Governance and Institutions for Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security

A Research Agenda

Heike Schroeder, University of East Anglia

CCAFS Meeting, Bonn, 10 June 2011

Starting Points

ESSP declared an ‘urgent need’ to develop ‘strategies for Earth System management’ Institutions, organisations and mechanisms addressing

human/environment interactions are not only insufficient but also poorly understood

Age of the Anthropocene What are the human dimensions of global environmental

change? How do we navigate the challenges arising from large-

scale environmental changes?

Definitions

Governance A social function centered on steering human groups

toward desired outcomes and away from undesirable outcomes

Institutions Sets of rights, rules and decision-making procedures that

govern human behavior and interactions ‘Rules of the game’

Earth System Governance Project

(Biermann, Betsill, Gupta, Kanie, Lebel, Liverman, Schroeder

and Siebenhuener 2009)

Architecture

Governance meta-level Made up of institutions, organizations, principles, norms, mechanisms and decision-making procedures

Lays ground for level of effectiveness and possible interplayHow is performance of environmental institutions affected by their embedding in larger architectures? What are the environmental consequences of non-environmental governance systems? What is the relative performance of different types of multilevel governance architectures?

CCAFS Questions: Architecture

How do the international structures for governing food interact with those for governing the earth system, such as the climate or biodiversity regimes?

How do threats to food security influence negotiations on earth system governance architectures, e.g., in debates about the targeting of funds for adaptation; role of biofuels; potential of biotechnology in climate adaptation; interaction of food security and land cover; or the impact of carbon pricing on food security?

At what jurisdictional levels is the food system governed and how do these interact with each other and with other earth system governance systems?

Agency

Ability of actors to prescribe behavior and to substantively participate in and/or set their own rules regarding the interactions between humans and their natural environment Who are the agents of earth system governance

(especially beyond the nation state)? How do different agents exercise agency in earth system

governance, and how can we evaluate their relevance?

CCAFS Questions: Agency

What role are non-state actors, such as corporations and nongovernmental organisations, likely to play in both food system adaptation to global environmental change and in efforts to mitigate changes in climate, biodiversity, or land cover?

What role should the state play in promoting or regulating the actions of non-state actors, for example, in the development of certification schemes, adaptation options, or carbon markets for the food sector?

Who are the most powerful actors in food system governance and how are they addressing earth system concerns?

Adaptiveness

Earth system governance must respond to the inherent uncertainties in human and natural systems to ensure long-term governance solutions with flexibility to react quickly to new findings and developments. What are the politics of adaptiveness? Which governance processes foster it? What attributes of governance systems enhance

capacities to adapt? How, when and why does adaptiveness influence earth

system governance?

CCAFS Questions: Adaptiveness

How can food governance be designed so as to maximise adaptation and flexibility to global environmental change?

What can be learned from local knowledge and institutions that facilitates adaptation at other scales?

How have major changes in food governance (such as those from public to private sector, or from simple to complex technologies and supply chains), altered the adaptiveness of the food system?

What can be learned from the experience of the Green Revolution and other major efforts to transform food systems that is relevant to earth system adaptation?

Accountability

There are multiple sources of accountability and legitimacy in an ever changing landscape of state and non-state actors in earth system governance What are the effects of different forms and degrees of

accountability and legitimacy for the performance of governance systems?

What institutional designs can produce the accountability and legitimacy of earth system governance in a way that guarantees balances of interests and perspectives?

CCAFS Questions: Accountability

How have systems of food governance become accountable for their environmental and social impacts?

What strategies are the state and private sector using to legitimise policies and decisions about food systems, especially those that consider environmental concerns, and how are consumers, nongovernmental organisations and the media having an influence?

What sort of science is needed to monitor and legitimise food governance and how is this changing because of environmental concerns?

Access and Allocation

Earth system governance is, as is any political activity, about the distribution of material and immaterial values. It is, in essence, a conflict about the access to goods and about their allocation—it is about justice, fairness, and equity. The novel character of earth system transformation and of the new governance solutions that are being developed, puts questions of allocation and access, debated for millennia, in a new light. How can we reach interdisciplinary conceptualizations and

definitions of allocation and access? What (overarching) principles underlie allocation and access? How can allocation be reconciled with governance

effectiveness?

CCAFS Questions: Access and Allocation

What legal, moral and other norms are entrenched in food systems governance and how might these change because of environmental issues?

How have changes in markets and state policies changed food allocation and access?

How might vulnerability to climate and other environmental changes translate into food system vulnerabilities?

How does the governance of land use, land cover, and biodiversity (for example through the establishment of protected areas) or the use of land for non-food activities (such as biofuels or cities) change patterns of access to food resources?

Conclusions

How to incorporate concerns about food systems into global and regional environmental governance, e.g. climate into trade regimes

How to understand the implications of food systems on the earth system, e.g. long global supply chains controlled by large private firms

Impacts of earth system governance on food systems, e.g. the interactions between biofuels, energy efficiency and food security

References

Young, O.R., L.A. King, and H. Schroeder (eds.) (2008), Institutions and Environmental Change: Principal Findings, Applications, and Research Frontiers, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press

Liverman, D., P. Ericksen, J. Ingram (2009), Governing Food Systems in the Context of Global Environmental Change. IHDP UPDATE Governance as a Crosscutting Theme in Human Dimensions Science, Issue 3, pp. 59-64

Biermann, F., M. Betsill, J. Gupta, N. Kanie, L. Lebel, D. Liverman, H. Schroeder, and B. Siebenhuener (2009), Earth System Governance: People, Places, and the Planet. Science and Implementation Plan of the Earth System Governance Project. Earth System Governance Report 1, IHDP Report 20. Bonn, IHDP