Transboundary climate and adaptation risks governance

Munene, Martin Brown (2023) Transboundary climate and adaptation risks governance. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

The growing debate on transboundary climate and adaptation risks (TCARs) raises questions about their nature, governance options and logics, and implications within and across boundaries. This thesis investigates these questions through four interconnected chapters written in a long paper format. It is based on primary data collected through interviews and direct observations, and secondary sources including official documents, census data and spatial maps. Focusing on the global level of climate policymaking, the first paper explores the construction and definition of TCARs in the Paris Agreement and considers the potential for their governance (TCARG) in its implementation. Through an analysis of the Agreement, its supplementary text and related literature, the study reveals that despite its hypothesised potential to foster TCARG, the Agreement gives limited attention to TCARG and lacks explicit focus on TCARs in its articulation. The paper identifies four evident dimensions of climate risk governance boundaries: legal-political, sectoral/functional, temporal, and ecological/ecosystems, with the legal-political dimension being the most influential. It also explores opportunities for enhancing TCARG during the Agreement's implementation. Paying attention to the nature of TCARs and their contextual predisposing factors, the second paper characterises Kenya’s TCAR challenge, exploring its intricacies both at the national and subnational scales. It shows that the significance of TCARs in the country is complex, and their propagation is often nonlinear and often complicated by intranational and international (in)actions within the ‘impact transmission’ system. Evidently, with or without globalisation, many TCARs remain relevant and TCARG necessary for Kenya. The paper demonstrates the cogency of the national and subnational scales in the context of TCARs and recommends the utilisation of robust and inclusive approaches in assessing not only climate change risks and impacts but also the risks and impacts of climate response measures. Shifting the focus to political systems due to their centrality in climate and disaster risk creation and governance, the third paper examines how the constitutional devolution of political, fiscal and administrative powers and resources has affected the social contracts and decision spaces for the design, implementation and coordination of adaptation, particularly its transboundary dimensions. Results show mixed impacts. While it has provided opportunities for enhanced local participation and ownership, devolution has also increased the polycentricity and fragmentation of adaptation governance by creating additional boundaries and layers. By creating new dimensions of citizenship rights and entitlements, devolution also complicated accountability, coordination and capacity challenges at multiple levels. The paper offers recommendations for improving the governance of TCARs in the context of devolution in Kenya and similar contexts. The final paper delves into the rationales behind the (ex)territoriality of climate and adaptation risk governance (CARG). Employing spatial imaginaries as a lens, the paper explores the (ex)territorial framing of CARG and its underlying logics in Kenya. It finds that CARG in Kenya is often deliberate and influenced by socio-political institutional and governance rationales, all of which are shaped by spatial imaginaries. Because TCARs and TCARG are exterritorial, they challenge these imaginaries and create governance dilemmas. The paper highlights the significance of spatial imaginaries in shaping CARG and proposes that the territoriality of adaptation framing and interventions is hereditary from the prevailing diverse spatial imaginaries in different spaces and places wherein CARG occurs.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 2023 Martin Brown Munene
Library of Congress subject classification:	G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences J Political Science > JA Political science (General)
Sets:	Departments > Geography and Environment
Supervisor:	Conway, Declan and Surminski, Swenja
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/4656

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