonstrate the critical importance of politics, power and interests when climate-motivated initiatives encounter wider and more complex national policy contexts, which strongly influence the prospects of achieving integrated climate policy and development goals in practice. We advance the following arguments: First, understanding both the informal nature and historical embeddedness of decision making around key issue areas and resource sectors of relevance to climate change policy is vital to engaging actually existing politics; why actors hold the positions they do and how they make decisions in practice. Second, we need to understand and engage with the interests, power relations and policy networks that will shape the prospects of realising climate policy goals; acting as barriers in some cases and as vehicles for change in others. Third, by looking at the ways in which common global drivers have very different impacts upon climate change policy once refracted through national levels institutions and policy processes, it is easier to understand the potential and limits of translating global policy into local practice. And fourth, climate change and development outcomes, and the associated trade-offs, look very different depending on how they are framed, who frames them and in which actor coalitions. Understanding these can inform the levers of change and power to be navigated, and with whom to engage in order to address climate change and development goals.

Despite the growth in work linking climate change and national level development agendas, there has been limited attention to their political economy. These processes mediate the winners, losers and potential trade-offs between different goals, and the political and institutional factors which enable or inhibit integration across different policy areas. This paper applies a political economy analysis to case studies on low carbon energy in Kenya and carbon forestry in Mozambique. In examining the intersection of climate and development policy, we demonstrate the critical importance of politics, power and interests when climate-motivated initiatives encounter wider and more complex national policy contexts, which strongly influence the prospects of achieving integrated climate policy and development goals in practice. We advance the following arguments: First, understanding both the informal nature and historical embeddedness of decision making around key issue areas and resource sectors of relevance to climate change policy is vital to engaging actually existing politics; why actors hold the positions they do and how they make decisions in practice. Second, we need to understand and engage with the interests, power relations and policy networks that will shape the prospects of realising climate policy goals; acting as barriers in some cases and as vehicles for change in others. Third, by looking at the ways in which common global drivers have very different impacts upon climate change policy once refracted through national levels institutions and policy processes, it is easier to understand the potential and limits of translating global policy into local practice. And fourth, climate change and development outcomes, and the associated trade-offs, look very different depending on how they are framed, who frames them and in which actor coalitions. Understanding these can inform the levers of change and power to be navigated, and with whom to engage in order to address climate change and development goals.

Describes experience of: CIRAD with Workshops, Role-playing games ; Moroccan farmers are becoming more involved in managing supply chains, notably through local and regional cooperatives, particularly for milk. However, despite the state's attempts to transfer responsibilities to associations of water users, it retains control of large-scale irrigation schemes. In addition, a decline in surface water available for such schemes has prompted farmers to use groundwater from individual tube wells. Meanwhile, government programmes to relieve water scarcity with drip irrigation technology have not had good uptake from farming communities. The Moroccan branch of the agricultural research centre for development, CIRAD, wanted to help small-scale farmers to better understand drip-irrigation and plan their own group projects. The aim was to use land in ways that better suited the farmers and to encourage farmers to take more ownership of the process. CIRAD wanted to use social learning through this process and put in M&E to capture it. The results include projects that farmers had co-created to meet collective system level water management and that were also tailored to individual farmers. These projects continued to flourish outside of the CIRAD intervention as different farmer groups continued to interact and learn from each other. CIRAD concluded that it was more important to enable farmers to engage with an issue as a group – and design irrigation projects together - than to transfer technology to them.

Describes experience of: CARE with Community-based adaptation, Participatory scenario planning ; CARE International launched the five-year Adaptation Learning Programme (ALP) for Africa in 2010, implemented in Ghana, Niger, Mozambique and Kenya, in partnership with local civil society and government institutions. The programme seeks to identify successful approaches to Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) for vulnerable communities through working directly with 40 communities as well as learning with other organisations practising CBA, and support incorporation of these approaches into development policies and programmes in the four countries and their regions in Africa. ALP ran a number of participatory scenario planning (PSP) meetings between meteorologists and local actors with the purpose of building mutual understanding of data needed by local users and in planning responses to weather scenarios collectively. Key here is an element of linking timelines - the immediacy of weather scenarios for the upcoming season and farmer priorities/responses on one hand, whilst at the same time building longer term understanding and capacity to plan/respond to climate change. Part of the process considered important was facilitation with a "light-touch" allowing the overall guided process to create sufficient space for reflection and a sense of ownership. This approach encourages participatory planning and recognises the importance of different knowledge systems by encouraging local communities and government to take ownership of the process. What has become evident is that new knowledge has been created through social learning, and there are encouraging signs that social learning processes are evolving, reflecting on their own purpose and effectiveness, to become more systemic. For example, in Kenya a task force has been created by communities and local government to continue to evolve PSP processes beyond the ALP programme and take implementation of agreed activities forward. Other organisations such as CCAFS have also adapted scenarios processes with respect to socioeconomic uncertainties and interaction with climate change at regional scales.

Agronomist researchers in Italy with a traditional approach to research wanted to raise awareness of nitrate levels in eco-systems. A "nitrate emergency" was declared in the 1990's where levels of nitrates in drinking water were above safe levels. The response was compulsory reduction of the use of fertilisers and other chemicals at individual farm plot level, resulting in reduced yields for farmers. Evidence from agronomists demonstrated that this approach was not effective as the problem was more complex than individual farm level practices – and included production processes across the water basin used so as to meet end-user expectations on type and appearance of produce. The result was a year-long process with iterative phases of learning that brought together different farm groups, government, and end-consumers. The nitrate issue was reframed through social learning processes spanning numerous iterations from a "problem" in terms of how much nitrate used on crops, to part of a wider systemic issue involving collective agreement on crop types, planting approaches, and in managing end-user expectations. Subsequently social learning has become more integrated with the planning and governance process, and the impact has been policy and practice change. Key factors that fostered social learning included co-design of research rather than repackaging as a communications exercise. This happened over time by building physical and social spaces that fostered learning. The facilitator built trust and acted as a common party between different groups. One big challenge that has undermined the process to some extent is the need for local governance bodies to comply with European requirements on farming which do not allow for some of the solutions the stakeholders have collectively developed. These EU requirements come with their own pressures to spend and report and are undermining stakeholder confidence in the ability of a more horizontal governance process working.