Comparing Climate Policy Processes in India, Brazil, and South Africa: Domestic Engagements With International Climate Policy Frameworks

Abstract

Using policy cycle model as a heuristic, this article studies Indian, Brazilian, and South African engagement with Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs) by (a) comparing NAMA policy process and (b) identifying factors driving or limiting the framework’s domestic application. India largely remained uninterested in NAMAs, Brazil aligned its domestic climate policy and NAMAs, while South Africa had a more nuanced engagement when formulating NAMAs. Four factors influenced these countries’ NAMA engagements: the level and necessity of international support, the availability of domestic policy provisions to tackle climate change, the domestic institutional capacity to coordinate interministerial functioning, and the role of individuals in the institutional apparatus. As an international climate policy framework, studying NAMA engagement provides learnings for nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement for designing the instrument, ensuring clarity on support provisions for ratcheting up ambitions, and enhancing institutional capacity, to expedite transition from policy formulation to implementation and beyond.

Capacity building for proportionate climate policy: Lessons from India and South Africa

“…Similarly, while the Department of Environmental Affairs had coordinating responsibility for implementing the White Paper, other departments were more powerful (Interviewee-4) and didn’t cooperate (Interviewee-2), and it was challenging to bring in senior managers, who were in a position to take decisions to participate in the Inter-Ministerial Committee meetings (Interviewee-1). As a result, South Africa could not secure international finance for implementing the goals of the White Paper (Upadhyaya et al, 2018).…”

“…Disproportionate national capacity, particularly in the developing country context, is one of the main reasons these countries have been hesitant to take up mitigation commitments (Dubash and Morgan, 2013; Mathur and Shrivastava, 2015; Okubo and Michaelowa, 2010). While NDCs mark a departure from this historical position, unevenly institutionalized capacity (Purdon, 2015) along with the barriers created by domestic politics (Upadhyaya et al, 2018) cast doubt on their ability to effectively implement and continuously enhance their NDCs.…”

Implications of Development Cooperation and State Bureaucracy on Climate Change Adaptation Policy in Bangladesh

“…When the interests and power of two or more agencies overlap, it may result in conflict among them over certain policy issues [95][96][97], because according to bureaucratic politics theory, bureaucratic actors want to maximize their powers and resources in the administration [66,98]. Moreover, because the role of individuals in the institutional apparatus matters [99], a one-size-fits-all approach to climate adaptation policy might be redefined and transformed towards a more general-technical co-existence and fusion of ideas at the top level of decision-making.…”

Environmental Ministries as Climate Policy Drivers: Comparing Brazil and India

“…6−7). If actors and institutions that drive Brazilian and Indian climate policy processes are better understood, the UNFCCC process's dynamics and possible global mitigation trajectories under the Paris Agreement will be better understood (Clémençon, 2016; Dimitrov, 2016; Upadhyaya, Fridahl, Linnér, & Román, 2018). Although environmental ministries are regarded as central actors in domestic climate policy development, their climate policy ambitions have been given scant attention in the climate policy literature, and this article contributes to filling that gap.…”

“…Several scholars have analyzed Brazilian and Indian climate policy making in the past decade, finding that the environmental ministries have had important roles in climate policy development (e.g., Burrier, 2016; Dubash, 2009; Hochstetler & Viola, 2012; Isaksen & Stokke, 2014; Tankha & Rauken, 2015; Viola & Franchini, 2012), but few studies compare the roles of environmental ministries in the two countries, as this article does. In a recent article, Upadhyaya et al. (2018) compare Brazilian, Indian, and South African policy processes on Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions 1 and point to the environmental ministries' institutional capacities as crucial for the countries' “engagement with international climate policy frameworks” (p. 19), but their analysis does not aim to explain these ministries' climate policy ambitions .…”