Economics, Institutions and Adaptation to Climate Change

sustainabilityconference2012 — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 18:24:41 +0000

Adaptation to climate change has attracted increasing interest as a necessary complement to greenhouse gas mitigation. Economic approaches to climate adaptation are rarely articulated and discussed explicitly despite the many benefits of such a framework-level discourse. Addressing this gap the article investigates how climate adaptation is approached in economics and how institutional economics may contribute to the development of the field. First, the paper identifies and critically reviews four major strands of current climate adaptation economics: estimation of adaptation benefits and costs, strategies for adaptation, the role of markets and governments, and policy instruments for adaptation. While having their merits, serious methodical difficulties prevail. Moreover, the applied neoclassical framing seems too narrow to capture the plethora of governance challenges and normative criteria revealed in adaptation policy discourses and in the adaptation literature. The article’s second part outlines an institutional economics approach to climate adaptation that addresses caveats in the current state-of-the-art and offers additional concepts to study adaptation. It also presents promising research strategies from institutional approaches to the environment and derives future research directions for climate adaptation economics. In the last step the paper assesses the normative foundations of climate adaptation economics and their implications for positive adaptation research.

Which conceptual foundations for environmental policies? An institutional and evolutionary framework of economic change

sustainabilityconference2012 — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 18:17:19 +0000

This paper draws on institutional and evolutionary economics and contributes to an approach to environmental policy which diverges from mainstream prescriptions. The ‘socio-technical system’ is the core concept: this is a complex made of co-evolving institutions, technologies, markets and actors that fulfils an overall societal need (such as housing, production, mobility, etc.). A systemic and dynamic analysis of those structural changes which are needed to create more sustainable socio-technical systems is provided; actors – and their ability to influence politics and policy – are explicitly taken into consideration. Unsustainable socio-technical systems feature a relevant resistance to change, because they are embedded in the very structure of our society and because of the conservative action of dominant stakeholders; this is why no environmental policy will be effective unless it aims at ‘unlocking’ our societies from their dominance. But also a constructive side of environmental policy is needed in order to establish new and more sustainable socio-technical systems; consistently, environmental policy is viewed as a combination of actions that can trigger, make viable and align those institutional, technological and economic changes which are needed to reach sustainability. Again, actors (for change) are at the heart of this vision of environmental policy: as subject, because the creation of new and sustainable socio- technical systems is made possible by (coalitions of) actors for change; as object, because environmental policy – to be effective – must actively support the empowerment, legitimation and social networking of such coalitions. A ‘chicken and egg’ problem remains: who comes first? Actors for change advocating policies for sustainability or policies for sustainability supporting actors for change?

Institutional economics – Sustainability – Missing Points in the Development Dialogue

Economics, Institutions and Adaptation to Climate Change

Which conceptual foundations for environmental policies? An institutional and evolutionary framework of economic change