Doctoral Dissertation Research - Making Markets for Environmental Governance - the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

This dissertation project funded by the Science, Technology & Society Program examines the development of the New Zealand Emissions Trading Scheme (NZ-ETS) as a case of market-based environmental governance in order to understand the role of techno-scientific knowledges in environmental policymaking. The New Zealand government recently announced the establishment of an emissions trading scheme that constitutes an ambitious attempt to use markets as instruments of climate change policy. The creation of this regulatory framework for greenhouse gases is the first national-scale attempt to create economy-wide regulation of greenhouse gases. The process of regulating greenhouse gases (GHGs) within the NZ-ETS centers on the creation of a market structure for a previously un-recognized and un-valued commodity (i.e., a permit for the carbon dioxide equivalent for each GHG). As such, the implementation of the market-based regulation of GHGs simultaneously depends upon knowledges from both the meteorological and economic sciences. This project explains how these scientific and technical knowledges direct the form and function of environmental policies. The intellectual merit of the proposed research rests on the integration of approaches from science studies and political economy to better understand the role of techno-scientific knowledges in environmental governance. The creation of an economy-wide regulatory scheme for greenhouse gases and the distinctive material properties of agricultural greenhouse gases as an object of regulation pose interesting challenges to existing accounts of how new institutions of environmental governance develop and an important opportunity to explore the construction, imaginaries, and effects of new market-based instruments for environmental governance. The project uses interviews with scientists involved in the measurement of greenhouse gases, government policy analysts, and economic advisors and consultants in conjunction with analyses of policy and industry consultation documents and scientific papers and reports in order to understand how this policy program mobilizes particular scientific and economic knowledges in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The broader impact lies in the capacity to inform the development of future climate change policies both within New Zealand and in other countries as they inevitably move to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture. As the New Zealand case offers one of the first attempts to include agriculture and land use in a national regime of GHG regulation, this project provides insight into the challenges and contingencies of creating market-based regulations for greenhouse gases. In an effort to engage participating interview subjects in a reflexive manner, a collaborative conference is held for participating policy analysts in public service departments.