TY - JOUR

T1 - Governance traps in climate change politics

T2 - reframing the debate in terms of responsibilities and rights

AU - Newell, Peter

AU - Bulkeley, Harriet

AU - Turner, Karen

AU - Shaw, Christophe

AU - Caney, Simon

AU - Shove, Elizabeth

AU - Pigeon, Nicholas

N1 - This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Newell, P., Bulkeley, H., Turner, K., Shaw, C., Caney, S., Shove, E. and Pidgeon, N. (2015), Governance traps in climate change politics: re-framing the debate in terms of responsibilities and rights. WIREs Clim Change, 6: 535–540. doi: 10.1002/wcc.356 which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcc.356 This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.

PY - 2015/11

Y1 - 2015/11

N2 - There is a strong sense of malaise surrounding climate politics today. This has been created at least in part by factors such as the chasm between the scale of action required and the adequacy of current political commitments, stalemate in global negotiations, the low price of carbon, and a growing sense of indifference among the publics of some developed countries about the threat posed by climate change. Within the policy community these issues are generally treated as different problems each to be overcome on their own terms. Yet, we argue, suggested solutions to these problems hold much in common—namely a focus on identifying agency, whether the capacity of institutions to act or the behavior of individuals. What is often missing from such accounts of climate politics is a recognition that the problems of how agency is attributed, what we might term governance traps, are structural in nature. Governing climate change therefore requires that we study the conditions through which these challenges arise and which in turn serve to frame agency in particular ways. We suggest that examining the ways in which notions of responsibilities and rights are currently being framed within climate politics provides one way into these dynamics. This opens up the critical questions that need to be addressed ahead of the critical Conference of the Parties meeting in Paris in November 2015

AB - There is a strong sense of malaise surrounding climate politics today. This has been created at least in part by factors such as the chasm between the scale of action required and the adequacy of current political commitments, stalemate in global negotiations, the low price of carbon, and a growing sense of indifference among the publics of some developed countries about the threat posed by climate change. Within the policy community these issues are generally treated as different problems each to be overcome on their own terms. Yet, we argue, suggested solutions to these problems hold much in common—namely a focus on identifying agency, whether the capacity of institutions to act or the behavior of individuals. What is often missing from such accounts of climate politics is a recognition that the problems of how agency is attributed, what we might term governance traps, are structural in nature. Governing climate change therefore requires that we study the conditions through which these challenges arise and which in turn serve to frame agency in particular ways. We suggest that examining the ways in which notions of responsibilities and rights are currently being framed within climate politics provides one way into these dynamics. This opens up the critical questions that need to be addressed ahead of the critical Conference of the Parties meeting in Paris in November 2015

U2 - 10.1002/wcc.356

DO - 10.1002/wcc.356

M3 - Journal article

VL - 6

SP - 535

EP - 540

JO - Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change

JF - Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change

SN - 1757-7780

IS - 6

ER -