Cause and response: vulnerability and climate in the Anthropocene

Causal analysis of vulnerability aims to identify root causes of crises so that transformative solutions might be found. Yet root-cause analysis is absent from most climate response assessments. Framings for climate-change risk analysis often locate causality in hazards while attributing some causal weight to proximate social variables such as poverty or lack of capacity. They rarely ask why capacity is lacking, assets are inadequate or social protections are absent or fail. This contribution frames vulnerability and security as matters of access to assets and social protections. Assets and social protections each have their own context-contingent causal chains. A key recursive element in those causal chains is the ability – means and powers – of vulnerable people to influence the political economy that shapes their assets and social protections. Vulnerability is, as Sen rightly observed, linked to the lack of freedom – the freedom to influence the political economy that shapes these entitlements. In the Anthropocene, human causes of climate hazard must also now be accounted for in etiologies of disaster. However, attention to anthropogenic climate change should not occlude social causes of (and responsibility for) vulnerability – vulnerability is still produced in and by society.     

Analysis of Ethical Leadership and Integrity Development in Local Government: The United States,The Netherlands,Montenegro, and Serbia

This research seeks to understand influences on local government integrity development as a control of corruption. Using survey data from public managers in local governments in The Netherlands, Serbia, Montenegro, and the United States, we examined three main areas: integrity policy, leadership, and organizational ethical climate. An important finding was that integrity policy comes from an indirect leadership effect that remains focused on a structural response as the primary source of ethical reasoning more than normative control. Clarity of decisions, consistency in the process of decision-making, and support for anticorruption efforts can be enhanced with a balanced approach to corruption control.     

Saying all the right things? Gendered discourse in climate-smart agriculture

Amidst debates about the role of ‘climate-smart agriculture’ (CSA), the intersection of concerns about climate change and agriculture offer an opportunity to consider how gender is considered in global policymaking. The latest module in the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, World Bank and International Fund for Agricultural Development Gender and Agriculture Sourcebook – ‘Gender and Climate Smart Agriculture’ – offers an opportunity to reassess how gender factors into these global recommendations. This contribution argues that the module makes strides toward more gender-aware policymaking, but the version of CSA discussed in the module sidesteps the market-led and productivity-oriented practices often associated with CSA. As a result, though the module pushes a more feminist agenda in many respects, it does not fully consider the gendered implications of corporate-led and trade-driven CSA.     

The EU’s Emissions Trading System,Part 1: Taking Stock

This is part 1 of a paper that revisits the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) in an attempt to take stock of how the system has worked and evaluate it from the standpoint of radical political economy. The paper briefly discusses the basics of the scheme, including its design as a financial instrument and its performance during the first trading period (2005–2007). It then moves to elaborating on the workings of the scheme during phase 2 (2008–2012) and on the initiation of phase 3 (2013–2014). This analysis discusses the adjustments and the extensions of the scheme, compliance results and allowance trades and prices with a critical eye. The paper reveals the unsatisfactory results of the scheme (even in its own proclaimed aims), which include allowances surplus, allowance trades for pure financial purposes, low and volatile price of allowances, windfall profits, extensive use of Kyoto project-based credits, and several malfunctions and instances of fraud. These findings set the ground for part 2 of the paper which offers a critical assessment of ETS from the standpoint of radical political economy, putting emphasis on the needs and interests of the unprivileged working people.     

The “Greening” of China: Progress,Limitations, and Contradictions

China’s rapid economic growth in the last three decades has been fuelled by energy-intensive investment and manufacturing, which have become instrumental for China to become the world’s largest economy based on purchasing power parity, and for the United States and the European Union to have access to cheap consumer goods. China’s development strategy, however, has generated a serious domestic environmental crisis, which has also accelerated the global climate emergency. In addition, the 2008 economic crisis led to a collapse of China’s external demand, inducing the leadership to support domestic investment – including investment in environmental projects – as an alternative source of effective demand. By setting ambitious green targets and by adopting strategic policy initiatives, China has become the world’s largest investor in renewable energy. Yet China remains the world’s largest coal consumer and the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitter. The Chinese economy nears a crossroad: will it be able to maintain its commitment to green energies or will it fall back to its historical reliance on fossil fuels to sustain growth? This article evaluates the interplay between China’s economy and environment over the course of the reform period, and investigates the set of forces that impinge upon China’s ecological future.     

Equity, international trade and climate policy

The literature of welfare-maximising greenhouse gas emission reduction strategies pays remarkably little attention to equity. This paper introduces various ways to consider efficiency and equity simultaneously. Lower (higher) discount rates lead to higher (lower) emission reduction. Higher (lower) inequity aversion leads to higher (lower) emission abatement, unless one also considers the negative effects of OECD emission reduction on the exports of developing countries; in that case, the effect of inequity aversion is ambiguous. In the absence of international co-operation, higher (lower) risk aversion leads to lower (higher) emission abatement. With international co-operation, the effect of risk aversion is ambiguous because the higher risk aversion gives more weight to poorer regions and poorer generations. We analyse four ways to introduce compassion in a non-cooperative setting. If observed development aid is a guide, international altruism is small and has little impact on optimal emission control. If countries act as if they 'feel' but not 'physically experience' the climate impact of the most vulnerable country, optimal emission reduction increases, but not substantially so. However, if countries actually have to pay for the damage done, they would prefer to reduce their emissions to much lower levels. Finally, if countries pay as much for emission reduction as other countries suffer from climate change, (that is, if climate policy restores the income distribution to what it would have been without climate change), emissions are rapidly cut to very low levels.     

Do prosocial motives have any business in business

Challenging the assumption that the only motive in business is egoism (self-interest), four distinct potential prosocial motives are identified: egoism, collectivism, altruism, and principlism. It is suggested that each of these motives may, under certain nonextraordinary conditions, operate in business settings. None is a sure-fire source of ethical business practices, however. Each may at times lead to action that makes more people better off and fewer people worse off; each may also lead to action that does the opposite.I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.—Adam Smith,The Wealthe of Nations (1776/1976), I., p. 478.     

试论德治的政治伦理视角

政治与道德或法律与伦理 ,都是社会的基本价值元素 ,他们共同构成社会和国家生存与生长的规范基础和理想目标。作为社会政治治理的基本规范 ,法治是首要的和最基本的 ,具有作为社会国家治理方式的基础地位 ,而德治是政治的合道德性或伦理合理性 ,这是民主法制基础上的道德正当性诉求。德治与法治的内在价值关系应当是相互配应和相互支持的价值资源互补关系。这种政治伦理理念应当成为现代民主社会条件下的以德治国所追求的基本目标。     

试论校园文化与思想道德建设

高校校园文化包括智能文化、规范文化、物质文化和精神文化四个方面 ,它直接影响着大学生的成长 ,是高校教育机制中一个十分重要的环节。文化育人与思想道德建设都是高校素质教育的重要组成部分 ,也是社会主义精神文明建设的重要内容。可以说 ,文化育人是基础 ,思想道德建设是核心 ,两者是辩证统一的关系。思想道德建设要通过一定的文化载体来实现 ,并相互渗透 ,相互促进。     

Global Environment Threats and a Divided Northern Community

The EU, Japan, and the US now share many environmental norms, laws, and institutions and cooperate on international environmental matters through numerous bilateral and multilateral channels. They disagree, however, on how to deal with some of the most serious issues facing the global environment and the quality of human life including wide-scale biodiversity loss, climate change, the use of genetically modified (GM) organisms; the trans-boundary movement of hazardous wastes, and chemical safety. As these are all issues that require the involvement of developing countries if global environmental protection efforts are to be effective, the discord that exists among the Northern states is of tremendous significance. The US has pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol arguing that the treaty is poorly designed and would be detrimental to the US economy. Japan and the EU have had to try to find a way to bring the treaty into force without the participation of the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases and to convince participating countries to meet their targets even though this may put them at a competitive disadvantage. In the case of biodiversity loss, although the US initiated international negotiations on biodiversity preservation, it has refused to join the EU and Japan in ratifying the Convention on Biological Diversity. There are also differences between the US, on the one side, and Japan and the EU on the other, regarding the use of GM organisms. This article analyses the reasons for the differences that have emerged among northern states in their international environmental policy positions and what the implications of this northern policy divide are for the effectiveness and legitimacy of international environmental protection efforts.