The realization of anthropogenic climate change has bought with it a politics that is as ancient as it is novel. Age old contests over power and interest, knowledge and values, justice and responsibility are writ large in the climate change domain, while new arenas, structures and processes of governing emerge. Since its inception in 1990, the process of negotiating an international agreement on climate change has provided an arena within which conflicts over the nature of development, of North-South relations, and of the role of the market in collective affairs have been reiterated, challenged and changed. As nation-states, regional governments and municipal authorities have sought to design climate policies, disputes have emerged between different social groups and economic interests. An increasingly complex array of private actors and transnational initiatives now also seek to address climate change, raising questions about the legitimacy and effectiveness of governing collective affairs outside of the realms of traditional political institutions. At the same time, individual acts - from catching a plane, shopping for food, to turning the lights off - have become imbued with a politics of responsibility for distant others, and indeed of struggles over where such responsibilities should begin and end.
The Climate Policy and Governance Domain of WIREs Climate Change will cover these various issues. Central to the aims of the journal is the development and synthesis of interdisciplinary knowledge about the complex ways in which physical and social processes are changing the climate and of the deep entanglement between nature and culture.[1] Governance - how, why and with what implications we manage collective affairs - and policy - the means through which this is effected - are central to this project.
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