Matthew J. Hoffmann

Climate Governance Experiments–Project Description

The global response to climate change has reached a critical juncture. Since the 1992 signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the nations of the world have attempted to address climate change through large-scale multilateral treaty-making. These efforts have been heroic, but disappointing. As evidence for the quickening pace of climate change mounts the treaty-making process has sputtered, and many are now skeptical about the prospect of an effective global response. Yet global treaty-making is not the only way that climate change can be addressed or, indeed, is being addressed. In the last decade myriad initiatives have emerged across the globe independently from, or only loosely connected to, the “official” UN-sponsored negotiations and treaties. In the face of stalemate in the formal negotiations, the world is experimenting with alternate means of responding to climate change. Climate Governance at the Crossroads chronicles these innovations–how cities, provinces and states, citizen groups, and corporations around the globe are addressing the causes and symptoms of global warming. The center of gravity in the global response to climate change is shifting from the multilateral treaty-making process to the diverse activities found beyond the negotiating halls. These innovations are pushing the envelope of climate action and demonstrating what is possible and they provide hope that the world will respond effectively to the climate crisis.

April 2013: Next steps for Experiments Project: Pathways to Decarbonization

Along with colleagues in Toronto, Ottawa, the US, UK, and Sweden, I was awarded a five year Social Science and Humanities Research Council grant for the project “Transformative Policy Pathways Towards Decarbonization”

March 2012: Climate Governance at the Crossroads was the runner up for the Sprout Award–best book in Environmental Studies from the International Studies Association.

February 2011: My book is the first major publication from this project:

Matthew J. Hoffmann. 2011. Climate Governance at the Crossroads: Experimenting with a Global Response after Kyoto Oxford University Press.

See the Oxford University Press Website for details.

Update January 2010: The first working paper from the project was recently presented at the Amsterdam Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change.  A PDF of this paper can be downloaded here.

Identifying Climate Governance Experiments:

A climate experiment is a governance initiative that meets these three criteria:

1. Experiments are independent from the Kyoto process or national regulatory measures. Initiatives that are designed to aid states in meeting Kyoto goals or national regulations are not experiments.

2. Experiments are engaged in making rules that shape how communities respond to climate change. Initiatives and actors that are primarily engaged in lobbying, for instance, are not experiments.

3. Experiments must cross jurisdictional boundaries. Many cities have climate policies, but individually these do not count as global governance experiments (relaxing this criteria would increase the number of experiments one thousand fold). Programs like the Cities for Climate Protection which link and network cities are experiments.

See the table below for the experiments currently in my database and feel free to make suggestions for possible additions!