Climate Change and Governance of Water - Research Paper Example

On Climate Change and Governance of Water Introduction Present-day environmental risks, from radioactive waste to genetic modification, air pollution to soil degradation, catch the sustained attention of scientists, lawmakers, social scientist etc. interested in how such issues can be dealt with and eased, how they are socially created and the political conflicts they provoke (Falkenmark and Rockstrom 2005). This paper centers on whether, and with what effects, new forms and discourses of governance have been shaped in the context of climate change and the governance of water, and the extent to which this has produced the redefinition of environmental obligations and responsibilities contained by the state. Climate Change and Issues of Governance Climate Change The threats created by the inception of climate change have been generally debated. Skeptics propose that there is inadequate evidence to show that changes to the climate outside the reach of natural unpredictability have taken, or will take, place. The prominent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) argues in contrast that 'the equilibrium of evidence suggests that there is a noticeable human influence on the global climate' (Houghton et al 1996). The Chairman of IPCC suggested in 1999 that it is no longer a question of whether the Earth's average temperature will alter, but rather when, where and by how much (Watson 1999). On the one side, some hold the idea that, alterations will be slow, incremental and contained by societal control. On the other side, the IPCC puts forward that major changes in global average temperatures and regional climatic conditions are to be anticipated, and that there are potentials for unpredictable alterations to the climate system (Grubb 1999; Houghton 1994). Another area of debate is how to address the threats posed by climate change and this attracted international attention which led to negotiations, domestic strategies and public concern during the 1990s. It has been clear that there are big challenges to states as they try to come up with international agreements and take domestic initiative. Specifically, this can be clearly seen in places where environmental and economic interests are in conflict, such as the USA and Australia, as the latest abandonment of support by the Bush administration for the Kyoto Protocol demonstrates all too clearly (Anderson & Leal 1991). Beck’s definition of the experience of risk in a risk society is exemplified in some of the features of the issue of climate change. First of these features is that the causes of climate change lie unfathomably within modernity. It seems that inoffensive and invisible gases, such as methane and carbon dioxide, released as by-products of growth (the industrialization of agriculture, augmented energy use and economic growth) altered the composition of the atmosphere with incalculable costs. This agrees with Beck's idea that in risk society, risks occurs not from a deficiency of modernity, as vulnerabilities linked with poverty and underdevelopment might be conceived, but to a certain extent as the side-effects of modernization (Anderson & Leal 1991) . The effects of climate change will be felt all over the world and by future generations and not only the developed countries who contributed too much greenhouse gases. Even though climate change may be felt by individuals, one’s understanding of the processes through which greenhouse gases have an effect on climate systems, the modeling of future changes, and the observing and recording of global climate patterns depends on scientific understanding. This trust on scientific arbitration of risk, Eden explains, leads to the scientific study of environmental problems: they are acknowledged and first and foremost made through the application of scientific techniques and analysis. At the same time, the reciprocal procedure occurs so that science becomes politicized and drawn into policy formulation (Eden 1996). As science, in the form of the IPCC, was given attention in the policy arena regarding possible courses of action concerning climate change, the de-monopolization of knowledge occurred and debates over whether the evidence needed action dominated policy arenas. These agree with Beck's proposition that, given the nature of contemporary risks, political conflicts are more and more revolving on the control and expression of knowledge (Goldblatt 1996). Climate change, given these characteristics, can be in use as a paradigmatic instance of the sorts of modern-day environmental risks. Whether these risks have produced new social and political processes characteristic of risk society consequently merits additional examination. Water Problems The making of dams and irrigation channels, the building of river embankments to develop navigation, drainage of wetlands for flood control, and the founding of inter-basin connections and water transfers have led to vast gains made in meeting human needs through water resources development. According to the data of the World Health Organization (WHO) and United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) (2006), more than 1.2 billion individuals have been supplied with improved water between 1990 and 2000 (Bodansky, 1993). This is a massive accomplishment; even though population growth has reduced its impact, but success the ‘second billion’ is proven to be a harder and slower task. Simultaneously, these approaches have themselves turn out to be unswerving drivers of ecosystem degradation. There are two impacts of water development; one is that there is less water that remains in the ecosystem and two, there is often a different pattern for the remaining water from the existing water conditions. It is projected that the amount of water withdrawn from inland water systems has augmented by no less than 15 times over the past two centuries. The effect of withdrawals, however, is not consistently spread and it is probable that about 80 per cent of the world’s population is living downstream of only 50 per cent of Earth’s renewable water supplies (Finlayson, 1985). Inland water ecosystems have also been contaminated by unwarranted nutrients, which forces eutrophication; heavy metals; nitrogen and sulphur based compounds, which cause acidification of freshwater ecosystems; organic compounds; floating particles, both organic and inorganic; contaminants such as bacteria, protists, or amoebae; and salinity. Modification in the state of freshwater and related inland water ecosystems have also took place at the hands of other direct drivers for instance species introductions and land utility change (Finlayson, 1985). The effect of climate change on water cycle is one of the areas wherein it has the greatest impact. A change in climate has the tendency to alter all elements of the water cycle which includes precipitation, evaporation, soil moisture, groundwater recharge, and runoff. Aside from that it can also modify the timing and intensity of precipitation, snowmelt and runoff. Modeling exercises point to complex and still unsure outcomes. But the load of evidence proposes that a lot of the world’s most water-stressed areas will get less water, and water flows and thus will become less conventional and more subject to intense events (Finlayson, 1985). The analysis stated above on the relationship of climate change and water ecosystem services shows some of the government imperatives. In due course, any progress of water resources will entail a transaction between provisioning, and the cultural, regulating and supporting services. Present trends to keep on favoring provisioning services should lessen poverty. However because of the connection between ecosystems and their cultural, regulatory and supporting services, poverty can only be reduced so way ahead of feedback loops from ecosystem ruin flow back through these services, in that way reducing well-being, mainly for the poorest members of society (Aylward et al. 2005,). While optimization is not likely in the real world, balance across ecosystem services lingers as vital for their governance. In order to make development, important direct drivers of governance alter need to be dealt with, such as internalizing environmental externalities, making certain stakeholder involvement, and escalating transparency and accountability of government and private sector decision-making (Finlayson, 1985, 176). 7 Governmental Issues Presently, international and intergenerational distribution of responsibility for risks has been the focus of the analysis made of the obligations of climate change. These debates are momentarily outlined, before taking into account how Australia's international obligations for climate risk were built and challenged. The understanding of intergenerational justice with deference to climate change is mutually appealing and complex, linking concerns for the representation of 'distant strangers' within modern environmental politics and raising tricky philosophical issues about the needs, deserts and identity of future generations. On the other hand, as argued, in practice the understanding of intergenerational justice has offered a simplified rationale for action; the need to stop hazardous anthropogenic intrusion with the climate system or, to put it differently, to steer clear from future harm (Eden 1996) . On the other hand, international equity debate which involves climate impacts consideration and how they can be stopped or compensated for, and sources of emissions and how they can be alleviated, has been frenzied. While the impacts of climate change continued to be vague, it is apparent that a number of places will experience more threat than others, particularly the small island states and delta regions, and debate has angered over how such impacts can be remunerated (Grubb 1999). It was declared in the UNFCCC that developed countries should lend a hand to developing countries with the duty of adaptation, a principle which has been reaffirmed in the Kyoto Protocol though there is substantial vagueness as to what this will denote in 435 practices. Without a doubt the longest running and disruptive debate regarding equity and climate change internationally has been the particular responsibilities of states for dropping emissions of greenhouse gases. In the forefront, this debate has been cast in north-south divide, with the argument made that the north should take first take action primarily because of its duty for the immense majority of emissions to date, its sky-scraping levels of per capita emissions and its ability to take action (Bodansky, 1995). The UNFCCC acknowledges these values and also declares that technical and financial transfers from the north are essential to facilitate emission lessening to take place in the 'south'. The addition of such principles goes by some means to contradicting claims that the politics of climate change stands for a form of 'environmental colonialism', though it does slight to at last determine the question of respective responsibilities (Bodansky, 1995). All through the Conference of the Parties (COP), the USA, Australia and quite a few industrial lobby groups argued that developing countries must be integrated in emissions reduction commitments because of their mounting contribution to the problem, alarms about international competitiveness and environmental efficiency, as well as efforts to transfer blame from themselves for the slow progress of negotiations (Houghton 1994). More effort has been directed towards thinking of the ways in which developing countries could be integrated in future agreements even if it was not explicitly stated in the Kyoto Protocol. The extent and arrangement of these debates put forward that the international politics of climate change risk have not been conducted only in terms of material interests, which at any rate are hard to identify, but on the foundation of the kinds of conflicts of accountability for risk and its alleviation that Beck argues lead risk society (Beck, 1992). Such conflicts have also been noticeable in debates relating to the function of individual countries in dealing with climate change. The allocation of responsibilities between countries of the 'north' became the topic of nonstop debate in the run up to Kyoto. Within the UNFCCC it is frequently affirmed that obligations can fall unequally on different parties. The text refers to common but discriminated duties and relevant capabilities, and the necessity to take into account differences in these Parties initial points and approaches, economic structures and resource bases, the call for maintaining strong and sustainable economic growth, accessible technologies and other individual conditions (Anderson et al 1991) (Bodansky, 1995). While such uncertainties were incorporated to point out that the developed country Parties should break new ground in fighting climate change, they have been employed to good effect by those disagreeing that the impact of addressing climate change will not be felt squarely in the midst of the countries of the 'north'. To this end, an important article in the Convention, referred to as the 'fossil fuel clause', advocates that Parties should take into account the implementation of the commitments of the Convention the context of Parties, specifically developing countries, with economies that are susceptible to the unfavorable effects of the execution of measures to counter to climate change (Houghton 1994). . This is applicable in particular to Parties with economies that are very much reliant on income generated from the manufacture, dispensation and export, and consumption of fossil fuels and related energy-intensive products and the use of fossil fuels for which such Parties have rigorous trouble in switching to substitutes (Beck 1992). This section provided Australia, in the midst of others, with noteworthy fuel for their disagreement that international obligations should be distinguished on the basis of the foreseen effect on the economy of taking action. Rather than the conversion proposed by Beck from the relations of production to the relations of definition as the foundation for politics in risk society, the international politics of climate change risk exemplify how definitions of obligation and responsibility are shaped by discussions on economic costs and benefits next to moral and scientific considerations (Brown 1996) America and Europe: A Case Study Beck, Funtowicz and Ravetz pushed to decentralize the creation of knowledge in connection to global environment change, but this push as they say can be argued to be less suited for American policy context than for that of Europe. Policy analysts warned that lawmakers should be careful in applying in America these European policies because there are important differences between the two continents specifically their policy environments. For one, Europe is technocratic and closed in approach with regards to decision making connected to climate change (Conca, 1993, 44). In the United States, professional deliberation on scientific evidence is not as protected from public debate, and management of the production and mobilization of knowledge is comparatively looser, which allows greater propagation of contending risk constructions in government and broader society. Even in the U.S. framework, the liberating potential of disclosure to a plurality of scientific announcements on the issue is limited, however it is limited in some measure by a propensity common among actors on both sides of the issue to present their chosen "facts" and related policy agendas as true and apparent, ahead of the need for deliberation (Brown 1996). The above discussion proposes that disclosure to heterogeneity of differing scientific statements does not release society from the patronization by technocracy nearly as by design as one might appreciate Beck to be telling, nor is it apparent that it essentially improves understanding of irreducible doubts. The subsequent introduction to some of the opposing scientific voices on the climate issue in the United States illustrates the heterogeneity of voices in search of defining climate reality in the United States which is also adopted by other leading countries in the issue of climate change (Conca, 1993). Conclusion Is it really important to define policy problems? It has been disagreed whether the scientific, economic and political definitions of a policy problem represent obstacles to efficient and effective policy (Anderson & Leal1991). To a certain extent, the argument goes; the meanings are fundamentally pessimistic efforts to downsize a political obligation to negligible action on global climate change and water governance. Having said that, the argument finishes with a challenge that these definitions of the policy problem would at most replace old rationalizations with new ones but depart with the position of minimal action and commitments to it unbroken. This disagreement miscalculates the power of ideas as tools of politics and policy. Public officials appreciates that a position not backed by a reasonable description of the problem - one that reverberates with informed and public opinion - is susceptible to opposition from other positions. Furthermore, the results of that competition are not prearranged. The strength of assurances and the arrangement themselves may vary alongside the rationalizations. In this situation, policy research can make a difference in policy. No one can know the result of the competition, but beginning the competition would be productive in any case. Knowingly or without knowing, the leading definitions of the policy problem support the recognized positions by keeping the main question off the public agenda. The main question not before the public is whether an alliance of scientists, economists, and public officials should organize and implement a all-inclusive policy on global climate change. As an alternative, such secondary questions as what that strategy should be, and when that policy might be needed, takes over the agenda. A test that lifted the main question for public debate would serve the interest of technical rationality by opening up the exploration f or solutions. If the world has penetrated a period of fast global climate change set off by the employment of science-based technologies on an unparalleled level, then the prevailing culture comprises the problem rather than the locus of policy solutions. Opening up the hunt for solutions would be initial step in the direction of becoming accustomed to the culture of new realities for the sake of continued existence if nothing else. If global climate change twisted out to be comparatively unimportant, then little will have been lost. Either way, the competition would be in the interest of democratic accountability by permitting the public to judge options to any all-inclusive policy proposed by the similar alliance that would try to organize and implement it. Sufficient ideas are by now obtainable to begin the competition. For instance, as this paper puts forward, realistic criteria of rationality and the lessons of sensible experience can be utilized to confront the plausibility o f the leading definitions and to direct concentration to a soft path strategy. The academic literature can be excavated for alternatives to conference, as well as sustainability as a universal aim and goal of policy. And continuing experience can be mined for humble and separate programs that merit diffusion and adaptation on a bigger scale (Houghton 1994). Such programs will keep on rising from the bottom up, but they might also be persuaded and supported from the top down. Thus far, there is shortage of political leaders at the core of awareness and policy who are eager to agree to the political risks of starting the competition. Policy research can assist possible leaders appreciate what is worth saying and doing when, how, for whom, for what purpose, and at what political possibility. But while research can shed light on other courses of action, research is no replacement for action. And in the end, the policy issues taking place from the dangers of global climate change and improper water governance can only be determined through politics. Resources Aylward, M. & Waddell, G. (2005). The Scientific and Conceptual Basis of Ecosystems. Stationary Office: London. Anderson T.L. & Leal D.R., 1991. Free Market Environmentalism. The PacificResearch Institute for Public Policy (PRIPP), California. Beck, U., 1992. 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