ThinkTank2BootsOnAlliance (TT2BOA) by Policy Alignment

Hi Pia, Thanks for your contest suggestion! In reading your proposal, I have recommendations you may want to consider. Your question "What action-generating policies can be implemented to further climate change work now?” is a quite viable contest question and I would recommend you honing in on and developing this idea further. For example, are you looking for examples of national or local policies? What kind of action are you hoping to generate? On the other hand, "How do global political mechanisms function?” is much more vague and may not produce the specific answers you are probably looking for. In your contest description, you speak specifically to President Rafael Correa and the Ecuadorian Parliament’s decision to drill in the Amazon. President Correa’s original plan, I believe, was to have other more wealthy nations pay to save this section of the Amazon, but it failed. Perhaps the contest can be focused on generating more effective plans like these, e.g., how it could be economically feasible for developing countries to choose conversation over drilling/mining/other exploitation for natural resources? I think the reason you have received few supports or comments on this proposal is because it’s not entirely clear what your suggestion is by the title. I highly recommended changing the proposal title to something more clear, like, “Effective climate change policies” Thanks! Laur Fisher Climate CoLab staff

The opening sentence of your contest description is one that I could scarcely agree with more, and the objective is, in my view, perhaps the most important of any proposal submitted. That said, I am also increasingly coming to the conclusion that what may make yours the most important single proposal of the Contest submissions to date is precisely that the imperative for highly multi-dimensional local/global coordination entailed in it may represent the most Herculean challenge of any of them. Important as they are, the merely technological innovations demanded of the great transition we are confronted with, seem almost just mildly challenging by comparison. Time limits do not permit me to provide more than the faintest glimpse of all the sources informing my reason for saying this, but perhaps one example may be helpful. One of the books that I just happen to be reading presently may be highly illustrative. Published by The National Research Council, it is entitled, THE DRAMA OF THE COMMONS. The following excerpt comprises the closing paragraph of a brief three-page synopsis of the four chapters of which Part I of the book is composed: "In summary, the following four chapters provide us with a rich account of the way in which user and user group characteristics interact with resource system characteristics and affect the processes by which institutions are crafted, the types of institutions that emerge, the degree to which they are implemented successfully, and the way in which resulting conflicts are resolved. In combination, they show us that much has been learned over the past 15 years, with some substantive insights and - perhaps more importantly - significant methodological and meta-theeoretical insights. They also provide us with a road map TO YET UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS OF COMMONS MANAGEMENT DESIGN AND WITH AN APPRECIATION THAT COMPLEX PROBLEMS HAVE HIGHLY CONTINGENT SOLUTIONS WHICH, IN TURN, REQUIRE CROSS-DISCIPLINARY COOPERATION." (My emphasis in capitalizing the closing passage.) And let me note that this is from a volume of 500 pages, comprised of four parts (none of which is of any less interest than Part I), with contributions from two dozen stellar scholars (including Economics Nobelist, Elinor Ostrom), and with a copyright date (2002) already twelve years old! I have little doubt that as I follow the bibliographic trail, I will discover that there have been many important additions to the learning and scholarship since this publication. That is very exciting on one hand, but it is at least equally frustrating and deeply concerning on the other, that there is such a profoundly dysfunctional disconnect between the existence of this knowledge and wisdom and the actual operational status of our national and inter-national governance processes. And given the thematically inbred, insular realities of the political process - at least in America, and at least as evidenced by the almost pathetically, comically sad 'gotcha' shouting-match displays of various major media "public affairs" content, characterized more often by attention to anachronistic irrelevancies than focus on relevant substance reflecting the real challenges we confront - a very great concern arises. The kind of constituency building processes historically generally required for major changes in policy direction often take decades. But if we are - as an increasing number of scientists involved in climate and other ecological analysis seem to be intimating - at the cusp of detrimental, runaway reinforcing feedback processes, due to lack of the kind of coordinated local/global remedial cooperation which your proposal calls for, do we have the luxury of that kind of time? If not, then resolving the disconnect challenge cited above becomes a huge part of what makes your proposal both so important but also so Herculean. As evidenced by the Climate CoLab itself, and MANY other important initiatives, this is not to say that nothing positive is happening, but when we hear things such as the recent Exxon pronouncement to the effect that there is little reason to believe that there will be any significant dent put in fossil fuel consumption for decades to come, we had better be under no illusions that the countervailing forces necessary to counter such 'powers that be' - and all their money and 'crony' political influence - may need to enlist far more bottom up insistence than has been evidenced to date. To say that the social, political and economic implications of that process, and the processes of multi-dimensional local/global institution-building coordination and cooperation required are non-trivial would constitute an understatement of truly epic proportions.