36. Climate change and the governance of time

Victor Toom, Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR); Huub Dijstelbloem, University of Amsterdam; Annick de Vries, Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR)

Posted: January 27, 2021

Climate change and climate policies relate to various regimes of time: geological epochs, the long-term consequences of the use of fossil fuels, investment cycles, technology development trajectories, the length of regulatory and legislative procedures, the periods elected governments have executive power, tipping points and points of no-return, subjective time perceptions, and even eschatological vision of the end of times.
The panel ‘Climate change and the governance of time’ seeks to investigate how climate policies interrelate with different regimes of time, which challenges this poses and which novel issues arise. It is interested in particular in how different regimes of time problematize the coming-into-being of collective climate agreements and long-term collaborations; and how different institutions and technologies ‘mediate’ time regimes and connect and disconnect them to climate policies.
The panel welcomes empirical, normative, conceptual and speculative analyses regarding long-term climate policies that consider the relations between humans, other earthlings, climate change and policy in relation to their various cycles, rhythms and tempi. Taking into account questions of transnational, intergenerational and ecological justice, differences of scale and (uncertain) knowledge in the realms of the commons, our aim is to collect empirical and conceptual papers dealing with the large question of the governance of time in relation to climate policies.



Published: 01/01/2021