LIST OF PANELS

To be potentially effective and successful, any climate policy framework ought to fit and mirror the realities, challenges, and policy problems for which it is designed. Since the climate change phenomenon is utterly complex and plays out at and affects various geographic scales and governance levels simultaneously, policy design must address regional, national, and local issues coherently. Moreover, climate change is often interlinked with other major policy problems, including inequality, economic crises, wars and violence, failing institutions and states, forced migration, pandemics, food/water/energy insecurity, and more. This “perfect storm” of major global crises, or “wicked problems,” often reinforcing and aggravating one another via “positive feedback loops,” seems to become a new normal for public policy and is characterized by unprecedented complexity and multi-causality, often paired with a high level of ambiguity and uncertainty (Yamu, 2014; Chapman et al., 2017; Kovacic & Di Felice, 2019; Head, 2008, 2019; Head & Alford 2015; Peters, 2017).

This “crisis of crises” is particularly precarious and disruptive for the Global South, which already suffers from multiple chronic conditions requiring urgent policy intervention. Yet, climate change manifests itself as the epitome of injustice for developing countries, particularly in the Global South, since its root cause – 170 years of extractive and exploitative industrial capitalism ­– paired with colonialization and its lasting legacy is nothing that the developing world is responsible for. The Global South is at the receiving end of the worst effects of climate change, including catastrophic heatwaves, droughts, floods, famine, extreme poverty, displacement, and many more – and largely left alone by those countries that have caused and continue to cause climate change. For example, at climate change conferences, known as COPs, delegations of certain industrialized countries, as well as ruthless fossil fuel lobbyists, coerce poor countries already hit hard by climate change into defensive mode and dictate watered-down compromises that do not change the game, adding insult to injury. The 2009 promise of COP15 in Copenhagen of making available $100 billion in support of adaptation needs has still not been met even to 50 percent, while the world’s key greenhouse gas emitters still refuse to pay into a “loss and damage” fund to compensate developing countries.

The overarching research questions of our panel are:
·      What are novel and innovative policy design and instrumentation options to effectively and sustainably address the myriad inequality, social injustices, social development, and human security issues linked to the effects of climate change on countries in the Global South?
·      What institutional, economic, financial, and technological policy options are available, or should be made available, to countries in the Global South to spur rapid adaptation to climate change and mitigate its worst and disastrous impacts?
·      How can intergovernmental organizations, global financial institutions, and donor agencies leverage and deliver green sustainable finance for rapid decarbonization, energy transitions, and technological shifts – all of which have to be combined coherently and implemented urgently and simultaneously in an integrated way?
·      What social policies should be prioritized in Global South countries?
·      How can South-South (and triangular) cooperation add to the advancement of social policy and climate policy in service of the Global South?

The desired outcome of the panel is the production of an edited volume. To this end, original contributions are encouraged from diverse disciplines (e.g., economics, environmental science, political science, education, and public policy). Theoretical and/or empirical contributions with a comparative or regional perspective are equally encouraged. Papers can focus on a single country case or propose cross-country analyses.

We are looking for original contributions that have not been published previously.  We encourage articles addressing but not limited to the following questions:

·      What are novel and innovative policy design and instrumentation options to effectively and sustainably address the myriad inequality, social injustices, social development, and human security issues linked to the effects of climate change on countries in the Global South?
·      What institutional, economic, financial, and technological policy options are available, or should be made available, to countries in the Global South to spur rapid adaptation to climate change and mitigate its worst and disastrous impacts?
·      How can intergovernmental organizations, global financial institutions, and donor agencies leverage and deliver green sustainable finance for rapid decarbonization, energy transitions, and technological shifts – all of which have to be combined coherently and implemented urgently and simultaneously in an integrated way?
·      What social policies should be prioritized in Global South countries?
·      How can South-South (and triangular) cooperation add to the advancement of social policy and climate policy in service of the Global South?

Please send an abstract of 500–800 words, including name, affiliation, biographical sketch, and email address.

The authors of the accepted abstracts will be invited to submit final papers of approximately 10,000-12,000 words.