Applied Energy 86 (2009) 258–264

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Applied Energy

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Foxes, hedgehogs, and greenhouse governance: Knowledge, uncertainty, andinternational policy-making in a warming World

David Michel *

Center for Transatlantic Relations, The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, 1717 Massachusetts Avenue, NW Suite 525, Washington, DC 20036, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history:Received 16 October 2007Received in revised form 7 May 2008Accepted 8 May 2008Available online 17 June 2008

Keywords:Climate policyUncertaintyAdaptive managementAdaptive governance

0306-2619/$ - see front matter � 2008 Elsevier Ltd. Adoi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2008.05.004

* Tel.: +1 202 468 7315; fax: +1 202 663 5879.E-mail address: amichel@sais-jhu.edu

Global environmental challenges like greenhouse warming are characterized by profound uncertaintiesabout the workings of complex systems, high stakes as to the costs and benefits of various possibleactions, and important differences concerning the values that should shape public choices, confoundingready resolution by conventional decision-making procedures. So-called adaptive or reflexive governancestrategies provide policy-makers an alternative framework for tackling the greenhouse problem. Adap-tive governance employs deliberate experimentation and continuous learning-by-doing to test and adjustongoing policy responses. Yet pursuing such approaches poses particular challenges to global climatecooperation. In an increasingly interdependent world, coordinating multiple parties experimentallyadopting different climate measures could prove contentious. Unequivocal policy lessons may be difficultto draw and apply. Timely collective revisions to ongoing policies may prove more difficult still to defineand agree. Advocates must engage these issues directly and develop means of addressing them if adaptivegovernance approaches are to allow policy-makers to formulate better strategies for combating climatechange.

� 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction

Conventional decision frameworks for climate policy-makingseek to determine the optimal choice among an array of alterna-tives. Standard techniques call upon the expertise of natural andsocial scientists to construct quantitative representations describ-ing the workings of relevant environmental and socio-economicsystems and how they are connected. Given a set of objectives par-ties wish to attain and a consistent metric to value them – dollarcosts, temperature change, composite measures combining multi-ple indices – policy analysts can deploy these modeling tools toforecast the expected results of various potential courses of action.Decision-makers may then rank alternative policy outcomesaccording to their desired selection criteria – cost-benefit ratio,realized warming, total utility – and identify the best option toachieve their preferred future among the projected possibilities [1].

Global greenhouse policy-making thus constitutes an exercisein applied foresight. Once emitted, greenhouse gases (GHGs) re-main in the atmosphere for 10s, 100s, even 1000s of years, impos-ing an inevitable inertial warming commitment on the climatesystem [2]. Once constructed, power plants, industrial facilities,transportation systems, etc. remain in use for decades, perpetuat-ing their installed technology base with their associated emissions

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patterns until the end of their economic lifetimes. So too, develop-ing and deploying new energy sources, mitigation technologies,and adaptation measures will be the work of many years. Climateabatement policies, then, must be considerably more preventivethan remedial. At their core, prevailing decision procedures relyon the expectation that improving knowledge will endow climatescience with sufficient predictive power to anticipatively steereffective greenhouse strategies.

Many scientists and policy-makers have long held this modelunsatisfactory. Rarely, if ever, will the sole ‘‘climatological facts”science can establish translate directly into ‘‘political facts” pre-scribing particular policy measures [3]. Irreducible uncertaintieswill always plague greenhouse understanding, confounding pre-sumptions that ever better information can point climate policiesto converge asymptotically to the ideal. In contrast to the predom-inant paradigm of optimization and control, analysts working in anumber of disciplines have begun to elaborate an alternative orien-tation to environmental policy-making. Variously termed reflexivegovernance, adaptive governance, or adaptive management amongother labels, these strategies advocate intentionally experimentalapproaches to policy construction, gleaning practical lessons fromdeliberate policy tests to guide ongoing ‘‘fuzzy” course corrections.They espouse determinedly pluralistic and participatory stancestowards formulating policy preferences and objectives. And theyadvise acute attention to the interdependence of social and ecolog-ical systems in enacting and adjusting policy interventions [4–7].

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Adaptive governance approaches could make a valuable contri-bution to international climate policy. Yet their implementation inthe global greenhouse raises a number of questions. In an increas-ingly interdependent world, coordinating multiple parties experi-mentally adopting different climate measures could provecontentious. Unequivocal policy lessons may be difficult to drawand apply. Timely collective revisions to ongoing policies mayprove more difficult still to define and agree. Advocates must en-gage these issues directly and develop means of addressing themif adaptive governance approaches are to help policy-makers for-mulate better strategies for combating climate change.

2. Climate policy conundrums: reducing uncertainty, increasingcontrol

The current climate regime supposes a linear relation betweengreenhouse knowledge and greenhouse action. Scientific under-standing sets the prior foundation for rational deliberation anddecision by the policy community. Science exposes, politics dis-poses. Indeed, some prominent analysts contend that, absent ex-pert guidance, policy-makers will be reduced to deferringdifficult decisions or plunging into blind gambles [8]. Or worse.Politicians and the public may inject their own inexpert opinionsto justify selectively biased or essentially arbitrary choices [9].Effective policy requires accurate knowledge. Scientific advances,by clarifying climate complexities, bounding and quantifyinguncertainties, will thereby ensure increasingly apposite policy ac-tions. ‘‘If scientific evidence indicates that calamitous conse-quences are likely”, asserts economist William Nordhaus, ‘‘thenour economic models will not only signal that a strenuous effortto slow or prevent future climate change is necessary but help de-vise the scope and timing of policy responses. Our future lies not inthe stars, but in our models” [10, p. 6].

When or whether human inquiry can so master nature’s mys-teries, though, is unclear. Climate knowledge has expanded expo-nentially since French mathematician Joseph Fourier firstidentified the natural greenhouse effect nearly two centuries ago[11]. Still, myriad questions remain. Uncertainties concerning nat-ural climate systems feed into uncertainties about the extent andeffects of human interference and vice versa. Gaps in our under-standing of greenhouse mechanisms combine with the indetermi-nacy of future emissions and inherent unknowns in societalreactions to global warming to sow a ‘‘cascade of uncertainty” fromcomprehending climate processes to determining climate forcingto assessing climate change impacts to fashioning policy responses[12].

2.1. Scientific uncertainty

Persistent uncertainties hamper definition of greenhouse miti-gation goals and practicable paths to attaining them. The Intergov-ernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates thataugmenting the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide (CO2) content totwice pre-industrial levels – the customary yardstick for measuringclimate sensitivity – would lift global average temperatures be-tween 1.5 �C and 4.5 �C [13]. If climate sensitivity to doubled CO2

is 1.5 �C, then limiting global warming to 2 �C above pre-industrialtemperatures, as the European Union and others favor, would de-mand stabilizing concentrations at 700 parts per million by volume(ppmv), allowing annual carbon emissions to swell two-fold bymid-century. But if climate sensitivity is 4.5 �C, CO2 concentrationswould have to be held to 380 ppmv, essentially present levels, andemissions totally eliminated soon after 2050 [14].

Additional investigation can expand as well as elucidate green-house ambiguities. The first major international assessment of glo-

bal warming dates to 1971. It figured climate sensitivity to growingcarbon concentrations at 2 �C [15]. By 1979, America’s National Re-search Council situated climate sensitivity between 1.5 �C and4.5 �C [16]. Thirty years later, the IPCC has neither conclusivelynarrowed this range nor established an agreed probability densityfunction across it [13]. On the contrary, recent studies have re-ported climate sensitivity could fall outside the IPCC estimates,perhaps reaching as high as 11 �C [17–19].

Indeed, heightened attention to climate complexities has showndistinctly unpleasant surprises may lurk among global warming’smany unknowns. Human pressures could exacerbate greenhouseuncertainty as rising emissions risk triggering rapid non-linear re-sponses. Crucial climate impact thresholds may be unstable,depending on the rate of warming as well as total temperature rise[20]. Paleoclimatic evidence preserved in ice cores, tree rings, andother sources reveals relatively small perturbations have repeat-edly tripped abrupt global and regional climate shifts, sometimesin under a decade. Today’s unprecedented forcing may tip climatepatterns into similarly sudden transitions. Yet greenhouse sciencecan now neither pinpoint critical climate triggers nor definitelygauge how much unwitting pressure humanity is exerting uponthem [13,21,22].

2.2. Human unpredictability

Inherent unpredictability in socio-economic systems fogsgreenhouse foresight even more than does imperfect comprehen-sion of climate mechanisms. According to one analysis, unknownfuture energy needs in the developing world represent the singlegreatest factor muddying long-term global emissions, warming,and climate damages. Alone, a 50% increase in the income elasticityof developing countries’ energy demand would raise projectedwarming for 2100 by 2.54 �C and boost market damages 229%.Most of the largest uncertainties clouding future temperaturechange and climate impacts reside in social variables – energy de-mand, labor productivity, technological changes – rather than innatural systems [23].

Science’s ability to vanquish such uncertainties is limited atbest. The basic forces behind CO2 emissions are expressed in anequation known as the Kaya identity:

CO2 Emissions ¼ Population� ðGDP=PopulationÞ� ðEnergy=GDPÞ � ðCO2=EnergyÞ

Global carbon dioxide production is a function of population, in-come per capita, energy use per unit of economic output, and thecarbon intensity of primary energy supply [24]. None of these fac-tors readily yields to prediction.

Analyses revisiting past global population projections makeclear the difficulties facing long-range demographic divination.Twenty-year forecasts go astray by 11% on average. Thirty-yearforecast errors average 15%, while predicting populations morethan 30% too high for 1-in-10 countries and 20% too low in another1-in-10 [25–27]. Over longer, greenhouse relevant horizons, cur-rent UN population scenarios stretch from a low of 7.4 billion peo-ple worldwide to a high of 10.6 billion in 2050, and from 5.5 to 14billion in 2100 [28].

Reading macroeconomic runes is no easier. Numerous studiestesting the predictive prowess of various international organiza-tions, government agencies, and private firms have concluded thattheir 1- to 5-year forecasts typically miss national GDP growthrates by an average of one to two percentage points, an appreciableerror when annual growth rates generally measure a few percentat best [29–31]. Climate policy must look much farther down theroad. Yet as Lawrence Klein, Nobel laureate for his contributionsto economic modeling, has cautioned, ‘‘very long horizons, say

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10.0–50.0 years. . . . [are] really outside the scope of systematic,careful forecasting or extrapolation” [32, p. 33].

National and global energy projections fare little better. Thoughsometimes tolerably on target in estimating total energy use, theiroverall results regularly mask sizable underlying but offsettinginaccuracies. Long-range energy forecasts have historically erredegregiously in figuring regional, sectoral, fuel mix, and technologytrends, all cardinal considerations for global warming planning[33–35]. The technological changes that could eventually trans-form the emissions equation also notoriously resist prediction. De-spite substantial recent progress, attempts to illuminate howclimate policies could impact technological innovation and viceversa remain highly contingent upon assumptions and linkagesbuilt into the models [36].

From one term of the Kaya identity to the next, uncertaintiesaccumulate to unsettle projections for climate policy. A major IPCCstudy exploring several potential storylines for the human driversof climate change found cumulative carbon emissions through2100 varied more than three-fold according to the scenarios’demographic, socio-economic, and technological premises. Withinthis span, some scenarios playing out disparate initial assumptionsultimately produced quite similar cumulative emissions. In others,small variations in underlying factors spawned widely divergingresults [24]. Reflecting this reality, current US Energy InformationAgency (EIA) estimates reckon global carbon emissions could climbanywhere from 43% to 77% by 2030. The difference between thehigh and low scenarios for China alone equals 2.357 billion metrictons of CO2, more than the present emissions of fellow emerginggiants Brazil, India, Mexico, and South Korea combined [37]. Eventhis broad margin may not snare the truth. A retrospective reviewof the EIA’s anticipative acumen revealed actual 2000 GHG produc-tion in every one of the top four world polluters fell completelyoutside the respective high-low emissions brackets forecast foreach of them in 1995, just five years before [38].

Science’s promise to pilot decision-makers through the shoalsof greenhouse uncertainty is predicated on the availability of clearclimate information and the fluid integration of expert knowledgeinto policy formulation. But the very complexities and ambiguitiesthat push policy-makers to call on expert insight can engendermultiple qualifications, caveats, and conflicting conclusions in ex-pert assessments. One study examining the distinct judgments ofmainstream economists, environmental economists, and naturalscientists found the climate change damage functions predictedby each group contrasted considerably. Each diverging estimatein turn suggested the need for mitigation responses of notably dif-fering rigor [39]. Rather than furnishing decision-makers with aconstant map and compass for navigating the climate labyrinth,on many crucial questions science can now deliver no more cate-gorical counsel than a ‘‘carefully worded set of subjective probabi-listic estimates in which our (often low) confidence in suchestimates accompanies any likelihood statements” [40, p. 445].Such contributions must strike many politicians as a slender reedon which to build potentially momentous policy choices.

3. Reflexive governance: managing uncertainty for adaptiveaction

Global environmental changes like greenhouse warming arecharacterized by profound uncertainties about the workings ofcomplex systems, high decision stakes as to the costs and benefitsof various possible actions, and important differences concerningthe values that should shape public choices. In the eyes of manyanalysts, these circumstances render objectives of prediction andcontrol based upon comprehensive elaboration and application ofscientific laws elusive if not illusionary. Addressing such challenges

requires practical actions distributed across and empiricallygrounded in particular contexts, what Funtowicz and Ravetz havetermed a ‘‘post-normal science”. ‘‘Whereas science was previouslyunderstood as steadily advancing the certainty of our knowledgeand control of the natural world. . . . [t]he activity of science nowencompasses the management of irreducible uncertainties inknowledge and ethics and the recognition of different legitimateperspectives and ways of knowing” [41, p. 178, 193]. Adaptive gov-ernance aims to fulfill this role.

3.1. Principles of adaptive governance

Adaptive governance takes an expressly experimental approachto developing climate policy and understanding. Standard modelsof the policy process describe a multi-stage, iterative cycle. Partic-ular issues are first identified and defined as policy problems. Thenvarious possible responses are devised. From these, policy-makersdecide specific actions and implement the chosen measures. Policyperformance is then evaluated, potentially leading to policy adjust-ments, further assessment, and additional corrective actions [42].In this vein, both the 1992 United Nations Framework Conventionon Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (KP) re-quire regular review and both anticipate re-evaluation and revision‘‘in the light of the objective of the Convention, the experiencegained in its implementation and the evolution of scientific andtechnical knowledge” (UNFCCC Article 7.2; KP Article 13.4). Adap-tive governance, however, goes further. Rather than accumulatelessons ad hoc as ancillary residuals of measures already adopted,adaptive management consciously constructs explicit policy teststo assay the feasibility and results of alternative treatments. Intheir most rigorous form, adaptive strategies simultaneously applydifferent measures to the same problem in different locations, con-ducting comparative policy trials targeting specific hypotheses andprobing particular options. Decision-makers thus weigh potentialpolicies for their heuristic value as well as expected effects onproblem issues. Adaptive approaches make ‘‘learning-by-doing”not just an accessory but a primary aim of policy choice from theoutset [43].

Adaptive governance also stresses the social dimensions ofenvironmental risk management. Myriad human activities maycontribute to given environmental changes, changes that in turnmay threaten multiple human interests. Meeting these challengescan require modifying many different practices intersecting atmany different scales, from individual behaviors to the conductof companies, communities, and countries. Adaptive governancetherefore seeks wide participation in the policy process. By survey-ing the range of knowledge perspectives available in the scientificand policy communities and in civil society, adaptive approacheslook to expand the information base underpinning policy designand decision, leading to better outcomes. By sounding out thespectrum of stakeholders that generate and experience environ-mental risks – and those that will effect and be affected by the re-sponses – adaptive governance aspires to cultivate broad civicengagement that can enhance the political legitimacy of andconsequent public commitment to policy actions [5,44].

Finally, reflexive governance urges decision-makers ‘‘takeaccount of the complexity of interlinked social, technological, andecological development. . . . and the contingency of human actionin the context of long-term system change” [45, p. 7]. In an inter-dependent world, environmental policies will interact with eachother, with other social policies and projects, and with natural sys-tems in dynamic patterns of cause and effect. Ideally, these effectswould be those decision-makers sought. In reality, pervasive non-linear processes and reciprocal feedback loops ensure virtually anymeasures enacted in tightly coupled socio-ecological systems –even those tried and tested in adaptive experiments – will entrain

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both intended and unintended consequences. These outcomes, theunpredicted and unwelcome as well as the anticipated and desired,will in turn condition the formulation and execution of subsequentpolicy interventions. Reflexive governance thus entails the contin-uing monitoring and modulation of ongoing processes, revisingpolicy tools and recalibrating objectives to reap the beneficialopportunities and repair the deleterious side effects occasionedby its own workings.

3.2. Adaptive frameworks for greenhouse governance

Adaptive techniques were originally developed for managingresources and ecosystems at smaller and intermediate scales likefisheries and pest control [46,47]. As anthropogenic pressures onthe world environment have mounted, a growing host of analystshave called for deploying adaptive strategies against global perilslike climate change [6,48–53]. Adaptive governance offers a theo-retically attractive model for confronting the policy problemsposed by greenhouse warming. Through structured experimenta-tion, decision-makers can pragmatically appraise how various op-tions perform in the field. Unforeseen negative outcomes can beheaded off. Scarce resources can be redirected to measures provid-ing the most purchase on the climate problem. Exploring a numberof alternative treatments concurrently also permits policy-makersto prepare a portfolio of instruments suited to diverse scenarios. Asdecision-makers learn more about emissions trajectories, green-house impacts, and technological innovations, they can draw onthis policy menu to fashion strategies appropriate to their circum-stances and tailored to unfolding developments.

While advocates largely concur on the merits of adaptive ap-proaches, they have advanced contrasting proposals for pursuingadaptive greenhouse governance. Some suggest adaptive tech-niques are more tractable in limited areas. Peterson et al. maintainthe requisite integrated experimentation may be best suited to pol-icy-making at the city, regional, and national levels [53]. Otherscontend many tools employed to resolve local resource problemscould help manage transnational issues. Dietz, Ostrom, and Sternargue adaptive strategies can be scaled to the global commonsthrough interconnected layers of institutions encompassing differ-ent geographic scales [6].

Some proponents focus on processes to structure adaptivegovernance over time. Keeney and McDaniels develop a tripartitemodel comprising preliminary measures to foster learning aboutthe greenhouse problem and spur creation of policy options,near-term emissions reductions to lessen the severity of climatechange, and steps to promote certain overarching objectives suchas maximizing international and intergenerational equity [52].Parties would implement this policy suite for an initial 20-yearperiod, then evaluate the results and turn their lessons to craft-ing further policy sets to be assessed and adjusted in turn. Lem-pert and Schlesinger put forward a similar policy triptychcomposed of ‘‘shaping actions” to generate new knowledge andalternatives, ‘‘hedging actions” to diminish vulnerabilities to ad-verse eventualities, and designated ‘‘signposts” or indicators thatwould alert decision-makers of the need to make mid-course cor-rections [51].

Other proponents focus on particular actors. Dowlatabadi rec-ommends regulators partner with industry [50]. Providing ‘‘inno-vator firms” with incentives and guarantees to systematicallyexplore and expand the technology frontier, policy-makers couldtry out the costs and benefits of various controls before establish-ing market mechanisms or regulatory mandates to spread success-ful instruments to other companies. Thompson and his colleagues,on the other hand, doubt international climate politics will permitthe kind of concerted, centralized experiments possible in domes-tic settings. Decision-makers should build instead on the existing

treaty regime. By exploiting the diversity of policies already under-way around the world as de facto case studies, bolstering data col-lection and reporting requirements, and rationalizing andreorienting review mechanisms, global cooperation could signifi-cantly further information sharing and transnational policy learn-ing [48,49].

These different perspectives plot several paths decision-makersmight take towards adaptive climate governance. But each alsoleaves important unanswered questions. Many of these questionsreflect the challenges of turning techniques designed for handlinglocalized issues finally falling under one political authority to tack-ling a worldwide problem falling across multiple political bound-aries. So, if adaptive strategies are indeed best pursued inregional or national fora, how are they to be integrated into globalobjectives rather than fragmented among separate policy islands?If, on the other hand, ‘‘Institutional arrangements must be com-plex, redundant, and nested in many layers” [6, p. 1910] to governthe climate commons, how are these arrangements to be coordi-nated to avoid a tangle of disparate actors working at cross-pur-poses? The learning goals reachable, the hedging actionsrealizable, and the signposts relevant for forging climate policy inthe international arena may not be practicable or pertinent for na-tional or sub-national decision-makers. What then is the appropri-ate scope for enacting adaptive frameworks and what institutionalarchitectures would best enable them? National regulators are nat-urally placed to partner with vanguard firms to nurture technolog-ical innovation. Empowered to promulgate incentives and controls,they can entice or compel other firms to adopt approaches provensuccessful. But how would such programs spread promising newtechnologies to the many polluters located beyond the nationalregulators’ remit in countries not party to the original partnership?The IPCC and other bodies established under the climate regimeare well positioned to gather and disseminate data on the variouspolicies undertaken by the parties. Adaptive management, though,seeks not just to amass information but to ameliorate practice. En-hanced reporting and review merely apprises parties of eachother’s activities. Adaptive governance should foster adaptivestrategies; it should induce parties to incorporate lessons fromtheir own and their neighbors’ actions into improving their ownpolicies.

4. Applying adaptive governance in a warming World

Reflexive governance advocates have persuasively laid bare thedeficiencies of present climate policy treatments and proposed apotentially powerful alternative. Yet they have devoted rather lessattention to articulating specific means and methods for policy-makers to successfully carry out adaptive strategies. For the mostpart, they have so far sketched only the general outlines of anadaptive management framework. They must do more. Preciselybecause of the deep uncertainties, high stakes, and clashing valuessurrounding greenhouse decision-making, implementing adaptivegovernance poses thorny questions of its own. Adaptive gover-nance engenders fundamental tensions between opening up thepolicy process to engage the manifold complexities and contingen-cies of interwoven socio-ecological systems on the one hand, andfocusing down the policy process to organize actions, render deci-sions, and structure institutions for realizing particular collectiveends on the other. Adaptive managers will need to devise specificprocedures and institutional arrangements to effectively overcomethe challenges inevitably arising from the combined commitmentto experimental policy development, expanding stakeholder par-ticipation, and extending attention to the wider field of interac-tions and interdependencies inhabiting dynamic policyenvironments.

262 D. Michel / Applied Energy 86 (2009) 258–264

4.1. Policy experimentation

Reflexive governance must balance the practical benefits deci-sion-makers may obtain from heuristic policy experimentationagainst the potential costs they may incur to pursue such pedagog-ical projects. Testing an array of alternative actions can help avertsome of the prospective pitfalls bedeviling greenhouse policy-mak-ing. Restricting emissions too quickly or by inefficient means risksworse economic dislocations than climate change itself mightcause [54]. Distributing abatement efforts among exploratory op-tions enhances system flexibility. It avoids technological lock-inor institutional entrapment in sub-optimal pathways from prema-ture commitments to particular answers while allowing learning-by-doing and technology research and development to improvemitigation solutions. Conversely, however, high adaptability canresult in significant policy slack, diluting resources and diminish-ing policy impacts. While diverse possibilities remain in theexploratory phase, society will mostly continue present practicesand building additional infrastructure around existing technolo-gies. Dispersing control policies may thus result in greater initialemissions, escalating climate system commitment to future warm-ing. Should more rapid or aggressive emissions reductions provenecessary, postponing vigorous mitigation while assorted experi-ments come to fruition may merely displace wrenching decisionsonto the future while potentially foreclosing some options alto-gether [55–57].

Compounding the challenges of negotiating such trade-offs, noguarantee ensures policy experimentation will yield sufficient evi-dence to adjudicate among alternatives. Decision-makers maystruggle to derive policy wisdom from equivocal, contradictory,or unheeded policy experiences. Ex post policy evaluation mustwrestle with the same complexities and uncertainties that saddleex ante policy formulation, making conclusive assessments diffi-cult [58]. Judging policy performance requires projecting the antic-ipated effects of specific measures and defining a baseline caseagainst which actual outcomes can be compared. Yet as the widelyvarying cost estimates for implementing the Kyoto Protocol makeclear, different models frequently forecast different consequencesfor the same policy [59]. Disagreements will likely also surface asto what lessons follow from given results. The Montreal Protocoland subsequent accords regulating ozone-depleting chlorofluoro-carbons, for instance, are often held up as models for global warm-ing. Many experts hail the ozone regime as a triumph ofenvironmental statecraft that led countries to significantly altertheir destructive behavior [60]. Other analyses, though, concludethese treaties did little to modify parties’ policies beyond whatthey would have voluntarily done in any case [61].

Even where adaptive initiatives successfully add to greenhouseunderstanding, decision-makers may be unable to translate prag-matic learning into appropriate action. Many developing stateslack the institutional and technical capacities to act on existing riskassessments or effectively implement basic measures, much lessmonitor, reevaluate, and repeatedly revise multiple instrumentsor swiftly swing from meeting the prerequisites of one policy ap-proach to another [62,63]. And as abundant US examples attest, so-cial practices often doggedly fail to reflect known environmentalhazards (e.g., building infrastructure in risk-prone areas), fre-quently abetted by inapt government policies [64].

4.2. Stakeholder participation

Conflicting interests as well as imperfect information hobbleclimate policy development. Proponents of adaptive governancelook to comprehensive stakeholder consultations to reconcile dis-parate perspectives and persuade diverse parties that adaptivestrategies best serve their collective advantage [51,65]. Such con-

sensual understandings may prove difficult to reach, however,and harder still to maintain in frameworks of intensive policyexperimentation. Adaptive approaches aim to let a 100 flowersbloom. They do not intend all of them to grow. The purpose of pol-icy experimentation is not policy proliferation. It is to identify anddiffuse best practices while discontinuing less effective treatments.This winnowing process may frustrate hopes that inclusive publicparticipation will smoothly sanction and sustain adaptivegovernance.

Adaptive governance assumes policy-makers will extend suc-cessful programs and end unsuccessful ones. But policy termina-tion is a politically charged endeavor, frequently foiled [66].Launching new policies itself creates certain interests, empowerscertain actors, prompts certain coalitions. These constituenciescan be expected to resist the reduction in their resources and roles– budgets cut, subsidies ended, jobs lost, institutional responsibil-ities rescinded – that would follow from closing down their policyprojects. Reference to policy performance may offer little help tocut this Gordian knot and might even tighten it. Given the afore-mentioned ambiguities and uncertainties qualifying policy evalua-tion, partisans of any given measures can often legitimatelyquestion the criteria and methods of unfavorable assessmentswhile countering with supportive analyses.

Inclusive stakeholder dialogue may successfully referee suchdisputes. But the combination of policy experimentation and par-ticipatory deliberation rouses the specter of an unappealing alter-native. By multiplying the parties harboring individual interests inthe preservation of particular policies while enlisting them all inthe search for consensual policy determination, adaptive gover-nance risks producing a ‘‘joint-decision trap” [67]. Here the objec-tions of unexcludable veto-players, this party opposing oneproposed policy change, that party opposing another, tend to per-petuate the status quo. Policy evolution comes, if at all, throughcollective logrolling as decision-makers judge policy options lessfor their problem-solving promise than for their political value tocement inter-party bargains. Securing continuing stakeholdercommitment may then sacrifice the very flexibility to adjust poli-cies to changing conditions that first recommends the adaptiveapproach.

4.3. Attending to complexity

Anthropogenic climate change lies at the intersection of twohighly complex systems, where the planet’s biogeochemical cyclesintertwine with humanity’s socio-economic structures. Indeed,global warming has been called ‘‘the apotheosis of the idea that‘everything relates to everything else’” [68, p. 183]. Reflexive gov-ernance gives decision-makers the means to learn about these con-nections and respond to their ramifications. Yet the same adaptivestrategies that allow policy-makers to engage the interdependen-cies and ambiguities inherent in dynamic social-ecological systemscan create uncertainties and contingencies of their own. In manyways, grappling with the climate challenge resembles wrestlingwith a balloon. Efforts to gain a firmer grip on one aspect of theissue may only cause another to bulge more prominently.

The problem of hydra-headed complexities, managed here onlyto manifest there, occurs most starkly in the international politicalarena. In an interconnected world, the policies undertaken by somecan affect the outcomes obtained by others. Kyoto is a case inpoint. The US, for instance, prominently worries that a regimewhere some parties control their emissions while others do notwill see significant ‘‘carbon leakage” [69]. Carbon-intensive indus-tries will simply move from carbon-constrained economies tounregulated ones. Carbon-regulating countries will suffer the lossof these businesses while global emissions continue unchanged.Other countries worry that American repudiation of the Protocol

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undermines their agreed objectives, eroding Kyoto’s climate im-pact to the vanishing point. Several studies have shown that, withUS withdrawal, total emissions from the 38 developed states sub-ject to the treaty’s restrictions will drop little if at all from unre-strained business-as-usual [70–72]. Not only will US GHGproduction be higher, so will that of the participating countries.As the world’s biggest polluter, America would have been the pri-mary purchaser in the emissions credits markets emerging in re-sponse to Kyoto. Absent US demand bidding it up, permit priceswill be appreciably lower. Weaker price signals lessen the incen-tives for businesses and consumers to pursue energy conservation,technological innovation, and other mitigation measures. ‘‘A Kyotoprotocol without the US is like musical chairs with one too manychairs”, opined one analyst. ‘‘[T]here’s a lot of marching aroundbut nothing happens” [73].

America was not motivated to reject Kyoto by an adaptive out-look. But the controversy does suggest the pursuit of disparate ac-tions prescribed by adaptive experimentation could aggravate thepolitical complexity of greenhouse decision-making. Far from con-sidering Washington’s program of voluntary domestic measures analternative policy experiment, some analysis has turned to explor-ing how Kyoto parties could employ tariffs or other issue linkagesto dissuade such non-collaboration [74,75]. More ominously foradaptive governance’s experimental ethos, legal scholars are pon-dering how liability suits might be lodged against parties deemedresponsible for climate damages [76,77]. Adaptive managementcannot bear fruit if decision-makers view each other’s actions notas stores of lessons for their own policy development but as stum-bling blocks to their policy goals.

The challenges of evaluating policy programs and drawingapplicable lessons, of structuring public deliberation, and of man-aging complex and interdependent policy spaces are not uniqueto global warming or adaptive management [78,79]. Adaptive gov-ernance advocates recognize these and other issues as well. Yetthey have more often evoked them in passing than elaborated theirimplications. To be sure, adaptive strategies do not demand defin-itively resolving all such questions in advance. To do so would in-vite the very policy paralysis under uncertainty adaptivetechniques aim to overcome. And it would short circuit the defin-ing, evolutionary advantage intrinsic to adaptive governance, thecapacity to learn from and amend its own application. Neverthe-less, insufficient explanation of the specific procedures and meth-odologies by which policy-makers can operationalize concreteadaptive measures to counter global warming constitutes the mostserious shortcoming of current adaptive governance proposals.Enacting reflexive governance implies substantial changes in theformulation, implementation, and evaluation of climate policies.Though it rejects counsels of policy perfectibility, realizing adap-tive governance will place significant demands on policy actorsand institutions at local, national, and international scales. Adap-tive approaches must to do more than acknowledge such pendingpuzzles. They must address them, be it provisionally, if they are toput policy-makers on the path to better decisions.

5. Conclusion

Global climate policy faces daunting environmental and politi-cal challenges. Like Isaiah Berlin’s famous hedgehog, current policyapproaches the greenhouse threat as a matter of knowing one bigthing [80]. Science can address the climate problem as a single sys-tem – or one set of interlocking systems. Continuously improvingknowledge of those systems will allow decision-makers to craftcontinually improving policies. Yet many of the most importantuncertainties confronting decision-makers are essentially irreduc-ible, rendering the objective of optimal policy design illusory. Like

Berlin’s fox, adaptive governance proposes to manage greenhouserisk as a matter of learning, knowing, and applying many littlethings, persistently adjusting imperfect policies to evolving con-texts rather than pretending to achieve optimal control. Whetherthe many actors who live in the warming greenhouse can effec-tively learn and collectively apply enough little things to preservethe global climate system is an open question. Perhaps the onlycertainty is that, if the nations of the Earth fail to counter globalwarming together, then together they will bear its consequences.

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of many of the arguments developed in this pa-per were presented at the REFGOV Consortium Conference: Institu-tions for Providing Global Environmental Goods, UniversitéCatholique de Louvain, Belgium, 15–16 June 2006 and at theGreenhouse Gases: Mitigation and Utilization – CHEMRAWN XVIIand ICCDU IX Conference, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada,8–12 July 2007, as well as at the 3rd International Green EnergyConference, Mälardalens University, Västeräs, Sweden, 18–20 June2007. The author thanks the participants in those conferences andtwo anonymous referees at Applied Energy for their helpfulcomments.

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