Climate Governance at the Crossroads Experimenting with a Global Response after Kyoto

by Hoffmann, Matthew J.

• ISBN13: 9780195390087
• ISBN10: 0195390083
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-03-16
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The global governance of climate change is in flux. Conventional strategies of addressing climate change through universal, interstate negotiations--the most prominent of which is the Kyoto Protocol--have been stymied by the gaps that exist between the negotiating powers of states, rendering such initiatives stagnant and ineffectual. In response, a number of new actors and processes have begun to challenge the traditionally exclusive authority of nation-states to create rules and manage environmental problems via multi-national treaties. Dozens of innovative climate response initiatives, or "governance experiments," have emerged at multiple levels of politics and across multiple jurisdictions: individuals, cities, states/provinces, corporations, and even new multilateral initiatives. Climate Governance at the Crossroads explains how and why these new governance experiments have emerged, drawing upon a database of such initiatives to ascertain how these initiatives fit together and how they influence what is defined as environmental governance. In assessing the relational impact of these initiatives (whether they complement each other or clash; whether they can be scaled up or down; and whether they can be expanded beyond their current jurisdictional and geographic boundaries), Matthew Hoffmann provides insight into whether this experimentation is likely to result in an effective response to climate change. Additionally, he draws broader conclusions about how we understand global governance, addressing questions of how we understand authority and what we accept as modes of rule-making in global political spaces.

Author Biography

Matthew J. Hoffmann is an Associate Professor of International Relations in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Toronto Scarborough and in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He teaches and pursues research on climate change politics, global governance, multilateral treaty-making, complex systems, and international organization. Hoffman is the author of Ozone Depletion and Climate Change: Constructing a Global Response and coeditor with Alice Ba of Contending Perspectives on Global Governance: Coherence, Contestation, and World-Order.

Table of Contents

Tables and Figures	p. vii
Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Into the Void	p. 3
The World of Climate Governance Experimentation	p. 27
Making Sense of Experimentation	p. 59
Experimenting in Practice	p. 80
Experimenting with Cities and Technology Deployment	p. 103
Constructing Carbon Markets	p. 123
Lost in the Void or Filling the Void?	p. 151
Appendix	p. 165
Interviews Undertaken for Project	p. 179
Notes	p. 183
References	p. 201
Index	p. 215
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