What is the private sector response to climate change in the Global South and what has motivated ... more What is the private sector response to climate change in the Global South and what has motivated action? The Carbon Disclosure Project and Clean Development Mechanism registries offer some systematic data in response to the first question. Despite limitations to both data sources, they show that private sector action on climate change clusters in the large industrializing countries of the Global South. A risk/opportunity framework integrating physical, regulatory, market and reputational drivers of private sector responses offers answers to the second question. The four drivers intersect to create particular national patterns in private sector responses to climate change. Corporate action in the large emerging economies is driven primarily by the prospect of domestic climate regulation—some large developing countries have pledged greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2020—and by the market opportunities created by the Clean Development Mechanism. In the less developed countries, barriers related to weak regulatory environments, low levels of industrialization and growth, restricted access to capital, and limited technical capacity intersect to limit private sector action on climate change. Looking to the future, the lack of depth and breadth in the push for corporate action on climate change in the Global South suggests reasons for concern.
The Business of Climate Change: Corporate Responses to Kyoto, 2005
A comparison of the organisational efforts of the business and environmental communities in the m... more A comparison of the organisational efforts of the business and environmental communities in the multilateral climate negotiations over the past ten years reveals a startling difference. In the environmental domain, the Climate Action Network has been the single, constant, dominant environmental advocacy association. In contrast, the population of business and industry associations presenting the business view on climate change has been turbulent, with the prominence of different organisations fluctuating over time. The author argues that this turbulence is the result of policy shifts by major multinational corporations, exacerbated by the institutional constraints on business and industry associations in the international climate negotiations. A comparison of three functions-access, consensus and anti-politics-that business groups and the Climate Action Network provide for their members in the climate debates, underscores that the anti-politics function of business associations hampers them in organising consensus across national borders and in accommodating internal conflict.
The perspectives of developing-country firms are missing from the policy literature on carbon mar... more The perspectives of developing-country firms are missing from the policy literature on carbon markets. This research addresses this gap by analysing participation in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) by sugar mills in Brazil. Specifically, the research documents how far the CDM has penetrated into Brazil's sugar sector; how sugar mill owners/managers perceive the benefits, risks and costs of CDM-related investments; and the processes by which Brazilian sugar mills entered the carbon market. The mill-level analysis of CDM participation reveals the market and non-market dynamics that drive patterns of sugar mill investment in carbon abatement. First, access to a trusted source of information was a key driver of initial CDM participation by sugar mills, alongside other market drivers such as revenue, cost and reputation concerns. Firms with pre-existing relationships with carbon industry experts were more willing to assume the risk of carbon market participation and were in a much better position to capture early opportunities in emissions reduction projects. Furthermore, carbon market consultants, rather than mill owners/managers, were the primary agents of CDM activities in Brazil's sugar sector. Consultants approached sugar mill owners, identified firm-level carbon market opportunities, created project templates by developing methodologies, convinced mill owners/managers of the benefits of carbon abatement investments, and guided projects through the bureaucratic CDM project approval process.
Debates over the " death of environmentalism " juxtapose two approaches to environmental advocacy... more Debates over the " death of environmentalism " juxtapose two approaches to environmental advocacy: an issues-based environmentalism that relies on technocratic, legal, scientifi c, policy-oriented and issue-specifi c advocacy activities and an ethics-based environmentalism that has as its primary focus the promotion of deep-seated changes in individual and societal values and behavior as they pertain to stewardship of the earth. Th e latter is presented both as a critique of the former and as a road map for a more eff ective environmental movement. Th is study documents the practice and challenges of ethics-based environmentalism through an analysis of the religious-environmental movement in the United States. Interviews with forty-two U.S.-based religious-environmental organizations revealed that the majority of these groups see themselves as engaged in an ethics-based environmen-talism grounded in frameworks that tie God to nature and emphasize action, community, and justice. Groups also identifi ed some of the challenges inherent in ethics-based environmental advocacy, including the need to confront societal norms, work on long time horizons, access funding, recruit support, and measure and document success.
Institutions, Policymaking, and Multilevel Governance, 2009
... After the 1994 Mexican presidential election that replaced Carlos Salinas with Ernesto Zedill... more ... After the 1994 Mexican presidential election that replaced Carlos Salinas with Ernesto Zedillo, Gay Garcia became the lead technical negotiator for the Mexican delegation to the international climate negotiations and also the head of delegation at meetings of the UNFCCC ...
What is the private sector response to climate change in the Global South? And what has motivated... more What is the private sector response to climate change in the Global South? And what has motivated action? The Carbon Disclosure Project and Clean Development Mechanism registries offer some systematic data in response to the first question. Despite limitations to both data sources, they show that private sector action on climate change clusters in China, India, Brazil and other large industrializing countries. Four drivers-physical, regulatory, market, and reputational-offer answers to the second question. In the more developed countries of the Global South, corporate action is driven primarily by the prospect of domestic climate regulation-some large developing countries have pledged greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2020-and by the market opportunities created by the Clean Development Mechanism. In the less developed countries, barriers related to weak regulatory environments, low levels of industrialization and growth, restricted access to capital, and limited technical capacity intersect to limit private-sector action on climate change. Looking to the future, the lack of depth and breadth in the push for corporate action on climate change in the Global South suggests reasons for concern.
Studies in Comparative International Development, 2007
... While there is some recognition that domestic firms are embedded in transnational regulatory ... more ... While there is some recognition that domestic firms are embedded in transnational regulatory fields (Selin and VanDeveer 2006), domestic drivers are ... was a growth in internal interest in environmental issues, driven in part by a series of industrial accidents (Gomez Avila et al. ...
Studies in Comparative International Development, 2007
ABSTRACT The second sector, which is typical of a Southern economy, is directed toward the domest... more ABSTRACT The second sector, which is typical of a Southern economy, is directed toward the domestic markets, and has a much thinner capital base, which results in the downwards business spiral of poor training and poor technology leading to poor profit margins….It comes as little surprise that this sector is also frequently the more polluting and resource inefficient (Wehrmeyer and Mulugetta 1999:5). Most evaluations of the potential of developing-country firms as agents of environmental sustainability are pessimistic. Developing-country firms are assumed to be environmental laggards, particularly in comparison to their industrialized country counterparts. They are assumed to be trapped in structures that dictate polluting practices as the only viable business model. And it is assumed that greatest potential for improving firm environmental practice in developing countries lies with the local subsidiaries of foreign multinationals and not with developing-country firms. These assumptions reflect empirical realities. Developing-country economies are polluting. However, they can also be misleading. The articles in this special issue of Studies in Comparative International Development offer competing characterizations of developing-country firms as potential agents in processes of sustainable development. Ranging across the globe from Ecuador to China, they each profile cases of developing-country firms embracing aspects of environmental protection, and even emerging as global leaders in the manufacturing and dissemination of clean technologies.
Field Performance Evaluation of Amorphous Silicon (aSi) Photovoltaic Systems in Kenya: Methods and Measurements in Support of a Sustainable Commercial Solar Energy Industry
Page 1. i Field Performance Evaluation of Amorphous Silicon (a-Si) Photovoltaic Systems in Kenya:... more Page 1. i Field Performance Evaluation of Amorphous Silicon (a-Si) Photovoltaic Systems in Kenya: Methods and Measurements in Support of a Sustainable Commercial Solar Energy Industry A PROJECT OF Energy Alternatives ...
The threat of climate change has elicited divergent climate policy responses from the world's maj... more The threat of climate change has elicited divergent climate policy responses from the world's major oil multinationals, splitting the oil industry into two factions. This article analyzes the causes and consequences of this split in the oil industry. First, it demonstrates that oil companies made divergent assessments of the market risks and opportunities related to climate change based on the scientific networks and policy fields in which they were embedded rather than on rational economic criteria. Second, it documents that although the climate policy split in the oil industry has had few effects on oil company operations, it changes the terms of debate over profitable corporate action on climate change, with significant material consequences for climate regulation and patterns of energy production. This analysis contributes to the debate between treadmill of production and ecological modernization theorists by highlighting the midrange processes of contestation shaping the long-term environmental trajectory of capitalism.
Iop Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 2009
Scenarios have become a standard tool in the portfolio of techniques that scientists and policy-m... more Scenarios have become a standard tool in the portfolio of techniques that scientists and policy-makers use to envision and plan for the future. Defined as plausible, challenging and relevant stories about how the future might unfold that integrate quantitative models with qualitative assessments of social and political trends, scenarios are a central component in assessment processes for a range of global issues, including climate change, biodiversity, agriculture, and energy. Yet, despite their prevalence, systematic analysis of scenarios is in its beginning stages. Fundamental questions remain about both the epistemology and scientific credibility of scenarios and their roles in policymaking and social change. Answers to these questions have the potential to determine the future of scenario analyses. Is scenario analysis moving in the direction of earth system governance informed by global scenarios generated through increasingly complex and comprehensive models integrating socio-economic and earth systems? Or will global environmental scenario analyses lose favour compared to more focused, policy-driven, regionally specific modelling? These questions come at an important time for the climate change issue, given that the scenario community, catalyzed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is currently preparing to embark on a new round of scenario development processes aimed at coordinating research and assessment, and informing policy, over the next five to ten years. These and related questions about where next to go with global environmental scenarios animated a workshop held at Brown University 1 that brought together leading practitioners and scholars of global environmental change scenarios from research, policy-making, advocacy, and business settings. The workshop aimed to provide an overview of current practices/best practices in scenario production and scenario use across a range of global environmental change arenas. Participants worked to bring the experience generated from over four decades of scenario development in other issue domains, including energy and security, to bear on environmental scenarios, and to bring into dialogue scenario practitioners, both producers and users, with social science scholars. The set of contributions to this focus issue of Environmental Research Letters arose out of this workshop and collectively examines key challenges facing the scenario community, synthesizes lessons, and offers recommendations for new research and practice in this field. One theme that emerged in many of the discussions at the workshop revolved around the distinction between two broad perspectives on the goals of scenario exercises: scenarios as products and scenarios as processes. Most global environmental change scenario exercises are product-oriented; the content of the scenarios developed is the main goal of many participants and those who commission or organize the scenario development process. Typically, what is of most interest are the environmental outcomes produced, how they relate to the various factors driving them, and what the results tell us about the prospects for future environmental change, for impacts, and for mitigation. A product-oriented perspective assumes that once produced, scenario products have lives of their own, divorced from the processes that generated them and able to serve multiple,
Scenario analysis, an approach to thinking about alternative futures based on storyline-driven mo... more Scenario analysis, an approach to thinking about alternative futures based on storyline-driven modeling, has become increasingly common and important in attempts to understand and respond to the impacts of human activities on natural systems at a variety of scales. The construction of scenarios is a fundamentally social activity, yet social scientific perspectives have rarely been brought to bear on it. Indeed, there is a growing imbalance between the increasing technical sophistication of the modeling elements of scenarios and the continued simplicity of our understanding of the social origins, linkages, and implications of the narratives to which they are coupled. Drawing on conceptual and methodological tools from science and technology studies, sociology and political science, we offer an overview of what a social scientific analysis of scenarios might include. In particular, we explore both how scenarios intervene in social microscale and macroscale contexts and how aspects of such contexts are embedded in scenarios, often implicitly. Analyzing the social 'work' of scenarios (i) can enhance the understanding of scenario developers and modeling practitioners of the knowledge production processes in which they participate and (ii) can improve the utility of scenario products as decision-support tools to actual, rather than imagined, decision-makers.
Unlike many environmental scientists (and Fleetwood Mac), most social scientists do not think yes... more Unlike many environmental scientists (and Fleetwood Mac), most social scientists do not think yesterday has gone and do not much want to think about tomorrow-at least not in their work. Yet, debate and analysis about global environmental change are often discussions about tomorrow. For example, discussions about climate change rely on projections of the future: of future greenhouse gas emissions, of future population growth, of future changes in energy use, of future technological innovation, and of future biophysical impacts.
The carbon market experiences of Brazil and India represent policy success stories under several ... more The carbon market experiences of Brazil and India represent policy success stories under several criteria. A careful evaluation, however, reveals challenges to market development that should be addressed in order to make the rollout of a post-2012 CDM more effective. We conducted firm-level interviews covering 82 CDM plants in the sugar and cement sectors in Brazil and India, focusing on how individual managers understood the potential benefits and risks of undertaking clean development mechanism (CDM) investments. Our results indicate that the CDM operates in a far more complex way in practice than that of simply adding a marginal increment to a project's internal rate of return. Our results indicate the following: first, although anticipated revenue played a central role in most managers' decisions to pursue CDM investments, there was no standard practice to account for financial benefits of CDM investments; second, some managers identified non-financial reputational factors as their primary motivation for pursuing CDM projects; and third, under fluctuating regulatory regimes with real immediate costs and uncertain CDM revenue, managers favored projects that often did not require carbon revenue to be viable. The post-2012 CDM architecture can benefit from incorporating these insights, and in particular reassess goals for strict additionality and mechanisms for achieving it.
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Papers by Simone Pulver