Regulations or Markets? Unpacking the sources of transformative change for climate and biodiversity governance
Time: 10:00 – 11:00 (SGT, GMT +8)
Speakers: Jolene Lin, Benjamin William CashoreRegistration is free at: https://bit.ly/3nI2G5c.
Abstract
Ever since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, international processes and domestic policy initiatives have turned to innovative policy mixes to conserve nature. These tools have expanded from traditional regulatory approaches to incorporate finance and market driven incentives. What are the lessons from these efforts for sparking the type of transformative change required to address the double crises of global climate change and mass species extinctions?
The purpose of this panel is to reflect on how past and current research on climate and forest governance generate insights for triggering transformative change. What is the role for regulation vis-a-vis finance and market driven tools? This panel also explores how both tools can be intertwined in political processes that produce and shape behavioural change. Such processes include: a) climate litigation by civil society, and b) a global “race to the top” in environmental standards among business and environment coalitions that can be traced back to strong regulatory requirements.
Presentation 1: Strategic climate litigation as a governance tool: effectiveness, challenges and opportunities [Associate Professor Jolene Lin]
Litigation is now widely recognised to be a regulatory pathway and mechanism in global climate change governance. Much of this litigation has featured governments as defendants, but lawsuits are now increasingly being filed against corporations too. This presentation explores some of the key trends in strategic climate litigation and sets out to answer some critical questions about its effectiveness and implications for nature-based climate solutions.
Presentation 2: Unpacking the regulatory sources of a race to the top [Professor Benjamin William Cashore]
An overwhelming amount of policy solutions to address the climate and biodiversity crisis have increasingly turned to market and finance solutions supported by a diverse coalition of business and environmental interests. Assessing their transformative potential requires disentangling two distinct types of business and environment coalitions: those that emerged to create a “level playing field” by firms who operated under strict domestic environmental rules are known as the “California effect”, while those created by firms to reduce regulatory burdens are known as the “Delaware effect”.