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This paper analyses how 10 localities in the USA and England, recognised as leaders in clean energy and climate action, have used collaborative approaches to develop local climate change plans and energy conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy initiatives. It examines these planning and policy-making processes in the context of Margerum's [2008. A typology of collaboration efforts in environmental management.Environmental Management, 41 (4), 487–500] typology of “action”, “organizational”, and “policy-level” collaborations, as well as Gray's [1989.Collaborating: finding common ground for multiparty problems. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass] classification of collaboration in the “problem-setting”, “direction-setting”, and “implementation” phases. We conducted interviews with local elected officials, municipal staff, energy professionals, and citizen volunteers in each community, supplemented with an analysis of their adopted energy, climate change, and land-use plans. We find that despite the different government structures and political contexts between the two countries, there was a surprising amount of commonality in how the case study localities used collaborative planning to develop local climate plans and clean energy initiatives. These processes were most often initiated by local elected officials and/or high-level staff members, and then carried out in collaboration with local third-sector organisations and other community stakeholders. In the USA, collaboration was strongest at the policy level and in the direction-setting phase, with the distinguishing feature that citizen advisory boards or stakeholder working groups often took a more active role in shaping local plans and policies. The English localities had some of those same types of collaborations, but were more likely to also employ action collaboration, in the implementation phase, in which third-sector organisations coordinated with the locality to directly provide clean energy services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although scientists disagree about the rate at which Arctic ice is melting, climate change will greatly alter the northern latitudes in coming decades if greenhouse gas emissions are not curtailed. Many of the expected changes will be negative; already, permafrost is melting in Siberia, and apartments and factories are sinking into quagmires. The melting of Arctic ice, however, will also open sea-lanes to shipping and allow access to enormous oil and gas reserves beneath the Arctic Ocean. The prospect of increased Arctic commerce brings with it competition among countries and companies for control of the area’s riches, and international competition always carries the possibility of conflict. Three authors, all experts in national security and the Arctic, explore the military, diplomatic, environmental, and economic outlook for the Arctic in 2030: from Russia, Yury Morozov (2012); from Canada, Rob Huebert (2012); and from the United States, George Backus. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Disappointment with international efforts to find legal solutions to climate change has led to the emergence of a new generation of climate policy. This includes the emergence of courts as new ‘battlefields in climate fights’. Cross-national comparative analysis of the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia supplements research that has found that litigation plays an important governance gap-filling role in jurisdictions without comprehensive national-level climate change policies. The inductive research design identifies patterns in climate change litigation. The three countries illustrate the varieties of climate policies, and thus serve as a useful entry point for thinking more generally about the interplay between climate politics and legal mobilisation. To improve theoretical understandings of the role of courts in climate change politics, the range of litigants and the variety of cases brought to courts under the umbrella of the term ‘climate change litigation’ are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Because of significant environmental changes underway in the Arctic region, institutional change for Northwest Passage management is receiving increased attention. Due to the potential environmental and security impacts of regularized ship transits through the Northwest Passage, a number of informed observers have discussed the need for considering alternative means of governing the waterway. This article assesses four approaches to governing the use of the Northwest Passage, including the current institutional arrangement. Following an overview of the environmental change underway in the Arctic region and its impacts on the Northwest Passage, the controversy surrounding the international legal status of the waterway and the possibility that it may in future become a commercial resource are discussed. Advantages and disadvantages of three alternative institutional models of resource governance recommended for application in the Northwest Passage case are presented, along with those surrounding the Arctic Cooperation Agreement, the current institution in use. The analysis suggests maintenance of the status quo institution appears to be the most likely outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The current and projected future physical impacts of climate change are most extreme in the northern latitudes. The indigenous peoples in the North American arctic and sub-arctic rely on the availability of natural resources in mixed subsistence economies for nutritional and cultural survival and thus experience disproportionate burdens with respect to our changing climate. Arctic climate impacts exemplify how global phenomena and activities can significantly affect people locally in remote regions. These impacts are largely consistent throughout the region, irrespective of national boarders; however, indigenous peoples in Canada are better positioned than those in the United States to shape policy in a way that would ensure their adaptation to climate change. Political and industrial activity on national and global scales can have significant environmental, social and cultural repercussions on the local scale in remote areas. Remedies for environmental injustice will thus require strong cross-scale political and institutional linkages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports that Canadian-U.S. environmental relations manifest a growing importance of transborder state and provincial cooperation and policy-making. Under the joint Climate Change Action Plan, adopted by the New England Governors and the Eastern Canadian Premiers in August 2001, participating provinces and states commit to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2010 and 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. The provinces and states moreover pledge to ultimately decrease GHG emissions to levels that do not pose a threat to the climate, which according to an official estimate would require a 75-85 percent reduction from 2001 emission levels.

Discusses the key requirements for implementation of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). Reference to how the Russian ratification of the treaty approved it along with the participation of 126 other countries; Indications that the U.S. and Australia will not take actions to ratify the agreement; Reference to how the rules of the agreement were rewritten at the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) of the Framework Convention in order to lower the costs for Canada, Japan, and Russia; Goals of a post-Kyoto framework which will focus on fundamental aspects of the science and economics of global climate change policy; Suggestion for industrialized to take initial steps to make emissions reductions on their own.