Abstract
The international awareness and emphasis on global climate change has put pressure on national governments to prepare action plans to counter its impact. The imperative to act as quickly as possible is an added strain on national government agents who seek effective and timely responses to this complex problem. A country's environmental policies are shaped by its structural, procedural and contextual features. Climate change policies are, even today, contested and controversial, complicated by the multiplicity of actors and interests at stake. Australia is a country that usefully illustrates the challenges in responding effectively to climate change. Despite in recent years creating a specialized Department of Climate Change and passing a controversial carbon tax, one cannot speak of a coherent (sustainable and /or effective) response to climate change in Australia. Firstly, the plurality of climate change actors in Australia exacerbates seemingly irreconcilable differences in perspective (this includes a considerable number of climate change skeptics). Secondly, the structural, procedural and contextual limitations of Australian institutional governance structures complicate climate change response plans. This research argues that, without building a sufficient consensus between different climate change actors about the need to act and without awareness of the structural and procedural deficiencies of local governance, it is very difficult to develop a comprehensive, effective, and sustainable climate change policy.
Author Information
Gurol Baba, Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey
Paper Information
Conference: ACSS2013
Stream: Social Sciences
This paper is part of the ACSS2013 Conference Proceedings (View)
Full Paper
View / Download the full paper in a new tab/window
To cite this article:
Baba G. (2013) Developing Effective Government Responses to Climate Change: The Case of Australia ISSN: 2186-2303 – The Asian Conference on the Social Sciences 2013 – Official Conference Proceedings https://doi.org/10.22492/2186-2303.20130282
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/2186-2303.20130282
Comments
Powered by WP LinkPress