Download Climate Change Discourse

Climate change narratives,
rights and the poor: Scientifc
discourse, international
political discourse and local
voices
NORGLOBAL dissemination
conference, October 2011
Asuncion Lera St.Clair
CMI/CICERO
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Key research question
► Narratives
of climate change are becoming central
to development discourse, and increasingly frame
understandings of other global challenges, such as
poverty and health.
► In this project we ask how the new climate change
narratives affect approaches and responses to the
poor and their rights, particularly as regards their
social rights related to resources profoundly
affected by climate change impacts such as water
and food, with a focus on South Africa.
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Research design
► Framings:
Policy, argument and linguistic analysis
of key global and national documents/texts on
energy, climate and development
► Legal: Socio-economic versus environmental rights
► Mobilization: movements and litigation of rights
► Bottom up narratives: Field work based analysis of
bottom up responses from communites affected
by environmental degradation, energy projects
(Medupi coal mine), and collection of bottom-up
community-based views on climate
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Partners in South Africa
►Centre
for Civil Society, University of
Kwazulu-Natal, Durban (Active on climate
justice)
►The Socio-Economic Rights Institute of
South Africa (SERI)
►In dialogue with UCT, Stellenbosch U.
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The importance of climate
change and development:
In the medium and long term, the
largest source of uncertainty in
climate change scenarios are what
development models will be
pursued by both developed and
developing countries.
"The World Bank is a trusted partner in
climate-smart investments. Four out of
five countries the World Bank works
with have now made climate change
among the top priorities for their antipoverty plans" (WB Website)
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Climate Change
and Development Framings:
A comparative analysis of the
Human Development Report 2007/8
and
the World Development Report 2010
Des Gasper and Ana Victoria Portocarrero
(International Institute of Social Studies,
Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Asuncion Lera St.Clair
(Chr. Michelsens Institute, Bergen
Centre for International Climate and environmental
Research-Oslo )
HDR 2007/8 -- WDR 2010
►
The HDR uses the same title for Report and Overview: it
provides an ethical and political message about struggle,
division, and overcoming division, in order to face a shared
crisis. It appeals to ideals of bravery, solidarity and human
community. The Overview maintains this style.
WDR 2010’s message is not a political and ethical
statement asserting a We, but instead a managerialist
‘Can-Do’ that matches the World Bank’s predominant
technocratic-bureaucratic style and reflects a framing of
climate change as a challenge that can be tamed with
sufficient funds and technology.
►
Its call for solidarity is reflected in frequent use of the word8
►
Our Methodology of comparison
►
Content-analysis: lexical choice = vocabulary; collocation
►
world-view, a pattern of attention and perception.
The Report Overviews are of very similar length, so simple
word-frequency counts that indicate large differences
suffice to indicate different world-views.
►
(Alexander, R.J., 2009: Framing Discourse on the Environment: A Critical
Discourse Approach (London: Routledge). A vocabulary conveys a
Frame-analysis: systematic comparison in posited key
dimensions, of the views, presences and absences (Schmidt,
R. (2006). Value-Critical Policy Analysis. In D. Yanow & P. Schwartz-Shea eds.,
Interpretation and Method (pp. 300-315). Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Yanow,
D., 2000. Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis. Thousand Oaks, CA:Sage.).
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Organizational, intellectual and
situational contexts
► GDOs:
agenda and norm setters, knowledge
brokers, discursive and material power, expert
institutions
► UNDP/Human development paradigm increased
ideological influence but little policy impact
► World Bank: circular, self-referential, cognitively
narrow and reductionist economic thinking
► Reports: tools for positioning
► HDR and WDR on climate shifts the history of slow
convergence between these 2 Reports
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Framing the Problem - checklist
importance given to the problem; and for whom and for
what it is considered a problem – for economic growth,
for equity & human rights, for poor people & future
generations?
2. The links seen between climate and development, with
attention to meanings attached to ‘development’ and
3. The specification of causal linkages and structural
rigidities, and the related degree of urgency.
4. What understanding of vulnerabilities and responsibilities
5. Uses of the term ‘efficiency’ and its role in directing
attention to activities in poor rather than rich countries.
6. How far the reports consider the issue in terms of human
rights.
1.
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Findings: WORLDVIEW
- Dramatically different vocabularies
‘justice’
‘human rights’
‘equity’/’equitable’
‘climate smart’
‘political’
‘economic growth’
‘efficiency’
‘We’
‘manage’
‘human’
HDR 2007/8
WDR 2010
7
11
2
0
0
0
15
9
23
23
21
6
26
48
56
11
6
102
26
8
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Findings on DIAGNOSIS: 1
► For
the Human Development Report the problem
is a fundamental civilizational issue, in which the
basic life quality and even sometimes the lives of
poor people--‘rural communities in Bangladesh, farmers
in Ethiopia and slum dwellers in Haiti’ (p.10 [3])--are
endangered, in large degree by actions by others,
in rich countries, who have a compelling moral
obligation to provide support and to modify their
current patterns of living.
► None
of this vision characterises the World
Development Report (see Table 1).
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WDR: the details of a mainstream economic
vision of a world smoothly ordered by
corporations and markets
but marked by convenient omissions and techno-optimism
wherever required for maintaining this vision (Storm,
2011),
► and by absence of self-reflection regarding the models of
development that have led to the climate crises in the first
place. In the WDR’s organizational and intellectual context,
climate change and poverty are technical problems to be
addressed by economic policy and technological innovation,
tasks to be led by the development aid bureaucracies and
global business. They are problems that will be resolved,
not intensified, by economic growth.
► market-based ‘solutions’ are put forward to whatever
‘local difficulties’ may arise, such as climate change
(O’Brien et al. 2009; St.Clair 2009).
►
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Findings on DIAGNOSIS: 2
►
►
►
The WDR evinces less urgency, reflecting its relatively
greater concern with monetary magnitudes and hence
implicitly with the interests of those with more resources to
protect themselves from possible future stresses.
The HDR’s reliance on a currency of human welfare
highlights that lives can be broken and stunted, and
contributes to its greater sense of urgency and willingness
to query unending economic growth in rich countries.
The Reports share ideas about inertia and lock-in, which
generate urgency but which, together with a standard
conceptualisation of ‘efficiency’, direct attention primarily
towards influencing the faster-growing LDCs.
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Findings: shared POLICY VISION
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Developing countries need more growth
An insurance rationale
Mitigation: HIEs should adopt carbon-pricing: either a
carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system.
These mechanisms generate finances for transfers to
LDCs for mitigation and adaptation, to be administered
by a multilateral mechanism.
The transfers will be programme-based. Developing
countries will have to commit to quantitative goals and
policy changes for mitigation, adaptation, and
management of water, land, and energy.
No international regime is proposed to require and
enforce changes in rich countries.
Freer domestic markets. Plus smart regulation.
Open global product markets.
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Policy measures:
the paradox of the HDR
►
►
►
Following its stress on human rights and ethical principles,
the HDR does relatively little to apply those ideas in policy
proposals.
Whether the key constraints are the training of its staff in
economics schools in the North, its lesser budget compared
to the World Bank’s research resources, political pressures
within and upon a multilateral agency, or stubborn reality,
would require a separate study to try to answer.
The HDR 2007/8 seems a classic UN report, influenced by
inspiring humanist perspectives but with relatively limited
resources for research and little associated funding for
programs with which to induce others to accept its ideas,
which produces a synthetic set of practical measures that
do not offend potential funders and largely rely on
proposals worked out by richer agencies.
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Some policy differences
►
►
►
►
The HDR calls for carbon budgets for all countries and
more program flexibility for LDCs,
HDR is explicit about the ethical underpinnings—solidarity
over time and obligations of rich countries arising from the
damage to others that they are responsible for—which
together imply (but here the HDR hesitates and
prevaricates) limits to further economic growth in rich
countries;
whereas the WDR tries to proceed with only a language of
enlightened self-interest and win-win ‘deals’, with no talk
of Northern obligations or self-limitation, let alone of
human rights. ….
Yet , despite those differences, the bulk of the proposals
are the same.
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Why does the HDR 2007/8 not convert its
critique far into a distinctive policy approach?
Three possibilities, and then (next slide) an overall interpretation.
First, its structuralist belief in ‘lock-in’ already in the North, and fear of
an imminent high-carbon ‘lock-in’ too in the South, leads it to share
the mainstream preference to focus on change of direction in the
South, not the North
Especially given also:
Second, its residual adherence sometimes to a decontextualized notion of
‘efficiency’ as judged in market terms (i.e. according to market
purchasing power, rather than in terms of human development values).
But most especially, and intensified by the first point:
Third, its belief in ‘the fierce urgency of the now’, leads HDR to
rush to a full policy package, designed in terms of instruments
already available on the table.
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Key to pay attention to the lack
of questioning of development
and poverty reduction ideas
Strong presence of the issues in IPCC 5AR(particularly
WG2)
► Many in the GEC community unhappy with market-based
solutions, misinterpretation of the science-politics relations
on climate change issues
► Large agreement on the need to contextualize, interpret
what climate change means for people
► Bridging literatures and traditions and fast tracking social
and human science research for climate change.
► yet, informed by and in conversation with climate science
►
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