Navigating Sub-Saharan African Just and Low-Carbon Transitions
Integrated Governance Approaches in Kenya and South Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12754166 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eszter Szedlacsek (0009-0007-4573-7830, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 25 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 44-70 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Global Environmental Politics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1526-3800 • E-ISSN: 1536-0091 |
| Publisher | The MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1162/glep.a.15 |
| OpenAlex | W4415622914 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 65 |
Aligning the implementation of climate efforts under the Paris Agreement with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is essential to ensuring socially just green transitions. Yet, in sub-Saharan Africa, national approaches to green transitions vary widely, particularly in how they integrate poverty reduction into climate action. Prevailing theories of policy integration frame such variation as a function of effective institutional and policy design. I advance an alternative explanation: that integration outcomes are shaped by contestations in rule- and norm-setting processes within a fragmented global environmental governance structure. I probe the plausibility of this argument by studying the co-constitutive interplay of structure and agency in two illustrative cases’ just transitions: South Africa and Kenya. I find that dominant actor coalitions strategically leverage the global environmental governance structure to reinforce liberal environmentalism as the core norm of the climate regime. The resulting, incremental changes to the core norm ultimately constrain the integration of poverty reduction into climate action in just transitions
Climate governance · Corporate governance · Environmental governance · Leverage (statistics · Norm (philosophy · Poverty · Poverty reduction · Sustainability · Sustainable development · Human Rights and Development · International Development and Aid · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance
The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism
A Theory of Contestation
Policy
Framework for analysing environmental policy integration
Environmental policy integration
The Transnational Regime Complex for Climate Change
Developmental States and Sustainability Transitions
The evolution of ideas in global climate policy
Just transitions for a new eco-social contract
Inclusive development, oil extraction and climate change
Just transition
The UN 2030 Agenda and the Quest for Policy Integration
The geopolitics of energy system transformation
Planetary justice
Planetary just transition? How inclusive and how just
Towards a theory of just transition
Integrative environmental governance
Access and allocation in earth system governance
The Rise of International Regime Complexity
Multilateral Climate Finance Coordination
Continuity and Change in Norm Translations After the Paris Agreement
Equity Norms in Global Environmental Governance
Understanding the Domestic Impact of International Norms
Cave 'Cave! Hic dragones
Norm dynamics in a post-hegemonic world
Climate policy meets national development contexts
Climate change and the transition to neoliberal environmental governance
Closing the governance gaps in the water-energy-food nexus
A discursive cartography of nationally determined contributions to the Paris climate agreement
Case Studies
Financing large-scale renewable-energy projects in Kenya
Theorising Global Environmental Governance
Integrated policymaking
Between green extractivism and energy justice
Norm diffusion and health system strengthening
The Problem of Ideology-Marxism without Guarantees
Policy integration
Neoliberal energy transitions in the South
The evolving role of finance in South Africa’s renewable energy sector
The Political Economy of Energy Transitions
International Norm Dynamics and Political Change
Institutional Interactions at the Crossroads of Trade and Environment
Drilling Down in Norm Diffusion
Asset Revaluation and the Existential Politics of Climate Change
How Ideas Spread
Global Capitalism, Reactionary Neoliberalism, and the Deepening of Environmental Injustices
Institutionalising decarbonisation in South Africa
Environmental policy integration
Complex global governance and domestic policies
Central Problems in Social Theory
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |