ID21 - Insights Issue 30

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		Knowing how to change - environmental policy learning and transfer

		Rolling out climate change policy lessons

		Pass it on. Using and confusing environmental health research

		Regional rules, national waves

		Whose wild? A human stake in Africa's conservation heritage

		What goes on between regulator and regulated?

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		Sites for Sore Eyes

June 1999 Insights Issue #30

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Rolling out climate change policy lessons

The 1990s witnessed unprecedented mobilisation of scientific assessments and models of climate change for consumption by policymakers, led by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. As a result, debate over whether humans are influencing the global climate has moved on to what the impacts will be and how people should respond. The new challenge is to extend ownership and absorption into common knowledge of this body of evidence. Scientists and policymakers in OECD countries cannot expect other parts of the world to want to import unaltered their understanding of climate change issues and solutions. Fresh efforts are needed now to refer climate change to local or regional agendas and perceptions, especially in developing countries, concludes a recent University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) study, part of the Global Environmental Change initiative. {short description of image}

Carbon dioxide emissions tonnes per capita, 1996
Source: World Bank Atlas, 1999

In preparation for the international climate convention in Kyoto in late 1997, the European Union set about devising a procedure for allocating emission reduction shares between Member States. The principle behind this allocation was to take account of different degrees of energy efficiency and lifestyle, for instance through measures of emissions per capita and per unit GDP, along with an assessment of what was technically feasible in each sector. The methodology was flexible enough to allow all EU countries to enter into political negotiations on precise reduction targets from a common and agreed baseline.

The result was a plausible way of achieving the EU's commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent by the year 2010, justifying the EU's status as prime mover on global climate change. The learning process that facilitated agreement over differentiated targets in the EU was another instance of mutual learning between science and policy. A team of university analysts in the Netherlands had already established a database on sectoral energy consumption in the EU member states and, jointly with the Dutch environment ministry, devised simple rules for differentiating targets. The procedure used informal workshops between Member State nominees to reach consensus and its success relied heavily upon flexibility (given basic agreement on principles) and on personal relationships of mutual trust.

These conditions point to the fact that policy learning is a creative process of social interaction. What then of the future? Major challenges that face tomorrow's negotiations are:

to extend ownership and social learning to a wider set of policy actors

to be creative enough to redefine the climate change agenda flexibly

to provide meaningful incentives and resources to act on the issues.

As noted above, learning should be a two-way traffic. Scientists and policymakers in well-off countries cannot afford to assume that others will adopt their reading of issues and appropriate responses. It may make better sense, for example, to address the issue of 'vulnerability to natural hazards' featuring climate change as one amongst a range of issues, rather than as the sole focus of attention. As for emission targets, international organisations face a major task of designing knowledge baselines and tools from which to construct future global emission pacts. OECD countries would be well-advised to channel more of their research and policy resources into cultivating connections with researchers, governments, agencies, community groups, NGOs and industry chiefs in less industrialised countries and scout out with them ways of relating climate change to locally and regionally defined agendas and perceptions.

Conditions for successful policy learning vs. attributes traditionally associated with policy

Feature	"Traditional" Model of Policy	"Modified" Model of Policy
Institutions	Formal structures and procedures	Flexibility in structures and procedures to promote informality
Personnel	Functional units	Individuals become critical
Source of knowledge	Provided from outside	Also generated internally
Role of science and scientists	Advisory, temporary contract	Partnership in policy knowledge production, longer-term dialogue
Trust	Emerges through due process, requires long-term relationships	Emerges through collective experience and "witnessing", can be rapidly gained
Policymaking	Instrumental	Creative

Two-way transfers

Working Group #1 of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (WG1/IPCC) brought together thousands of scientists and government officials to assess the state of scientific knowledge on climate. Reports by the Panel won wide currency in governmental policy circles for the issue of human-induced climate change. WGI's bold 1998 assertion that: 'The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate' has since been echoed many thousands of times in the media, and in scientific, government, industry and NGO conferences and publications. Factors that helped WG1 push the debate forward were:

careful and thorough assessment by key scientists (far exceeding orthodox peer review)
effort to involve scientists from countries that had sponsored little research in this area
involvement in the process of policymakers from leading economies, North and South
stimulating active and less formal dialogue between climate scientists and policymakers
endorsement by key politicians from OECD countries (before and during the process)
the state of the knowledge base, depending largely on national investment in science
active participation in the assessment process by nongovernmental organisations in the business and voluntary sectors, providing what has been termed 'extended peer review'

A raft of scientific knowledge was made directly relevant to the concerns of environmental policymakers through a painstaking and long-drawn-out process of person-to-person dialogue in an institutional context that avoided red tape and procedural formality (see chart above).

Simon Shackley
Manchester School of Management
UMIST
PO Box 88
Manchester
M60 1QD
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 161 200 8781
Fax: +44 (0) 161 200 3505
Email: Simon.Shackley@umist.ac.uk
UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology), UK

See also:

Timing and Sponsorship. The Research-to-Policy Process in the EU 15% Kyoto Proposal. In CIRCITER Final Report to European Commission, Bielefeld University, Germany. By Nolin, J. & Dresen, L. (1999) .
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Consensual Knowledge and Global Politics in Global Environmental Change 7(1):77-79, by Shackley, S. (1997).

Other related links:

ESRC Global Environmental Change Programme

Search ELDIS for sources on Environment

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