CiR2P Option 1 | Promote good governance  

DISCUSSION:

Governance refers to multiple processes and strategies used to coordinate and support the activities of individuals and community, government and business actors operating at a number of levels from local to international. Failures of basic governance include long-term misrule and corruption by elites and associated social-economic and institutional decay.

To achieve good governance involves individual states themselves and the broader international community playing mutually supportive roles in developing the institutions and processes – legislative, executive, and judicial – of effective government, combined with a willingness by individual states to accept a strong civil society as well as basic political and civil rights. Good governance is key to human protection.

The challenge of governing for climate action stems from three interrelated factors:

1. The multiple scales and levels of political decision-making involved;
2. The need for coordination and collaboration between state and non-state actors;
3. The deeply embedded nature of greenhouse gas emissions in everyday processes of production and consumption.

Given the scale and complexity of the climate challenge there is growing recognition of the need to ‘mainstream’ climate change strategy (or what could also be referred to as “good climate governance”) by integrating climate adaptation and mitigation considerations across all government policy domains and objectives, including budgeting. Where possible, decision makers in government, in collaboration with stakeholders, should consider both the climate-related risks and opportunities in all major decisions.

Western governments could help fragile states achieve ‘good climate governance’ in the interests of human protection and economic development, by developing and implementing new programs, or adjusting the many existing government programs, that seek to have the following impact: 

• establish climate mainstreaming as the central priority in government climate change plans. This approach would elevate mainstreaming in government decision making, but allows flexibility whether to consider climate change mitigation and adaptation in broader public policy decision makers.   
• pursue a climate mainstreaming strategy through the government’s central strategic policy document. This would send a stronger signal to those agencies and decisionmakers outside of the core sectors involved in mitigation and adaptation that there is a need to consider climate change. 
• legislate a mainstreaming approach to climate change in the governments climate change and or environmental protection act/s. This approach would formalise a requirement for decisionmakers to consider climate change across ministries and agencies.
• include climate mainstreaming as a constitutional provision, which would deeply embed good climate governance in the functioning and values of the state.

As a first step, Western governments could provide financial and technical support to generate an up-to-date baseline assessment of the target government’s climate change governance and the extent to which climate change has been integrated or ‘mainstreamed’ into decision making.