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Imperatives for Climate Governance for States in the Anthropocene: An Agenda for Transformation

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Abstract

Given recognition of human causation of planetary-scale climate change, this chapter proposes four imperatives which together enable the testing of governance approaches regarding their address of climate change. After elaborating each imperative in turn, they are used to evaluate how climate change-oriented governance has performed in several Australian contexts, including renewable energy, water policy reform and management of synthetic greenhouse gases. What is foregrounded through analysis is that these imperatives must come to drive governance and policy across levels and across domains, whether directly framed as targeting climate change or not, along with the importance of polycentric and decentralised approaches. This is particularly true when national leadership is inadequate because of the strong intersectionality and impact of leadership, experimentation and anticipation in climate change-oriented governance.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the editors, Beth Edmondson and Stuart Levy, for the opportunity to contribute to this text and for thus enabling us to further explore how our own differing commitments to theoretical and empirical climate change research can be interwoven.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Canberra, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    Josephine Mummery

  2. Federation University Australia, Ballarat, VIC, Australia

    Jane Mummery

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  1. Josephine Mummery
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Correspondence to Jane Mummery .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Arts, Federation University, Mount Helen, VIC, Australia

    Beth Edmondson

  2. Federation College, Federation University, Churchill, VIC, Australia

    Stuart Levy

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Mummery, J., Mummery, J. (2019). Imperatives for Climate Governance for States in the Anthropocene: An Agenda for Transformation. In: Edmondson, B., Levy, S. (eds) Transformative Climates and Accountable Governance. Palgrave Studies in Environmental Transformation, Transition and Accountability. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97400-2_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97400-2_4

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