[PDF] Federal Constitutions Global Governance And The Role Of Forests In Regulating Climate Change eBook

Author : Blake Hudson
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 43,98 MB
Release : 2018
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Federal systems of government present more difficulties for international treaty formation than perhaps any other form of governance. Federal constitutions that grant subnational governments virtually exclusive regulatory authority over certain subject matter may constrain national governments during international negotiations - a national government that cannot constitutionally bind subnational governments to an international agreement cannot freely arrange its international obligations. While federal nations that grant subnational governments exclusive regulatory control obviously place value on stringent decentralization and the benefits it provides in those regulatory areas, the difficulty lies in striking a balance between global governance and constitutional decentralization in federal systems. Recent scholarship demonstrates that U.S. federalism, for example, may jeopardize international negotiations seeking to utilize certain mechanisms of global forest management to combat climate change, since subnational forest management is a regulatory responsibility reserved for state governments under current constitutional jurisprudence. This Article expands that scholarship by undertaking a comparative constitutional analysis of five other federal systems - Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, and Russia. These nations, along with the United States, are crucial to climate and forest negotiations since they account for 54 percent of the world's total forest cover. This Article reviews the constitutional allocation of forest regulatory authority between national and subnational governments in these nations to better understand potential complications that federal systems present for global climate governance aimed at forests. The Article concludes that federal systems maintaining three key elements within their constitutional structure are most capable of agreeing to an international climate agreement that incorporates forests in a consequential manner - successfully implementing that treaty on domestic scales, and doing so in a way that maintains the recognized benefits of decentralized forest management at the local level: (1) national constitutional primacy over forest management, (2) national sharing of constitutional forest management authority, and (3) adequate forest policy institutional enforcement capacity. The Article also establishes the foundation for further research assessing how the constitutional status quo of federal systems lacking key elements may be adjusted to achieve more effective climate and forest governance.

Author : Blake Hudson
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Page : 0 pages
File Size : 32,76 MB
Release : 2012
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Recent research demonstrates the difficulties that federal systems of government may present for international treaty formation, a prime example being legally binding treaties aimed at harnessing global forests to regulate climate change. Some federal constitutions, such as the U.S. and Canadian constitutions, grant subnational governments virtually exclusive direct forest management regulatory authority for non-federally owned forests. With subnational governments controlling sixty-five percent of forests in the United States and eighty-four percent in Canada, the U.S. and Canadian federal governments may be constrained during international negotiations and unable to legally bind subnational governments to any agreement prescribing methods of utilizing these forests to combat climate change. These constraints are especially important since these two countries control fifteen percent of the world's forests. Decentralized forest policy in the U.S. and Canada certainly provides valuable benefits. Yet constitutional decentralization in federal systems should be more effectively balanced with global forest governance if that mechanism for addressing climate change is to be preserved in its most flexible form. Though a binding agreement has yet to materialize, and other increasingly touted mechanisms may be utilized to tackle climate change, it is imperative that world governments maintain every legal and policy tool at their disposal to address the problem. A recent comparative constitutional analysis of five federal systems controlling fifty-four percent of global forests determined that the United States and Canada lack two of the three key elements of federal constitutional structure that best facilitate a federal nation's ability to enter into and successfully implement an international climate agreement including forests while also preserving the recognized benefits of decentralized forest policy. This Article addresses how these constitutional deficiencies might be remedied to achieve more effective climate and forest governance. In other words, the Article explores mechanisms for establishing “Fail-safe Federalism” for forest management in the United States and Canada, by first highlighting the domestic nuances of both constitutional structure and forest policy in the two countries and next assessing whether top-down, bilateral, horizontal, or transnational approaches are the most effective mechanisms for forging Fail-safe Federalism within each.

Author : Blake Hudson
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 25,77 MB
Release : 2014-03-26
Category : Law
ISBN : 1136661743

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Constitutions and the Commons looks at a critical but little examined issue of the degree to which the federal constitution of a nation contributes toward or limits the ability of the national government to manage its domestic natural resources. Furthermore it considers how far the constitution facilitates the binding of constituent states, provinces or subnational units to honor the conditions of international environmental treaties. While the main focus is on the US, there is also detailed coverage of other nations such as Australia, Brazil, India, and Russia. After introducing the role of constitutions in establishing the legal framework for environmental management in federal systems, the author presents a continuum of constitutionally driven natural resource management scenarios, from local to national, and then to global governance. These sections describe how subnational governance in federal systems may take on the characteristics of a commons – with all the attendant tragedies – in the absence of sufficient national constitutional authority. In turn, sufficient national constitutional authority over natural resources also allows these nations to more effectively engage in efforts to manage the global commons, as these nations would be unconstrained by subnational units of government during international negotiations. It is thus shown that national governments in federal systems are at the center of a constitutional 'nested governance commons,' with lower levels of government potentially acting as rational herders on the national commons and national governments potentially acting as rational herders on the global commons. National governments in federal systems are therefore crucial to establishing sustainable management of resources across scales. The book concludes by discussing how federal systems without sufficient national constitutional authority over resources may be strengthened by adopting the approach of federal constitutions that facilitate more robust national level inputs into natural resources management, facilitating national minimum standards as a form of "Fail-safe Federalism" that subnational governments may supplement with discretion to preserve important values of federalism.

Author : R. Maguire
Publisher : Edward Elgar Publishing
Page : 383 pages
File Size : 30,77 MB
Release : 2013-03-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 0857936077

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This work provides an important, broad and legal critique and assessment of transnational trends, structures and innovations currently in use for managing forests.

Author : Simon Butt
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 236 pages
File Size : 19,7 MB
Release : 2015-02-11
Category : Law
ISBN : 1317563719

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Deforestation in tropical rainforest countries is one of the largest contributors to human-induced climate change. Deforestation, especially in the tropics, contributes around 20 per cent of annual global greenhouse gas emissions, and, in the case of Indonesia, amounts to 85 per cent of its annual emissions from human activities. This book provides a comprehensive assessment of the emerging legal and policy frameworks for managing forests as a key means to address climate change. The authors uniquely combine an assessment of the international rules for forestry governance with a detailed assessment of the legal and institutional context of Indonesia; one of the most globally important test case jurisdictions for the effective roll-out of ‘Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation’ (REDD). Using Indonesia as a key case study, the book explores challenges that heavily forested States face in resource management to address climate mitigation imperatives, such as providing safeguards for local communities and indigenous peoples. This book will be of great relevance to students, scholars and policymakers with an interest in international environmental law, climate change and environment and sustainability studies in general.

Author : Emmanuel O. Nuesiri
Publisher : Springer
Page : 335 pages
File Size : 37,48 MB
Release : 2018-03-07
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 3319719467

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This edited collection assesses governance in forestry programmes and projects, including REDD+ governance. It examines political representation, participation and decentralisation in forest governance, providing insight as to how forest governance arrangements can be responsive to the socio-economic interests of local people and communities who live adjacent to and depend on forests. Global Forest Governance and Climate Change argues that inclusive complementary representation of local communities is required for strong participatory processes and democratic decentralisation of forest governance. Responsiveness to local people’s socio-economic interests in forestry initiatives require paying attention to not just the hosting of participatory meetings and activities, but also to the full cast of appointed, self-authorized, and elected representative agents that stand, speak, and act for local people. This book will be of interest to students and academics across the fields of climate change governance, forestry, development studies, and political economy. It will also be a useful resource for policy makers and practitioners responsible for forestry and climate change initiatives.

Author : Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Publisher : Food & Agriculture Org.
Page : 73 pages
File Size : 37,75 MB
Release : 2019-02-18
Category : Technology & Engineering
ISBN : 9251310947

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The critical role of forests in climate change mitigation and adaptation is now widely recognized. Forests contribute significantly to climate change mitigation through their carbon sink and carbon storage functions. They play an essential role in reducing vulnerabilities and enhancing adaptation of people and ecosystems to climate change and climate variability, the negative impacts of which are becoming increasingly evident in many parts of the world. In many countries climate change issues have not been fully addressed in national forest policies, forestry mitigation and adaptation needs at national level have not been thoroughly considered in national climate change strategies, and cross-sectoral dimensions of climate change impacts and response measures have not been fully appreciated. This publication seeks to provide a practical approach to the process of integrating climate change into national forest programmes. The aim is to assist senior officials in government administrations and the representatives of other stakeholders, including civil society organizations and the private sector, prepare the forest sector for the challenges and opportunities posed by climate change. This document complements a set of guidelines prepared by FAO in 2013 to support forest managers incorporate climate change considerations into forest management plans and practices.

Author : Blake Hudson
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 15,35 MB
Release : 2012
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The constitutional structure of a federal system of government can undermine effective natural capital management across scales, from local to global. Federal constitutions that grant subnational governments virtually exclusive regulatory authority over certain types of natural capital appropriation -- such as resources appropriated by private forest management or other land-use-related economic development activities -- entrench a legally defensible natural capital commons in those jurisdictions. For example, the same constitution that may legally facilitate poor forest-management practices by private landowners in the southeastern United States may complicate international negotiations related to forest management and climate change. Both the local and international issues may remain unaddressed because the national government is not constitutionally empowered to guide subnational policy formation and therefore may not bind subnational governments to certain types of international agreements related to private forests. Though there are around 160 unitary systems of government worldwide, compared to 25 federal systems, approximately 46 percent of the world's land base is contained within the boundaries of federal nations. For certain types of natural capital, like forests, the numbers are even starker. Though federal systems comprise approximately 13 percent of the world's governments, they maintain control over 70 to 80 percent of the world's forests--a resource crucial for combating climate change. Ultimately, national constitutional incapacity to participate in the direct regulation of subnational natural capital management in federal systems may legally entrench a series of natural capital commons, one nested within another: 1) private individuals may rationally appropriate natural capital within the state commons in the absence of state government rules guiding sustainable resource appropriation; 2) state governments may rationally appropriate natural capital within the national commons because the national government is not constitutionally empowered to guide resource appropriation within states; and 3) national governments may rationally appropriate resources within the global commons because subnational governments constrain federal system participation in legally binding global governance of resources. This Article introduces and describes, at the most basic level, the operation of nested natural capital commons created by certain federal structures. This description is necessarily preliminary, establishing a foundation for future detailed study of both the structure and operation of nested natural capital commons and how keystone constitutions in federal systems may be fortified to allow more effective natural capital management across local, national, and global scales.

Author : Andrew Jordan
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 407 pages
File Size : 31,47 MB
Release : 2018-05-03
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 1108304745

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Climate change governance is in a state of enormous flux. New and more dynamic forms of governing are appearing around the international climate regime centred on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). They appear to be emerging spontaneously from the bottom up, producing a more dispersed pattern of governing, which Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom famously described as 'polycentric'. This book brings together contributions from some of the world's foremost experts to provide the first systematic test of the ability of polycentric thinking to explain and enhance societal attempts to govern climate change. It is ideal for researchers in public policy, international relations, environmental science, environmental management, politics, law and public administration. It will also be useful on advanced courses in climate policy and governance, and for practitioners seeking incisive summaries of developments in particular sub-areas and sectors. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Author : Joyeeta Gupta
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 45,50 MB
Release : 2014-06-19
Category : Carbon sequestration
ISBN : 9781138809642

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This books explores how an analysis of past forest governance patterns from the global through to the local level, can help us to build institutions which more effectively deal with forests within the climate change regime. The book assesses the options under REDD to reduce emissions from deforestation in developing countries in the context of other forest policies. Based on an assessment of existing multi-level institutional forestry arrangements, the book questions how policy frameworks can be better designed in order to effectively and equitably govern the challenges of deforestation and land degradation under the global climate change regime.