What are the prospects of a just transition towards sustainable climate change policies? The search for practical lessons from policy studies.

Citation

Cairney P, Timonina I & Stephan H (2024) What are the prospects of a just transition towards sustainable climate change policies? The search for practical lessons from policy studies.. In: Pandemic Recovery? Reframing and Rescaling Societal Challenges. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 224-237. https://www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/pandemic-recovery-9781802201109.html

Abstract
While COVID-19 and climate change present different policy challenges, they raise similar issues of inequality. Inequalities relate to the social and economic impacts of each problem, and the unequal influence over the policy processes to address them. COVID-19 highlighted these issues during a concentrated period, compared to climate change in which attention to equity has been more fleeting. We explore the extent to which a longer post-pandemic period will present opportunities for governments to address the unequal impacts of climate crisis. We report insights from a qualitative systematic review of climate justice research. We find high researcher certainty about how to define this problem and produce transformational changes to address it, but also a tendency to report a major gap between hopes and outcomes. We describe how policy theory-informed research may help to bridge a divide between researcher expectations for climate justice and actual policies and practice.

Keywords
Climate change; climate justice; policy; policymaking; social justice; neoliberalism

People

Professor Paul Cairney

Professor, Politics

Dr Hannes Stephan

Lecturer, Politics