The private sector in climate governance: opportunities for climate compatible development through multilevel industry-government engagement

Abstract

Globally, the sustainable development agenda is undergoing a process of climatisation. This means that climate change mitigation and adaptation are influencing the design and delivery of development initiatives. This paper explores the extent to which climate governance influences the role and practice of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in development. We draw on case study evidence from copper mining concessions in Northwestern Zambia in order to examine how CSR activities are adopting norms of climatised development. Our results show that the extractive industries are increasingly initiating CSR activities to align with local livelihoods, and therefore play a key role in climate compatible development (CCD). In addition, they act as context changers through for example, in-migration, which increases pressure on local forest resources. However, these roles go unacknowledged by both industry and government as CSR activities are disconnected from broader CCD priorities. We discuss the positive and negative implications of drawing the extractive industries into the CCD arena. We link to critiques of politicized CSR and consider practical implications, both for the sector and the achievement of climate development goals. We conclude that CSR activities should be seen as a local manifestation of multilevel engagement between the extractive industries and broader development sectors.

Assessing the Integration of Climate Change and Development Strategies at Local Levels: Insights from Muheza District, Tanzania

“…Some authors point out that development policy and planning is a cornerstone of CCD. Integrating climate change adaptation and mitigation in sectoral development policy and planning is argued to provide opportunities to deliver triple wins in the long term and to make an efficient use of scarce resources in developing contexts [6,20,21]. Suckall et al [6] observe that climate mainstreaming in development policy is essential to reduce trade-offs between the three dimensions of CCD.…”

“…Moreover, evidence to date suggests that CCD governance would involve multiple stakeholders. For instance, Leventon et al [21] noticed that the private sector could facilitate CCD implementation: in Zambia, extractive industries are implementing projects that are achieving triple wins, although without a CCD framing. Similarly, NGOs and community-level stakeholders are important in ensuring that climate objectives are consistent with development priorities at the local level [26,27].…”

“…Similarly, NGOs and community-level stakeholders are important in ensuring that climate objectives are consistent with development priorities at the local level [26,27]. Evidence from Southern Africa suggests that public-private partnerships and networks as well as inter-ministerial working-groups can enhance CCD [17,21,26]. As such, CCD governance would involve 'multiple government and non-government actors .…”

“…However, local levels can have limited capacity, in terms of skills and resources, to address climate change [13,29]. Yet, research on CCD has focused on integration at national level [5], or on single small-scale projects delivering CCD rather than local level planning [6,21]. The presence and the effectiveness of institutional arrangements supporting climate change integration with development objectives at local levels has not been investigated.…”

Climate-compatible development in New Zealand

“…The integrated approach of climatecompatible development demands a high level of specialised knowledge and resources to avoid costly mistakes (Locatelli et al, 2015;Kongsager, Locatelli and Chazarin, 2016). An intimate understanding of local conditions, including the views and wishes of the local people, is important (Leventon, Dyer and Van Alstin, 2015;Kongsager and Corbera, 2015). There remains the potential for adaptation and mitigation projects to clash, or development and climate change goals being at odds (Klein et al, 2007;Locatelli et al, 2015;Ficklin et al, 2017).…”