Critique internationale - Content
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[Twenty Years of Global Climatic Governance Impasse: For Another Order of Governmentality]
At once a scientific question and political problem, climate change has given rise to a complex system of arenas, institutions, experts and varied actors. They are all engaged in a process of world governance in the aim of finding solutions. That being the case, how is one to explain the fact that this process has achieved so little in the way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions? In order to answer this question, I focus on the manner in which the framing of the climate problem has been conceived, understood and embodied in negotiations. I review several of its characteristic elements: the pollution paradigm, globalization, the top-down strategy of “burden sharing”, market and compensation mechanisms, the specific interactions between science and politics, which entail various models of expertise and give rise to contradictory expectations, and, finally, the theme of adaptation, which has come to occupy an increasingly important place on the UN’s governance agenda for reasons relating to reconfigurations of the geopolitics of climate. The failure of the Copenhagen Conference (2009), which was presented as a decisive moment for dealing with climate issues at a planetary level, challenges this framing, and calls for a rethinking of the order of governmentality of the climate problem. To that end, I put forward a few proposals and suggestions for future study.
[Governing the Climate, Constructing Europe: The History of the Creation of a Carbon Market (ETS)]
The European leadership strategy in the area of international climate policies consists of two components: numerical objectives for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and a European carbon market (ETS) to achieve these reductions. Reexamining the history of the ETS’ adoption in the early 2000s helps elucidate the paradox of this tool’s rapid promotion. In the 1990s, community institutions had taken a very different stance, with Europe supporting an “ecotax” project and rejecting recourse to the carbon market and other “flexible mechanisms”. Three factors shaped the new direction taken by European climate policies: the emergence in the 1970s of a movement critical of environmental regulation, which, in contrast to market-based tools, was seen as ineffective and excessively rigid by economists and legal scholars; political negotiations between Rio and Kyoto, with their power struggles, uncertainties and the failure of inter-European negotiations regarding a tax-based approach; the debate over the principle of subsidiarity, the particular moment in the European construction in which the Commission ratified the creation of the carbon market.
[The Trans-Scalar Interplay of Paper Manufactures in the Framework of the Implementation of “Climate and Energy” Policy: The Case of Aquitaine]
In 2008, climate change forecasts led the European Union to establish the “Climate and Energy Package” in order to increase the share of renewable energy in the energy supply and thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Following this, France launched a call for Energy Regulation Commission (CRÉ) bids in the aim of bringing together under the aegis of EDF a collection of industrial electricity production projects based on cogeneration – that is, the use of biomass to jointly produce heat and electricity. Yet such a policy is hardly limited to the development of forest sub-products and would ultimately strain the wood supply, calling into question current models of forestry. This new energy strategy involves the redefinition of relations that have been stabilized upstream within an industry resembling a network of independent actors organized around wood as a resource. We here focus on the paper industry and the manner in which it has problematized the question of wood energy and climate change at the European, national and sub-national levels in order to position itself as an indispensable actor in the development of wood-energy
[Adaptation to Climate Change in France and Quebec: Convergent Institutional Constructions, Divergent Diffusion]
In the space of a few decades, climate change has established itself as a central object of research for the scientific community and a high profile social and political question. Closely associated with the work of the IPCC, two dominant modes of action have supplied the institutional response: these are, respectively, attenuation and adaptation. The latter has established itself as a potential path for policy by appealing to the imperative of human survival and adopting the form of a vast normative program. By drawing upon a comparative approach, I propose to examine climate change adaptation policies as an emerging framework structuring global, transversal and multi-level public action. To this end, I examine the convergent process by which climate change adaptation policies have been institutionalized in France and Quebec. I then consider the issues involved in the spread of climate change adaptation via territorial risk management policies and water resource governance. Ultimately, the result is that the new requirements imposed by adaptation are in contradiction with the interests and shorter temporalities still prevailing within local management activities.
[Climate Change and Policy Effects: The Development of Renewable Energy in the Midi-Pyrénées]
In order to analyze the construction of regional-scale policies for fighting climate change, I have chosen to study windmill development, wood energy and solar power in the region of Midi-Pyrénées. More precisely, I study the interactions between public actors, local associations and renewable energy experts, the manner in which this interface has been institutionalized and what this process means in terms of knowledge acquisition among the actors involved. Theoretically, I seek to shed light on neo-institutionalist and sociology of science approaches. By drawing upon the “policy arrangements” framework of analysis, I show that three of the dimensions characterizing the policy arrangement of renewable energy – coalitions among actors, the distribution of resources and the legal framework – have gradually been modified. This has led to changes in a fourth dimension – that of dominant discourse. Finally, even if interactions between experts and local associations may play a decisive role in the initial phase of the construction of energy policies, public actors gradually succeed in bringing the implementation of these policies under their control.
[The Palestinian Authority and “Climate Change” as an Emergent Public Problem]
“Climate change” is an oft avowed environmental priority among cooperation and development actors. The Palestinian Territories, for their part, are one of the largest recipients of international aid. To the degree that the UNPD has played a role in promoting the question of “climate change”, the dependence of the Palestinian Authority on international aid has contributed to framing this emergent public problem; its construction is anchored in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Palestinian state’s demand for recognition at the international level. In the international arenas dedicated to “climate change”, what’s more, the Palestinian Authority discusses this question in terms of political and climatic injustice. Two questions thus merit study: what effect does the construction of the climate problem have on the Palestinian Authority and, conversely, what effect does the Palestinian Authority have on the construction of the climate problem?
À propos de Sans distinction de race ? Une analyse critique du concept de race et de ses effets pratiques de Magali Bessone (Paris, Vrin, 2013, 240 pages)
Sophie Houdart, L’universel à vue d’œil, Paris, Éditions Petra, 2013,280 pages.
Thomas Medvetz. Think Tanks in America? Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2012,XIV-324 pages.
Vasiliki P. Neofotistos. The Risk of War : Everyday Sociality in the Republic of Macedonia. Philadelphie, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012,206 pages.
