Photo: Kris Krug
Following on some of the ideas I thought about during the recently concluded Aspen Environment Forum, and also reflecting upon a very insightful class I took at the Hertie School of Governance during my first year there – a class on multilateral governance taught by Professor Inge Kaul (world expert on public goods) and Thorsten Benner (director of the Global Public Policy Institute), I wrote a piece for FutureChallenges.org on new climate change governance architectures.
Here’s the full-length article (but please visit the entire platform, as other authors feature some really instructive pieces):
Finding the right type of climate change governance architecture and driving humanity on a more sustainable path might just be the tip of the iceberg of future challenges and megatrends featured on Futurechallenges.org. Why? It is intimately linked with all of them: new governance structures (see the magic scenarios below), demographic issues (climate refugees “complement” an unsustainable industrial production and consumption pattern, which will most likely make it impossible for us to feed a growing planet of 9 billion people by 2050), biodiversity and natural resources (because of human consumption of natural resources – the same that induced climate change – ecosystems have degraded at a 30% rate between 1970 and 2003, and our ecological footprint has exceeded the Earth’s capacity by about 25% as of 2003, says WWF’s Living Planet Report, 2006 edition, security (climate change-induced resources scarcity and migration will increasingly become a source of conflict, specialists indicate, and have done so already, as the infamous case of Darfur points out). Continue reading ‘Futurechallenges.org – Governing Climate Change. In Search for the Perfect Solution’