Paradoxes of Public Participation in Climate Change Governance

Sprain, Leah

doi:10.5325/goodsociety.25.1.0062

Cited by 44 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Experiments also run the risk of attracting a specific set of participants-those with the time and means to be involved in experiments-giving them a disproportionate voice in the development of local climate governance interventions (Evans, Karvonen, and Raven 2016;van der Heijden 2016van der Heijden , 2017. While public participation in urban climate experimentation comes with certain advantages, it also runs the risk of narrow and vested interests becoming overrepresented (Birnbaum 2015;Scott 2015;Sprain 2016). Finally, some argue that experimentation is a result of neoliberal processes and austerity politics and opens the door for the reproduction of environmentally damaging forms of capitalist urban development (Ansell and Torfing 2015;Enright and Rossi 2018).…”

Section: Conditions That Affect Urban Climate Governance Experimentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban Climate Governance Experimentation in Seoul: Science, Politics, or a Little of Both?

Heijden

Hong

2020

Urban Affairs Review

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Cities are key in urban climate mitigation. Since the early 2000s, a trend of urban climate governance experimentation has been observed in which cities, and especially city governments, are trialing novel governance interventions, processes, and instruments to learn from their development and implementation. This article explores the role of the government of the city of Seoul, South Korea, in a range of local experiments. It particularly focuses on the factors that contribute to the success (or lack thereof) of urban climate governance experimentation. It finds that the city’s government has been successful in developing and trialing some but not all experiments and that the overall results of these are promising in certain areas of city development and use. The article also highlights some less promising results, indicating the fragile nature of urban climate governance experimentation—in both the scientific and political senses of the term.

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Section: Conditions That Affect Urban Climate Governance Experimentationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban Climate Governance Experimentation in Seoul: Science, Politics, or a Little of Both?

Heijden

Hong

2020

Urban Affairs Review

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“…Expanding on Arnstein's [18] limitations for public participation Sprain [86] identified barriers for organizations and communities as well as for governance of sustained participation in climate change governance. Among barriers for organisations and communities the reviewed literature reported lack of motivation (44%) and resistance to power redistribution (40%) most frequently, followed by paternalism (38%) and bias (29%) ( Table 6).…”

Section: Barriers To Public Participation In Climate Changementioning

confidence: 99%

Can public awareness, knowledge and engagement improve climate change adaptation policies?

et al. 2021

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Communities that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change need to adapt to increase their resilience. Effective government policies and plans are a key component of this transition, but they are not sufficient in themselves. The community needs to be made aware of the risks, acquire knowledge about the options that are available for a response, and be empowered to take their own actions. Effective public engagement is therefore key to success in planning for climate change. This paper focuses on the importance of public engagement in climate change adaptation policy. It undertakes a systematic quantitative review of the literature dealing with the core themes of climate change awareness, knowledge, and engagement in policy-making. The findings reveal a gap in the existing academic literature on public engagement, its impacts on different types of knowledge, and the integration of both into climate change adaptation policy. In addition, findings show a strong link between public knowledge and engagement that can be used to encourage and motivate the public by using behavioural economics as a policy instrument. The paper also makes a useful contribution by identifying more effective strategies to improve climate change resilience and sustainability.

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“…Multi-disciplinary problem solving for adaptation requires time to build common vocabularies and problem understanding among stakeholders, particularly when those stakeholders have competing interests in gaining political power and control over international aid (also see discussions in Few et al [43]). And indeed, there are a number of paradoxes [58]. Stakeholder participation is challenging when trying to involve vulnerable groups who cannot afford missing productive time, are marginalized by local leaders, or are in political opposition to the national government [59].…”

Section: Napas: a Novel Form Of Adaptation Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Transformational Adaptation in Least Developed Countries: Does Expanded Stakeholder Participation Make a Difference?

et al. 2020

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Did the novel planning arrangements in the National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) enable stakeholders to substantively influence adaptation planning? If so, does the observed influence have potential for more transformational adaptation? We inform these questions by reviewing and coding the first 50 NAPAs, prepared by the world’s poorest nations with support from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We then apply categorical statistics and qualitative comparative analysis to test for stakeholder influence on the planning process and outcomes. We find little evidence that the composition of stakeholder participation influenced climate vulnerability analysis or adaptation planning in the NAPAs. Although the NAPAs were designed to be participatory and country-driven, they were constrained by limited budgets, prescribed guidelines from the UNFCCC, and the challenges of cultivating effective stakeholder participation. Key aspects of NAPAs even worked against generating transformational adaptation. Chief amongst these, risk exposure and sensitivity were emphasized over adaptive capacity in assessing vulnerability, and cost- effectiveness and synergies with existing development and environmental policies were priorities for selecting adaptation actions. These barriers to effective stakeholder engagement and transformational adaptation are timely reminders for those countries currently in the process of preparing their National Adaptation Plans to the UNFCCC.

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Paradoxes of Public Participation in Climate Change Governance

Cited by 44 publications

References 38 publications

Urban Climate Governance Experimentation in Seoul: Science, Politics, or a Little of Both?

Urban Climate Governance Experimentation in Seoul: Science, Politics, or a Little of Both?

Can public awareness, knowledge and engagement improve climate change adaptation policies?

Transformational Adaptation in Least Developed Countries: Does Expanded Stakeholder Participation Make a Difference?

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