Time Horizons and Geography in Environmental Policy

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Slow harms do not draw the urgent attention or the resources to solve them, and yet environmental degradation and the failure to adapt to climate change are among the world’s greatest policy challenges. Having traditionally been viewed as local and technical phenomena, “slow harms” are increasingly being contested across actors, levels of government, and issue areas. This increasing contestation impacts the assessment, funding, measurement, and regulation of environmental and other adaptation issues across organizations, issue areas, and levels of government.

In contrast to climate mitigation (measures to diminish greenhouse gas emissions), a solution to “slow harms” with strong advocates because of its absolute gains logic, river decontamination, embankment construction, and other solutions to environmental degradation are viewed as zero-sum (for their geographical bounds and zero-sum logic). Parting from this contrast between specifically located “slow harms” and generalized solutions such as emissions mitigation, this panel seeks to add knowledge on the patterns, causes and consequences of major shifts in norms, framings, and resource allocation for addressing environmental degradation.

Each of the papers contributes with theory-guided empirical analyses, together addressing the following questions: (1) How have “slow harms” norms and framings developed across actors, issue areas, levels of government, and over time? (2) What is the changing role of citizens in addressing environmental degradation and climate adaptation? (3) What factors enable and hinder remediating the environment where national governments are failing to confront and solve these problems?

In addressing these questions, this panel speaks to mainly two bodies of research, seeking to extend discussion of the time horizon component of environmental “slow harms.” Studies of environmental governance have increased over the last decade, yet existing global environmental governance scholarship is primarily occupied with the study of climate mitigation regimes and institutional complexity and polycentrism. Here we seek to give time horizons a greater place in the discussion, by considering the incentives of political actors with short time horizons, even as environmental degradation and climate change are nearly always long-term effects. The panel brings together scholars from several regions of the world with a range of empirical and methodological approaches.

Sub Unit

• Division 39: Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics

Chair

• Erika S. Weinthal Duke University

Discussant

• Mark N. Lubell University of California, Davis

Individual Presentations

• The Short-Term Planning Bias in Adaptation: A Survey Experiment in Bangladesh - Todd A. Eisenstadt, American University; Matthew Wright, University of British Columbia

• Slow Harms and Citizen Action: Environmental Degradation and Policy Change - Veronica Herrera, University of California, Los Angeles

• Addressing the Imagined Trade-off Between Mitigation and Adaptation Spending - Ifeoluwa M Olawole, American University

• The Diffusion of Climate Change Norms across Sectors and Scales - Lisa Maria Dellmuth, Stockholm University; Karina Shyrokykh, Stockholm University