Building a Social Mandate for Climate Action: Lessons from COVID-19.

The COVID-19 imposed lockdown has led to a number of temporary environmental side effects (reduced global emissions, cleaner air, less noise), that the climate community has aspired to achieve over a number of decades. However, these benefits have been achieved at a massive cost to welfare and the economy. This commentary draws lessons from the COVID-19 crisis for climate change. It discusses whether there are more sustainable ways of achieving these benefits, as part of a more desirable, low carbon resilient future, in a more planned, inclusive and less disruptive way. In order to achieve this, we argue for a clearer social contract between citizens and the state. We discuss how COVID-19 has demonstrated that behaviours can change abruptly, that these changes come at a cost, that we need a 'social mandate' to ensure these changes remain in the long-term, and that science plays an important role in informing this process. We suggest that deliberative engagement mechanisms, such as citizens' assemblies and juries, could be a powerful way to build a social mandate for climate action post-COVID-19. This would enable behaviour changes to become more accepted, embedded and bearable in the long-term and provide the basis for future climate action.

The economic case for low carbon waste management in rapidly growing cities in the developing world: The case of Palembang, Indonesia.

The provision of appropriate waste management is not only an indicator of development but also of broader sustainability. This is particularly relevant to expanding cities in developing countries faced with rising waste generation and associated environmental health problems. Despite these urgent issues, city authorities often lack the evidence required to make well-informed decisions. This study evaluates the carbon and economic performance of low-carbon measures in the waste sector at a city level, within the context of a developing country. Palembang in Indonesia is used as a case of a medium-sized city in a newly industrialized country, with relevance to other similar cities in the developing world. Evidence suggests that the waste sector can achieve substantial carbon emission reductions, and become a carbon sink, in a cost effective way. Hence there is an economic case for a low carbon development path for Palembang, and possibly for other cities in developing and developed countries facing similar challenges.

Trust-based environmental regulation.

Within this paper, we examine the contribution that trust-based relationships can make to achieving better-and particularly more effective, efficient and equitable-environmental regulation. While levels of trust in regulators, regulatory processes and outcomes are often discussed, the influence of trust on different actors and on different measures of regulatory performance is poorly understood. Within this paper, we define trust-based environmental regulation as a specific regulatory style that involves openness and cooperation in interaction between regulated, regulators and third-party stakeholders in order to achieve environmental protection objectives. We then discuss the pros and cons of trust relationships between regulators, regulated businesses and citizens for achieving behavioural change towards greater environmental protection. To illustrate the significance of these issues, we then examine three forms of contractual regulatory style where trust relationships are critically important: responsive regulation, self-regulation and environmental agreements. Based on this analysis, we highlight the importance of trust-based relationships, and we argue that one of the greatest contributions of trust-based environmental regulation is to challenge how we think about regulation. Trust is often understood as enabling existing regulatory relationships or in the case of self-regulation as a complement to regulation. However, we argue that the real potential of trust is to open up new ways for participants in regulatory regimes to engage in collective action, to go beyond a perception of regulation as driven by the competing interests of individual actors, and thus, to open up new channels of influence for behavioural change towards greater environmental protection. Our analysis therefore has great relevance for future research and for on-going debates on the future of regulation.