Session: Geographies of Climate Change Mitigation: Marketization, Financialization, and Decarbonization
Organizers: Mark Cooper (Lund University / University of California, Davis) Wim Carton (Lund University) John Chung-En Liu (Occidental College) Discussants: Jennifer Rice (University of Georgia) [second discussant t.b.a.] The ratification of the Paris Agreement marked a new direction for climate governance. In contrast to the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement employs a bottom-up approach centered on coordinated, cooperative, multi-scalar activities. The Paris climate regime is not only likely to encourage an assortment of strategies for governing greenhouse gas emissions, but will implicate a new set of sites, scales, and actors in the mitigation of climate change. These emerging forms of emissions governance offer the potential for new forms of collaboration and social change, but will also bring new tensions and conflicts. This growing diversity of strategies, sites, scales, and actors in climate mitigation necessitates that we diversify our theoretical, empirical, and analytical approaches, but also that we build new analyses and explanations that cohere across cases, places, and processes. Drawing inspiration from Bridge et al.’s (2013) analysis of energy transitions, the geographies of climate change mitigation can be said to entail: activities within or across specific territories and economies, the structural and contextual processes that condition mitigation activities, and the generation of new – and uneven – geographies through these activities. By examining the geographies of climate governance we hope to engage some of the most pressing issues around climate change and society: What form does mitigation take in particular places, and how can we make sense of the development and effect of particular mitigation activities? What roles do different actors and governance structures play in these activities? How do the priorities of different actors align or conflict at different scales? What new geographical trends for mitigation are emerging within the Paris regime? We aim to organize one or more sessions that bring together critical perspectives on climate change mitigation and the role of markets, finance, and regulation in efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonize economies. Our aim is for these sessions to bring together perspectives on both the Global North and Global South, to highlight the intertwined character of geographically differentiated processes, and to explore new ways of analyzing and theorizing climate change mitigation. Paper topics could include, but are not limited to: – Compliance-based policy instruments such as carbon taxes and cap-and-trade – Programs that encourage the economization of greenhouse gas emissions and the development of low-carbon economies – Non-state governance programs including private standards and sector initiatives – Carbon offsetting and offset programs such as CDM and REDD+ – Climate finance and investment in low-carbon development – The role of economists, policy advisors, private sector actors, and NGOs in the development, implementation, function, or contestation of mitigation programs – The political economy and politics of greenhouse gas mitigation and decarbonization within particular territories or sectors – Perspectives on climate justice and responsibility for mitigation post-Paris, and processes of uneven development in the implementation of mitigation programs. To aid the discussants for this session, presenters will be asked to submit a written paper several weeks before the conference. Please email abstracts (up to 250 words) to Mark Cooper (mark.coo...@svet.lu.se<mailto:mark.coo...@svet.lu.se>) by October 21st. We will confirm participation by October 23rd.
