Reconciling Paradoxes in Climate Policy Making | Prakash C.J, Ecosystem People Supporters

Preamble: “Our knowledge and control of the natural world, now science is seen as coping with many uncertainties in policy issues of risk and the environment. In response, new styles of scientific activity are being developed. The reductionist, analytical worldview which divides systems into ever smaller elements, studied by ever more esoteric specialism, is being replaced by a systemic, synthetic and humanistic approach. The old dichotomies of facts and values, and of knowledge and ignorance, are being transcended. Natural systems are recognized as dynamic and complex; those involving interactions with humanity are ‘emergent’, including properties of reflection and contradiction. The science appropriate to this new condition will be based on the assumptions of unpredictability, incomplete control, and a plurality of legitimate perspectives. At present, there is no agreed description of what the future will bring, but there is a general sense that much of our intellectual inheritance now lies firmly in the past. ‘Post-modern’ is widely used as a term for describing contemporary cultural phenomena; 2 it refers to an approach of unrestrained criticism of the assumptions underlying our dominant culture, and it flirts with nihilism and despair. In contrast to this, here we introduce the term ‘post-normal’. This has an echo of the seminal work on modern science by Kuhn. 3 For him, ‘normal science’ referred to the unexciting, indeed anti-intellectual routine puzzle solving by which science advances steadily between its conceptual revolutions. In this ‘normal’ state of science, uncertainties are managed automatically, values are unspoken, and foundational problems unheard of. The post-modern phenomenon can be seen in one sense as a response to the collapse of such ‘normality’ as the norm for science and culture.” —(Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993)

Abstract: The academic debates concerning the problems of development, resistance, so-called “energy transition” and the propagation of the green growth myth can only sustain the "politics of hagemony". Hegemony is a concept introduced by Antonio Gramsci, which explains the power of dominant groups in persuading subordinate groups to accept its ideology. Hegemony is constantly readjusted and renegotiated and it is with this context where the citizen-led policy making attemps to present their dissident views and challenge the dominant authority ideology. Here we consider paradoxes resulting from competing demands and reconciliation as a “trade-off arising from issues related to speed and acceleration of low-carbon transitions.” We take cognizance of the view that significant tensions build up in the process of giving a thrust to achieving both just and rapid low-carbon transitions i.e., the way in which participatory processes may speed up social justice but slow down the climate action, or alternatively the transitions are pushed up by perpetuating injustices. Under the present state of climate negotiations by the “Conference of Parties" (COP) the focus needs to shift “from mapping justice dimensions to acknowledging the inevitable trade-offs and winners and losers produced by transition processes as a first step to better navigating them.” The process of dealing with such paradoxical tensions also requires a better understanding of cultural and human factors that can help reframing the situation for reconciliation. Since complex problems require diverse perspectives, mechanisms and players, a participatory citizenship approach is expected to strengthen rather than replace top-down steering in policy making. This requires cross-disciplinary research agenda as how to view opposite directions, “drawing avenues for future cross-disciplinary research into legal frameworks, on the one hand, and public preferences, on the other hand, to examine when and how they could be reconciled.”

Introduction: Present state of climate negotiations dealing with paradoxical tensions calls for looking beyond conventional science-policy framework. For example, the “COP27 parties” negotiations have shown renewed business interests in “green” transition ignoring the emergency call by scientists. The Economist in its November 14 issue (2022) came out with a cryptic report that the past decade growth in carbon emissions has ‘fallen’ to 0.5% compared to 3% a year in the previous decade, even though emissions have started rising again after a COVID-forced dip in 2020. Against this dominant narrative, the majority concerns were accommodated to some extent but the biggest polluters and spenders on climate/energy transition managed to have their final say in decision making. Paradox in climate policy framework is an established fact that renders climate policy-making an unproductive and unimaginative entrepreneurship. In the current scenario, reconciliation has been suggested as a trade-off arising from issues related to speed and acceleration of low-carbon transitions (Newell et al. 2022. p.1). Therefore, it is suggested, focus needs to shift from mapping justice dimensions to acknowledging the inevitable trade-offs and winners and losers produced by transition processes as a first step to better navigating them (Ibid). For India, low carbon transition is easier said than done because apart from the technical and economic challenges of alternative production and distribution, there is a human dimension (Rastogi, 2022). The ongoing transitions without necessary safeguards will hurt the vulnerable, especially the marginalised, and their economies; the farming community will be forced to reshuffle what is to be grown where hurting more in the scenario of production losses. There are perspectives presenting the key institutional and infrastructural elements of a net-zero energy system for India, including aspects related to public sector undertakings, labour unions, distribution companies, power market design and pricing, fossil dependent states, and citizens (Chaturvedi, 2021). It argues that five key strategies- engaging with citizens, engaging with energy sector workforce, pricing carbon, deploying low-cost finance, and going beyond co-benefits- are key to ensure that this vision is realized (Ibid). Transitioning to net-zero systems is simultaneously a technological and a social challenge as different net-zero configurations imply different system and lifestyle changes, and strongly depend on people supporting and adopting these changes (Perlaviciute, et al. 2021). Besides, there is no single net-zero solution, and configurations may differ from region to region, the cultural and regional factors can enable or inhibit the implementation of net-zero systems on a global scale (Ibid, p.1).

Here, we attempt to place the question of social justice in the light of emerging possibilities on science-policy interface in climate context by refocusing on policy issues. We start by understanding transition and relate it to systems paradigm in this ‘post-normal age.’ Then we explore possibilities of public participation offered by citizen science in shaping climate policy at multiple levels, local as well as regional, depending on the extent to which the environmental justice movement has been able to influence the climate discourse. In view of these two directions, we draw avenues for future cross-disciplinary research into legal frameworks, on the one hand, and public preferences, on the other hand, to examine when and how they could be reconciled.The idea that climate citizens’ assemblies – randomly selected representative citizens gathered to make policy recommendations on how to meet greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions targets – could provide an innovative solution to the failure of governments to design and adopt ambitious laws and policies has gained in popularity recently (Duvic-Paoli, 2022, p.235).

1.0. Problem with Just Transition: "Just transition" (JT) is a broad ‘umbrella’ term which needs to be properly understood and conceptualized/reconceptualized in the light of new research findings. What constitutes a just transition cannot be defined in the abstract or a priori, but rather must be understood in the contexts in which it emerges and is developed; the nature of tensions between business demands, political interests, and civil society concerns and the extent and ways in which they can be resolved will differ by context and so this agenda needs to be further advanced through detailed empirical analysis of how particular political systems navigate these complex dilemmas and on whose terms (Newell et al. 2022, pp.3-4). Drawing upon ‘whole-systems’ approach (Jenkins et al., 2014), Abram et al. (2022) recognizes there is not one transition but rather multiple, interdependent transition processes that rarely follow linear trajectories. These authors have outlined four stylized dimensions of transition justice – recognitional, distributive, procedural, and restorative – that offer an alternative to the more reductionist approaches that are typically in play today. Second, JT scholarship both challenges prevailing neoliberal discourses surrounding decarbonization programmes, as well as proposes alternatives; the question remains, though: how can the term’s full conceptual power be developed for the analysis, normative evaluation, and enactment of contemporary, rapid, and far-reaching energy transitions (Ibid).

However, disagreement over what to include within the conceptual boundaries of JT – between a focus on economic inequality and labour markets versus a more expansive focus on social justice – may lie more at the level of strategic practice than with the normative goals underpinning both definitions, offering the potential for synthesis; this may explain why conceptual tensions can be found even within the same publication (Ibid). For example, in their report ‘Pursuing Clean Energy Equitably’, Newell et al. (2011) outlined the distributional, recognition and procedural consequences of energy impacts and decision-making, issues that have since become established in energy justice scholarship (e.g., Jenkins et al., 2016).

Nonetheless, their JT definition focuses entirely on taking ‘appropriate measures to protect jobs in vulnerable industries’ and ensuring ‘that new jobs created … are ‘decent’ jobs’ (Ibid., p. 55). Other findings have implications in terms of revealing different challenges across the three dimensions of academic work on energy and environmental justice, equity, and transitions; and participation and energy democracy (Upham et al. 2022). For the energy and environmental justice communities, these findings speak to the difficulty of generalizing broader findings from other sectors to industry, which appears to have greater degrees of path dependence and lock-in than e.g. consumer-facing sectors (Ibid p.12). This in turn, can lead to communities becoming dependent on, and attached to, industrial production in ways that make decarbonisation a perceived prospective injustice, rather than the other way around (Ibid). For the energy democracy and community participation, it has been revealed how not engaging in discussions of industrial systems transformation and reorientation is itself a decision or stance about participation (not acting is an active decision) (Ibid). Policies for industrial decarbonisation may also “enhance democracy and inclusion” (and shift power relations) in some dimensions (i.e., local or national) at the expense of other dimensions and scales (i.e., global or regional) but can lead to greater contention rather than consensus (Ibid).

However, the inability to manage just transitions in the past may explain why so many low-carbon transitions have been inequitable so far which casts doubt over whether one should expect accelerated low-carbon transitions to be more equitable (Newell et al. 2022). Because policymakers increasingly aim to work with powerful financial actors and incumbent firms, there is a high probability that a future low-carbon society will also be unfair and inequitable (Ibid). The reason is that the structural power of business and finance gives them greater influence in policy making (Newell and Paterson, 1998), often reducing space for the consideration of justice issues in the absence of counter-veiling social pressure and deliberate attempts to engage with diverse publics and a plurality of transition pathways (Ibid).

2.0. Convergence of Crises: After having set out conceptualization, JT scholarship use the example of the COVID-19 pandemic response to illustrate the potential benefits of a whole-systems JT approach to decarbonisation with primary focus on mitigation rather than adaptation (Abram et al. 2022). There is a growing recognition that COVID-19 and climate change are ‘converging crises’ that should be addressed simultaneously (Lancet Editorial, 2021). In similar vein, the exclusionary nationalist pandemic policies fail to acknowledge that ‘integrated and complex systems are only as strong as their weakest link’ (Goldin, 2020). Above all, the pandemic serves as a reminder that human wellbeing is closely tied to the health of the planet, with climate change and environmental degradation heightening the risk of future public health emergencies (Brown, 2020). The brunt of these effects will be borne by already disadvantaged and vulnerable groups with limited ability to influence policymaking processes; while systemic effects are often generated globally, the negative effects of systemic disruptions – and the policy responses they elicit – are experienced locally (Ibid).

The pandemic, while distinct from the climate crisis, presents policy makers worldwide with a critical emergency that demands simultaneous global, national, and local responses while affecting economic sectors across the board and putting the most vulnerable in society at the worst disadvantage (Abram et al. 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic therefore requires a whole-systems approach. Diverse interventions have been applied in relatively short time frames; in 2020, national recommendations and lockdowns were implemented within weeks of the diagnosis of the first case of COVID-19 (Ibid). As a result, measures introduced to date overlook important intersections between the virus and wider patterns of exclusion and inequality (Maestripieri, 2021). The short timeframe over which events and responses have unfolded, enabled a fast and direct evaluation of narrow, siloed responses and the harmful ripple effects these have had on varying sections of society. Such assessments have increased calls for holistic, multi-dimensional policy tools that address economic or environmental problems together, requiring new, diverse and whole-systems solutions (Ibid).

3.0. Dilemma with Public Engagement: Climate policy-making in the scenario of plurality of transition pathways demands more public engagement than is possible under the present dispensation of democratic state which allows limited participation. Public participation (as per the US National Research Council, 2008) refers to processes organized by responsible parties (e.g., elected officials, government agencies, other public- or private-sector organizations) to deliberately engage the public in the planning, development, and implementation of climate policies. In developed world, the climate policy is being rapidly incorporated into political agendas (Perlaviciute and Squintani, 2020). The decisions taken are generally top-down involving little inputs from ordinary citizens, resulting into partial or non-implementation due to public resistance or lack of uptake; the challenge, therefore, is not only to make climate policy more robust, but also democratise citizen involvement further in policy formulation to increase uptake (Kythreotis et al.,2019). Citizen Social Science (CSS) narrative framework has been proposed as an advanced collaborative approach of accelerating climate action and policies that moves beyond conventional citizen science and participatory approaches (Ibid). CSS can potentially transform citizen behavior and enable citizens to become key agents in driving climate policy change beyond the traditional science-policy model of the democratization of science, and thus enabling more inclusive climate policy change (Ibid). In the recent past, there have been repeated calls for increased citizen engagement, understanding individual behavior, and greater channels of communication between different stakeholders in both scientific and policy discourses related to climate change that move beyond mere public acceptance of the physical evidence of climate change (op.cit.p2; Lassen et al., 2011; Beniston, 2013; Schweizer et al., 2013; Swart et al., 2014; Sörqvist, 2016; Carvalho et al., 2017; Sprain and Reinig, 2018). It is never more imperative that the forms and structures of citizen engagement in climate science and policy decisions remain central to climate action given that the Paris Agreement will afford non-state actors (e.g., private and third sector groups) more influence in formal policy implementation (op.cit.p2; Van Asselt, 2016; Kuyper et al., 2018). As per the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report (Global Warming of 1.5◦: an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming), “strengthening of capacities for climate action of national and sub-national authorities, civil society, the private sector, Indigenous peoples and local communities” is key to achieving ambitious climate policy goals that can possibly restrict warming below 1.5◦C by 2100 provided citizens and institutions act together without any delay (Kythreotis et al.,2019. p.2). Following the IPCC reports, even a 50% chance of remaining within 1.5°C, the world’s economies must reach peak emissions no later than 2025 and reduce the burden of total global emissions.

However, democratically legitimizing increased citizen engagement within current institutional structures is complex given how such structures demarcate lay citizens from scientific experts and/or government (op.cit.p2; Miller and Rose, 2017). Even polycentric climate governance systems that are supposed to incorporate private and third sector groups into policy decisions suffer from orchestration from government (state) actors, resulting in systematic governance experimentation and learning being stifled (op.cit.p2; Abbott, 2017). Furthermore, communication practices often exist between citizens, scientific experts and/or government that constrain increased citizen engagement in climate change policy formulation and implementation (op.cit.p2; Carvalho et al., 2017). Hence, the governance crisis of the sustainability paradigm continues (op.cit.p2; Peters, 2017), where states continue to dominate the international political discourse of climate change through particular modes of governmentality and sovereignty (op.cit.p2; Kythreotis, 2012), engaging citizens more within the climate policy process, and thus further achieving ambitious climate policy goals made by the state actors. Perlaviciute and Squintani (2020) propose a forward-looking, cross-disciplinary research agenda for studying how to reconcile legal frameworks and public preferences to reach socially acceptable climate policies. The UN-based Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making, and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (known as Aarhus Convention) is the prime legal framework. Rules fostering public participation at macro level could be derived from outside the environmental law field e.g., Switzerland uses direct democracy, mostly referenda, as a form of public participation across the entire decision-making chain, including at the policy level (op.cit.p345; Swiss country reports under the Aarhus convention).

4.0. Methodological tool: CSS is defined as representing new methodological and theoretical territory that resonates with more diverse and heterogeneous forms of social knowing, values and cultures of citizens beyond CS (Castree et al., 2014). While CS uses citizens as policy passive objects for research in conducting measurements for big data sets, the proposed CSS framework makes citizens co-learners within the research process by actively enabling them to explore transformatively changing institutionalized research and policy systems. Elevating CS to a new level across governments as an advanced collaborative approach of accelerating climate action and policies beyond conventional citizen science and participatory approaches, examples of how CSS can potentially transform citizen behavior and enable citizens to become key agents in driving climate policy change are shown (Kythreotis et al.,2019). CS as a methodological tool for understanding large scale processes has burgeoned, arguably as a reaction to the use of particular forms of epistemic expertise that have traditionally and unilaterally contributed to policy decisions (op.cit. Haas, 1992), rather than consideration of more diverse, but contextual knowledges and forms of social knowing (Irwin, 1995). Citizens can be utilized to obtain larger datasets that enable researchers to assist policy-making practice, democratizing expertise into more formal policy processes (Fischer, 1993). To December 2018 there are 57 active and searchable CS projects related to climate change that are listed on the Scistarter website (Scistarter, 2018). All of these projects involve citizens observing and collecting data, rather than formulating the CS research methods, analyzing and interpreting the data as a means to instigate climate policy action. By acting as volunteers, citizens are important for data collection to inform climate research (Bonney et al., 2014; Lahoz and Schneider, 2014) as a means to understand trends, causes, impacts, and responses to, climate change (Savo et al., 2016). The UNFCCC Secretariat through collective nations, have recognized the potential of CS and have assisted in initiating and implementing large citizen consultations on climate change (Bedsted et al., 2015). However, there is also a need to engender links between local policy actors and the communities they serve, particularly with respect to climate adaptation (Vogel and Henstra, 2015). So, a question remains whether CS could be used more effectively to further engage different citizens and communities for more tailored local climate policy beyond crowdsourcing to obtain large(r) data sets? There is evidence of governments and municipalities working better to include traditional and local knowledge into their governance systems (Leonard et al., 2013) but more work is needed to further integrate citizen action and climate policy-making.

Though the term “citizen social science” has been previously used in the literature (Purdam, 2014), the way in which it has been explained has remained confined within the paradigm of using CS to create large data sets for policy-making. CSS can be defined as representing new methodological and theoretical territory that resonates with more diverse and heterogeneous forms of social knowing, values and cultures of citizens beyond CS (Castree et al., 2014). While CS uses citizens as policy passive objects for research in conducting measurements for big data sets, the CSS framework makes citizens co-learners within the research process by actively enabling them to explore transformatively changing institutionalized research and policy systems (Kythreotis et al.,2019. CSS embraces the principles of a “Two-Eyed Seeing” approach in an Indigenous and scientific knowledge systems context; where a co-learning journey (where citizens take a lead, often over government/policymakers, in making decisions about how best to formulate policy) is encouraged for more transdisciplinary research and to bring together different ways of knowing (op.cit.; Bartlett et al., 2012). One way of differentiating CSS from CS is therefore to consider this “two-eyed seeing” approach that repositions citizens as central co-learners that can widen the climate science evidence-base to a more holistic understanding of perspectives for the benefit of all (op.cit.; Savo et al., 2016).

Research has also illustrated how blending scientific and traditional knowledge through citizen co-learning highlighted key environmental stressors under uncertainty (Mantyka-Pringle et al., 2017). Hence, this demonstrates the difference between citizens getting involved in public engagement exercises within formal policy processes and apparatus, and citizens being catalysts and drivers of climate policy transformation. With public engagement, participants often work within pre-conceived state ideas and traditional governance structures that are institutionally entrenched in top-down power dynamics (e.g., a particular policy standpoint based on ideology) (Morrison et al., 2017) designed to protect the political economy status-quo. Co-production or co-learning through CSS moves beyond conventional public engagement and makes the citizens initiate action and policy responses based on their specific forms of social knowing and values.

This organic form of bottom-up collaborative knowledge-making can help to eliminate any cultural issues and insensitivities that may emerge upscale when formulating policies. It can also catalyze transformative change through the eyes of everyday citizens by allowing them to be exposed to climate policy decisions that they would not normally be involved or interested in. Therefore, CSS is underpinned by multiple disciplines and methods of co-production enabling citizens to make more context-specific, transparent and explicit contribution to climate policy-making and action.

5.0. Bridge Building: The climate objective in the regional context of Global South need not be rebuilding a regional trade union against the North; however, focusing on practical outcomes rather than returning to the old ideological battles may appear on the nation-state’s agenda. In case of striving for unity of action, the process can be accelerated by building bridges between the two contending parties heading for reconciliation, if not contestation. Recognizing the delaying tactics of the Global North, a middle course is likely to be struck in the face of inevitability of impending climate crisis already affecting the Global South irreversibly. Even though participatory processes may increase justice (but slow down the speed of action), calls for deepening dialogue and participation with all stakeholders around just transitions illustrate the dynamic aimed at slowing climate action (Newell et al. 2022). The coal industry and other incumbents have embraced the just transition agenda to suggest that calls for more ambitious climate change need to be accompanied by plans to address a whole gamut of social, regional and economic inequities which predate contemporary calls for decarbonization (Ibid). This suggests the need for participatory spaces to be aligned with the need for rapid and deep transitions so that the deliberation is more over different pathways and less the speed or depth of change required, but it also suggests the limits of seeing citizen engagement as a panacea for addressing all justice issues in transitions (Ibid). For example, a round table at the Bonn climate negotiations in 2019 on JT continually emphasised the need to involve all stakeholders in transition planning, citing examples of coal-rich areas in Europe, but without acknowledging the fact that under most scenarios consistent with the Paris agreement, those reserves could not be extracted, so that from a distributional perspective the key issue is how to support economic diversification and retraining of workers rather than prolong the life of that industry (op.cit.; Newell, 2021).

However, the inability to manage just transitions in the past may explain why so many low-carbon transitions have been inequitable so far. This casts doubt over whether we ought to expect accelerated low-carbon transitions to be more equitable. Because policymakers increasingly aim to work with powerful financial actors and incumbent firms, there is a high probability that a future low-carbon society will also be unfair and inequitable. The reason is that the structural power of business and finance gives them greater influence in policymaking (op.cit.; Newell,1998), often reducing space for the consideration of justice issues in the absence of counter-veiling social pressure and deliberate attempts to engage with diverse publics and a plurality of transition pathways (Ibid).The nature of tensions between business demands, political interests, and civil society concerns and the extent and ways in which they can be resolved will differ by context and so this agenda needs to be further advanced through detailed empirical analysis of how particular political systems navigate these complex dilemmas and on whose terms (Ibid). Any policy or socio-technical pathway, even a low-carbon one, inevitably produces uneven costs and benefits across society, time, and space (Ibid). Although there will always be short term losers from transitions, including low carbon ones, recognizing the inherent tensions between rapid and just transitions is a critical first step towards devising policy architectures and forms of social engagement that begin to minimise the costs and impacts of adjustment (Ibid). In any effort of reducing the tension between expert and traditional knowledge, collaboration research can usefully explore social contexts outside the ‘normal science’. This could then catalyse the co-production of alternative policies between citizens, scientists and policy-makers that address emerging climate issues in specific communities (Kythreotis et al., 2019). Bridging citizens, scientists and governments through a CSS narrative framework that increases recognition of human qualities and needs would help reconfigure formal climate policy-making through the democratic systems already in place (Ibid, p.8). Besides, the communal values held by citizens can also serve as a bridge toward an overarching global climate policy goal, like the 2◦C Paris target. Climate change research will then get an enhancement with exploration of various narratives and pathways for public engagement that move beyond current techno-managerial science-policy approaches.

Conclusion: In an attempt to find out whether a viable alternative to climate policy-making path exists or not, we have combined recent researches that dwell on the subject. We also understand that complex problems require diverse perspectives, mechanisms and players, a participatory citizenship approach is expected to strengthen rather than replace top-down steering in policy making. Paraphrasing UN Human rights office of High Commissioner’s call, we need to build bridges between peoples, institutions, and governments to bring out a viable climate solution. Moving beyond current techno-managerial science-policy approaches, the ‘new process’ will strengthen climate change research with exploration of various narratives and pathways for public engagement. Otherwise, in the current scenario of delayed action on climate mitigation and adaptation, both in the Global South as well as the North, there seems to be limited opportunities available on climate justice.

(Authors: Prakash C.J is an independent scholar based in Delhi and Ecosystem People Supporters is an informal group)

[This paper is a working draft prepared by a diligent team of Ecosystem People Supporters led by the first author, an Ecologist, who has been working independently with civil society groups over the last two decades]

References:

• Abbott, K. W. (2017). Orchestration: strategic ordering in polycentric climate governance. SSRN Electron. J. 30. doi:10.13140/RG.2.2 10435. 60692

• Abram, S., Ed Atkins, Alix Dietzel, Kirsten Jenkins, Lorna Kiamba, Joshua Kirshner, Julia Kreienkamp, Karen Parkhill, Tom Pegram & Lara M. Santos Ayllón (2022). Just Transition: A whole-systems approach to decarbonisation, Climate Policy, 22:8, 1033-1049, doi: 10.1080/14693062.2022.2108365

• Bedsted, B., Mathieu, Y., and Leyrit, C. (2015). World Wide Views on Climate and Energy. Available online at: http://climateandenergy.wwviews.org/wp-content/ uploads/2015/09/WWviews-Result-Report_english_low.pdf.

• Beniston, M. (2013). Grand challenges in climate research. Front. Environ. Sci. 1:1. doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2013.00001

• Beyer, J., & Vandermosten, A. (2021). Greenness of the stimulus index. Vivideconomics prepared for Finance for Biodiversity Initiative. https://www.vivideconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Green-Stimulus-Index-6th-Edition_final-report.pdf

• Blattner, Charlotte E., Ana M. Vicedo-Cabrera, Thomas L. Frölicher, Karin Ingold, Christoph C. Raible & Judith Wyttenbach. How science bolstered a key European climate-change case. Nature 11 September 2023.

• Bonney, R., Shirk, J. L., Phillips, T. B., Wiggins, A., Ballard, H. L., Miller-Rushing, A. J., et al. (2014). Citizen science. Next steps for citizen science. Science 343, 1436–1437. doi: 10.1126/science.1251554

• Brown, K. (2020). The pandemic is not a natural disaster. The New Yorker, 13 April 2020. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/ culture/annals-of-inquiry/the-pandemic-is-not-a-natural-disaster[accessed 5 November 2020].

• Carvalho, A., van Wessel, M., and Maeseele, P. (2017). Communication practices and political engagement with climate change: a research agenda. Environ. Commun. 11, 122–135. doi: 10.1080/17524032.2016.1241815

• Castree, N., Adams, W. M., Barry, J., Brockington, D., Büscher, B., and Corbera, E. (2014). Changing the intellectual climate. Nat. Clim. Chang 4, 763–768. doi: 10.1038/nclimate2339

• Chaturvedi, V. 2021. A vision for net-zero energy system for India. Energy and Climate Change vol.2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egycc.2021.100056

• Duvic-Paoli, Leslie-Anne (2022). Re-imagining the making of climate law and policy in citizens’ assemblies. Transnational Environmental Law 11:2, pp.235-261

• Fischer, F. (1993). Citizen participation and the democratization of policy expertise: from theoretical inquiry to practical cases. Policy Sci. 26, 165–187. doi: 10.1007/BF00999715

• Funtowicz, Silvio O. and Jerome R. Ravetz (1993). Science for the post-normal age. Futures 25(7)739-755

• Irwin, A. (1995). Citizen Science: A Study of People, Expertise, and Sustainable Development. London; New York, NY: Routledge.

• Jenkins, K., McCauley, D., Heffron, R., Stephan, H., & Rehner, R. (2016). Energy justice: A conceptual review. Energy Research & Social Science, 11, 174–182. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2015.10.004

• Kythreotis, A. (2012). Progress in global climate change politics? Reasserting national state territoriality in a ‘post-political’ world. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 36, 457–474. doi: 10.1177/0309132511427961

• Kuyper, J. W., Linnér, B. O., and Schroeder, H. (2018). Non-state actors in hybrid global climate governance: justice, legitimacy, and effectiveness in a post-Paris era. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev. Clim. Chang. 9:e497. doi: 10.1002/wcc.497

• Lancet Editorial. (2021). Climate and COVID-19: Converging crises. The Lancet, 397(10269), 71. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736 (20)32579-4

• Larsen, K., and Gunnarsson-Östling, U. (2009). Climate change scenarios and citizen-participation: Mitigation and adaptation perspectives in constructing sustainable futures. Habitat Int. 33, 260–266. doi: 10.1016/j.habitatint.2008.10.007

• Lassen, I., Horsbøl, A., Bonnen, K., and Pedersen, A. G. J. (2011). Climate change discourses and citizen participation: a case study of the discursive construction of citizenship in two public events. Environ. Commun. 5, 411–427. doi: 10.1080/17524032.2011.610809

• Leonard, S., Parsons, M., Olawsky, K., and Kofod, F. (2013). The role of culture and traditional knowledge in climate change adaptation: insights from East Kimberley, Australia. Glob. Environ. Chang 23, 623–632. doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.02.012

• Maestripieri, L. (2021). The COVID-19 pandemics: Why intersectionality matters. Frontiers in Sociology, 6(642662), 1–6.

• Mantyka-Pringle, C. S., Jardine, T. D., Bradford, L., Bharadwaj, L., Kythreotis, A., and Fresque-Baxter, J.(2017). Bridging science and traditional knowledge to assess cumulative impacts of stressors on ecosystem health. Environ. Int. 102, 125–137. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2017.02.008

• Miller, P., and Rose, N. (2017). “Political power beyond the State: problematics of government,” in Foucault and Law, ed P. Fitzpatrick (London: Routledge), 191–224. doi: 10.4324/9781315094021-9

• Morrison, T. H., Adger, W. N., Brown, K., Lemos, M. C., Huitema, D., and Hughes, T. P. (2017). Mitigation and adaptation in polycentric systems: sources of power in the pursuit of collective goals. Wiley Interdiscip. Rev. Clim. Chang. 8:e479. doi: 10.1002/wcc.479

• Newell, P., Phillips, J., & Mulvaney, D. (2011). ‘Pursuing Clean Energy Equitably.’ Human Development Research Paper, 2011/03, pp. 1- 74.

• Newell, Peter J., Geels, Frank W. and Benjamin, K. (2022). Navigating tensions between rapid and just low-carbon transitions. Environ. Res. Lett. 17 pp. 1-5

• Newell, P. and Paterson, M.1998. Climate for business: global warming, the state and business. Rev. Int. Political Econ.5: 679-704.

• Newell, P. 2021. Power Shift: The Global Political Economy of Energy Transitions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)

• Perlaviciute, G. and Squintani, L. (2020). Policy making: Toward reconciling public preferences and legal frameworks. One Earth 2, April 24,pp.341-348.doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.03.009

• Perlaviciute, G., Steg L. and Sovacool, B. K. (2021). A perspective on human dimensions of a transition to net-zero energy systems. Energy and Climate Change. Volume 2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egycc.2021.100042

• Peters, M. (2017). Can democracy solve the sustainability crisis? Green politics, grassroots participation and the failure of the sustainability paradigm. Educ. Philos. Theory. 1–9. doi: 10.1080/00131857.2017.1388657

• Purdam, K. (2014). Citizen social science and citizen data? Methodological and ethical challenges for social research. Curr. Sociol. 62, 374–392. doi: 10.1177/0011392114527997

• Rastogi, A. The Indian Express, November 12, 2022

• Savo, V., Lepofsky, D., Benner, J. P., Kohfeld, K. E., Bailey, J., and Lertzman, K. (2016). Observations of climate change among subsistence- oriented communities around the world. Nat. Clim. Chang. 6, 462–473. doi: 10.1038/nclimate2958

• Schweizer, S., Davis, S., and Thompson, J. L. (2013). Changing the conversation about climate change: a theoretical framework for place-based climate change engagement. Environ. Commun. 7, 42–62. doi: 10.1080/17524032.2012.753634

• Sörqvist, P. (2016). Grand challenges in environmental psychology. Front. Psychol.7:583. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00583

• Sprain, L., and Reinig, L. (2018). Citizens speaking as experts: expertise discourse in deliberative forums. Environ. Commun. 12, 357–369. doi: 10.1080/17524032.2017.1394894

• Squintani, L. (2017). The Aarhus paradox: time to speak about equal opportunities in environmental governance. J. Eur. Environ. Plann. Law 14, 3–5

• Squintani, L. (2019). Beyond Minimum Harmonisation: Gold-Plating and Green-Plating of European Environmental Law (Cambridge Studies in European Law and Policy) (Cambridge University Press).

• Swart, R., Biesbroek, R., and Lourenço, T. C. (2014). Science of adaptation to climate change and science for adaptation. Front. Environ. Sci. 2:29.

• Swiss country reports under the Aarhus convention. https://www. unece.org/env/pp/reports_trc_implementation_2017.html.

• Upham, P., Sovacool, B. and Ghosh, B. (2022). Just transitions for industrial decarbonization: A framework for innovation, participation, and justice. Sustainable Energy Reviews 167:11269

• United Nations Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-Making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters (Aarhus, Denmark, 25 June 1998, UN Treaty Series 2161), 447.

• US National Research Council (2008). Public Participation in Environmental Assessment and Decision Making, T. Dietz and P.C. Stern, eds. (The National Academies Press). https://doi.org/10.17226/12434

• Van Asselt, H. (2016). The role of non-state actors in reviewing ambition, implementation, and compliance under the Paris agreement. Clim. Law 6, 91–108. doi: 10.1163/18786561-00601006

• Vogel, B. and Henstra, D. (2015). Studying local climate adaptation: a heuristic research framework for comparative policy analysis. Glob. Environ. Chang 31, 110–120. doi: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.01.001