GGRC26H3 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Administrative Division, Corporate Social Responsibility, Neoliberalism
GGRC26 Midterm Review Notes
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Week 2: What is environmental governance?
Environmental governance
- What is environment?
o Environment is surroundings or condition in which we live
o Environment is natural world as a whole or in as particular geographic area
▪ Some parts of environment can be confined to a location (e.g. forests), but we need corporations
beyond national level when things come to large scale (e.g. water governance)
o Environment is conceptualized as a common good (Agrawal and Lemos 2007)
o IPCC (The intergovernmental panel for climate change)’s 2014 assessment report: “climate mitigation is
a public good; climate change is a case of the ‘tragedy of the commons’.”
- The definition of environment is a human centric view focusing on the interaction between living things and non-
living things/human and the world around us. How we define environment affect and shape the way how we see
and manage the environment
Tragedy of the commons
- Common property resources known as commons
- Resources that all members can access are difficult or impossible to exclude people from accessing, as there is no
rules or laws to prevent someone to use it
- Use by one member can subtract from the benefit of other users
Assumptions of the TOC framework
- Nature is external, resources are finite
o There is a separation of human and nature in the way thinking of the problem
- People are self-interested, autonomous, individualistic, profit-seeking, rational.
o Absence of culture: People who are using the resources do not think the relationship between the users
- Has roots in Malthusian theories, where population growth is seen as a major problem. We need to limit
population growth to resolve the resources allocation problem.
What solutions does the tragedy imply?
- What Hardin proposed is centralized coercion (state-imposed allocation of usage and access rights) OR
privatization (a form of mutual coercion)
o Centralized or state-based coercion is that external authorities come to allocate and regulate the resources
using some kinds of regulations (would be some kinds of governments)
o Privatization is that users somehow impose pressures on each other and they will self-regulate the
resources. It is not about the authority involvement, it is about actors who being involved. One thing to
note is that things do not have to be privatized to achieve mutual coercion.
But there is a confusion between common property and open access regime
- Open access (no rules, no property rights) is not equal to common property (as conceived by Hardin)
o E.g. confined grass patches in the community for the farmers to herd sheep is the common property that is
owned by a group of individuals. Access, use, and exclusion are controlled by the joint owners.
- Many access regimes exist to govern common property
- Privatization is only one form of mutual coercion but not practically applicable to oceans/fisheries, forests, other
large-scale problems)
What solutions does the tragedy imply?
- Framing environment as TOC renders it necessarily a governance problem
- Can miss the systematic conditions or processes e.g. political economy
o Render tragedy as a governance problem: ignore the systematic conditions under the governance happen
(is it the capitalism or political economy or anything along with it, those would be responsible for the
problems we have)
GGRC26 Midterm Review Notes
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- Encompasses a particular worldview that highlight a one-way people to nature relationship where nature is
external and as a resource to people
o We frame the environment as resource for human to use. We affect nature in a positive or negative way,
there is no feedback from the resources, no back and forth between people and nature.
- Implies that governance is THE solution
Environmental governance
- The dominant framework
o The solution of solving the tragedy of commons are the framework of governance in general
- Solutions are less radical than what might by suggested by other frameworks
- Solutions are still highly contentious/debatable
- Framework is simplistic from a certain perspective, whereas actual governance arrangements are highly complex,
diverse, and evolving
What is governance?
- Governance is action or manner of governing, governance is also the arrangements through which actors direct
actions
- Actors include governments, private actors, non-governmental organization, communities (people who are
involved in the problems), intergovernmental organization (e.g. IPCC and UNFCCC), etc.
- Arrangements can include laws, regulations (formal or less formal-commonly acceptable), standards (could be
mutually agreed upon), social norms, etc.
- Governance is not equal to government
Other definitions
- Institutions are norms of rules governing collective actions that include the legal system, cultural or religious
practices, informal social norms (e.g. universities)
- Agency is the power of individual or collective actors to change the course of events or the outcome of processes
(Biermann and Pattberg, 2008, p.4). Agency is the ability to influence or act upon things. If you have agency, you
will have the power to influence the outcomes of something.
Global governance
- Analytical definition, which includes many aspects of global politics, and a variety of actors. There is unclear
distinction between international relations or world politics. Sometimes it is too broad to be useful.
- A counterweight to the negative consequences of economic and ecological globalization.
o Political program with purpose to regain steering/control capacity to solve problems brought about by
globalization
o Often includes developing new institutions and treaties, and new (more effective) actors such as
international organizations
- Attempt by international organization or elites to limit freedom of action of states with emphasis of inequality and
highlight North-South power relations. It relates to the questions such as who gets the power and who gets to
make decisions
Biermann and Pattberg (2008) argue that we are seeing the emergence of:
- New types of actors
o Address environmental problems without being forced or funded by states
o Increase in the number, variety, and degree of participation of actors in global governance
o Include:
▪ Non-state actors (e.g. NGOs)
▪ Private actors (profit and non-profit): E.g., corporations (sometimes as direct partners of
governments)
▪ Partnerships and networks: governments push for private actor’s partnership
▪ Subnational public actors (e.g. cities/municipalities)
GGRC26 Midterm Review Notes
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- New types of agency
o Increased autonomy from national governments
o Nonstate actors increasingly engage in policy setting
▪ Large corporations have their own policies (e.g. Starbucks) and have a lot to do with the
environment
o Increasing influence through: direct participation in decision making, implementing solutions on the
ground, lobbying, disseminating knowledge and shaping discourses
o New role of experts: e.g. IPCC report provides scientific advice to policy makers. Scientists sudden have
a platform that they do not have before
- New mechanisms and institutions of global governance
o Use of new financial mechanisms, such as trading schemes, payments of services, transferable quotas,
new types of taxes, and other types of financial incentives
o Financial mechanism become mainstream especially in climate change initiatives (e.g. carbon tax and
trading system; carbon trade system in Ontario and Quebec)
Figure 1: Multi-partner governance
- Hybrid governance model with public partnership are emerging right now
The old way of environmental governance
- States, communities, and market agents all affect environmental outcomes. Communities and industries have the
main role (except in colonial states).
- Role of state is to regulate perceived excesses of resource extraction by private actors
o Centralized coercion when necessary to avoid tragedy of the commons
o The role of state is regulator in certain scenarios, colonial state is the exception where the state and actors
are often the one extracting resources (more direct relationship to the state)
Some saw the role of the state as that of dealing with negative environmental externalities
- Problem = difference between private and social costs cannot be solved by the free
market
- Inefficiency of the free market or market failure
- The role of state is regulator and manager to prevent negative consequences associated
with the market. Government should be responsible to regulate the external cost and the
market failure
- A very economistic view of the problem that stems from Keynesian economics
- The cost that is not involved in the transaction cost is the externalities or external cost
(e.g. social cost of pissing people off, and pollution that is not covered in the cost)
- Arbitrary: because it is hard to calculate the price and monitor or monetize the external
costs; for someone it might by cost nothing but for someone else being affected by it, it
would be a different scenario.
- Should we trying to put a monitoring value on the external costs would be a vital question to think
Document Summary
Ipcc (the intergovernmental panel for climate change)"s 2014 assessment report: climate mitigation is a public good; climate change is a case of the tragedy of the commons". The definition of environment is a human centric view focusing on the interaction between living things and non- living things/human and the world around us. How we define environment affect and shape the way how we see and manage the environment. Resources that all members can access are difficult or impossible to exclude people from accessing, as there is no rules or laws to prevent someone to use it. Use by one member can subtract from the benefit of other users. Nature is external, resources are finite: there is a separation of human and nature in the way thinking of the problem. People are self-interested, autonomous, individualistic, profit-seeking, rational: absence of culture: people who are using the resources do not think the relationship between the users.
