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Politicians' engagement with climate change is the focus of an emerging literature, but this research has not been subjected to systematic analysis. To address this important gap, we perform a systematic review of 141 articles on politicians and climate change published between 1985 and 2021. We find a growing research area; almost half of the articles were published after 2018. Existing research is fragmented and focused on a small number of democracies in the Global North, with the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Norway and Australia being the most‐heavily studied. Substantively, we analyze politicians' motivations, the incentives and barriers they face, and the strategies they employ to block/enable climate action. We find evidence of politicians being both intrinsically and extrinsically motivated. Intrinsic motivations often derive from formative experiences occurring prior to entering politics. Extrinsic motivations most commonly include publics/voters and external events. Importantly, intrinsic and extrinsic motivations vary in different political contexts, and indeed these two motivations may pull politicians in different directions. Politicians may employ various strategies—such as reframing—to achieve their desired policy outcomes. Moreover, politicians' motivations and strategies in relation to climate change are not static, but often vary. We conclude that there is an urgent need for research on how politicians are enabled and/or constrained by political system characteristics. Research is especially called for in the Global South and/or less democratic systems, as well as on investigating how politicians are (not) decarbonizing difficult‐to‐abate sectors and how they reconcile the sometimes‐competing demands for climate change mitigation and adaptation. This article is categorized under:Policy and Governance > National Climate Change PolicyPolicy and Governance > Multilevel and Transnational Climate Change Governance [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elected politicians and civil servants are key in developing climate policy. The articles in this special issue investigate factors that induce politico-administrative actors to adopt climate policies and dismantle anti-climate policies to advance decarbonisation. Politico-administrative actors have predominantly expanded climate policy and raised policy ambition in recent decades. However, economic crises and weakening public support may cause dismantling of climate policy and hamper policy ambition. Against this backdrop, articles in this special issue also study factors that propel climate policy dismantling. Together, the contributions show that interactions between politico-administrative actors and publics, organised interests, and international organisations shape climate and anti-climate policy change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is there a rural–urban divide in citizens' views on European Union agricultural policy? We argue that the place of residence influences a person's attitude toward agricultural policy issues. More precisely, we postulate that rural populations are less likely to view environmental and climate action, and sustainable food production as key objectives of agricultural policy; instead, we hypothesize they are more likely to indicate job growth in rural areas and ensuring a fair standard of living for farmers as key objectives. We analyze data from a Special Eurobarometer survey fielded in 2020 for 24,328 individuals living in 27 European Union member states. Multilevel mixed-effect logit models reveal the place of residence (urban–peri-urban–rural) as a significant predictor of the respondents' attitudes for almost all dimensions of agricultural policy. The differences are most striking for environmental and climate-related aspects of agricultural policy, as well as for its goal of generating economic growth and jobs in rural areas. From this, we conclude there is a rural–urban divide concerning agricultural policy, which policymakers should be aware of and attempt to address. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's complex policy problems are strongly characterized by interdependencies across sectors. Such interdependencies hamper the sustainable management of natural resources such as water. The protection of water resources exhibits manifold interlinkages, often with energy and food policy. Interdependent policy problems entail trade-offs across policy sectors and therefore present decision-makers with a major challenge. In order to address this, the design of sustainable policy mixes should produce synergetic effects that contribute to both the protection of water resources and achieving the objectives of other interlinked policy sectors. However, it remains unclear why some policy mixes show significant flaws that prevent the achievement of sustainable outcomes. The contributions of this special issue step into this research gap and aim to explain variation in policy mixes and their contribution to sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National policy ambition plays a central role in climate change governance under the Paris Agreement and is now a focus of rapidly emerging literature. In this contribution, we argue that policy ambition can be captured by the level of national policy activity, which in accordance with the existing literature should be referred to as "policy density." In this study, we measure climate policy density by drawing on three publicly available databases. All three measurements show an upward trend in the adoption of climate policy. However, our empirical comparison also reveals differences between the measurements with regard to the degree of policy expansion and sectoral coverage, which are due to differences in the type of policies in the databases. For the first time, we compare the patterns of policy density within each database (2000-2019) and reveal that while they are different, they are nonetheless potentially complementary. Since the choice of the database and the resulting measurement of policy density ultimately depend on the questions posed by researchers, we conclude by discussing whether some questions are better answered by some measurements than others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine stakeholder participation in the online debate on genetically modified organisms in China and assess how the debate has changed over time. Therefore, we compare messages posted between 2013 and 2020 on the Chinese microblog website Weibo by using discourse network analysis. Our findings reveal strong opposition to genetically modified crops, along with the existence of two competing coalitions of supporters and opponents. We further observe an increasing number of posts supporting genetically modified organisms by the public in recent years. Consequently, there is an indication that the positions of stakeholders have changed over time. We discuss the policy implications for China and draw conclusions for other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thus, scenario research may shift to compound events as drought-flood sequences and to the linkages between droughts/floods on the one hand and pollution on the other. Since then, scenario studies anticipating the possible futures of floods and droughts and also pollution have been conducted. Following particularly dry years causing droughts in many parts of the world, several countries worldwide have been affected by floods in July and August 2021. Exchange with social science research implies several dimensions: one is representation of society in water scenario studies - social drivers as well as impacts of water extremes on society. [Extracted from the article]

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The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) entered into force in December 2000; it marks a decisive turn in European water governance and related policies, management practices and restoration trends. After 20 years of implementation through two management cycles, EU member states have transposed the WFD requirements into national law, performed baseline assessments of water bodies, and implemented first measures such as hydromorphological river restoration which aims to achieve 'good ecological status', or at least the potential level targeted for that particular water body, by 2027. So far, however, WFD implementation has shown limited success; this weak result has given rise to studies, which are mainly discussions about possible technical limitations of WFD implementation and the appropriateness of monitoring procedures. This paper complements these studies by exploring governance-related bottlenecks that have emerged in the last two decades, as perceived by scientists and practitioners. An online survey was conducted which built on a list of 24 barriers to WFD implementation; these barriers had been identified previously by more than 40 researchers during a workshop in January 2019 and through a literature review. In this survey, the list of perceived barriers to WFD implementation was shared to 130 scientists and practitioners, who were asked to prioritise the items on list. Taken together, four main barriers to WFD implementation were identified: 1) problems related to horizontal intersectoral communication, 2) insufficient land reserves, 3) insufficient staff capacities, and 4) inadequate funding. The results of the analysis of WFD implementation indicated a bottleneck at the governance level that was due to insufficient horizontal collaboration and communication. This result is not in line with previous surveys that identified policy integration as the main bottleneck. We conclude from this that the governance dimension of WFD implementation merits more attention in terms of both research and political consultation in order to identify the needs for action that are key to improved WFD implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In several European countries and at the level of the European Union, we can observe political and societal attempts to promote the use of tap water. Most prominently, the European Commission proposed revisions for the Drinking Water Directive, which includes strategies for promoting the consumption of tap water. The strategies comprise the following: improving access to tap water, upgrading quality standards for tap water, and enhancing transparency concerning the benefits of tap water. National initiatives in European countries pursue similar strategies that concentrate on enhancing access to tap water and communicating its economic, environmental, and social benefits. By drawing on existent literature in different disciplines, we assess how promising these strategies are for inducing individuals to drink tap water rather than bottled water. Our overview reveals that our knowledge regarding the quality dimension is very good: numerous studies on European countries have shown that dissatisfaction with the sensory properties and health‐related concerns prevent individuals from drinking (more) tap water and opting for bottled water instead. The body of research with a specific focus on Europe is significantly smaller concerning the other two dimensions: access to tap water and the benefits of tap water. Nonetheless, there is indicative and preliminary evidence that improved access to tap water and a better communication of the benefits of tap water could positively affect consumption patterns. This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Sustainable Engineering of WaterHuman Water > Water GovernanceHuman Water > Water as Imagined and Represented [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to investigate the extent to which supporters and opponents at the European Union (EU) level strive to mobilize the public with regard the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). To this end, it addresses two research questions: First, to which concepts do GMO opponents and supporters refer when seeking to mobilize the public? Second, do GMO opponents and supporters differ in the coherence of the concepts they use to attain public mobilization? The empirical findings show that the pro-GMO coalition is composed of biotechnology companies as well as representatives of Argentina, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the World Trade Organization. The anti-GMO coalition consists of environmental nongovernmental organizations and representatives from most of the EU member states. Altogether, the anti-GMO coalition has been more coherent in the concepts they invoke in the last few years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have increasingly argued for an integration of policies on agriculture and water due to their strong interlinkage. The entry of agricultural pollutants into water represents one of the main pressures on Europe's ground and surface waters. This not only poses a risk to the environment and human health but also jeopardizes meeting the targets set by the EU Water Framework Directive. Research on the political agenda setting has shown that issue salience is key for triggering policy change. Nevertheless, Germany has repeatedly failed to adopt adequate policy measures despite the salience of the issue among the German public and increasing pressure by the EU. In this study, I shed light on the positioning of political parties in Germany on agricultural pollutants to explain the absence of policy change. More specifically, I ask whether there is an ideological division between political parties that hampers the adoption of effective, integrated policy measures. A qualitative content analysis of election manifestos published between 1998 and 2018 finds that political parties' policy positions are predominantly influenced by their placement on an environmental and an economic ideological dimension. As a result, political parties in Germany advocate conflictive policy approaches, which is detrimental to the adoption of effective policy measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]