Building a Social Mandate for Climate Action: Lessons from COVID-19
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Building a Social Mandate for Climate Action: Lessons from COVID‑19 Candice Howarth1 · Peter Bryant2 · Adam Corner3 · Sam Fankhauser1 · Andy Gouldson4 · Lorraine Whitmarsh5 · Rebecca Willis6 Accepted: 3 July 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract The COVID-19 imposed lockdown has led to a number of temporary environmental side effects (reduced global emissions, cleaner air, less noise), that the climate community has aspired to achieve over a number of decades. However, these benefits have been achieved at a massive cost to welfare and the economy. This commentary draws lessons from the COVID-19 crisis for climate change. It discusses whether there are more sustainable ways of achieving these benefits, as part of a more desirable, low carbon resilient future, in a more planned, inclusive and less disruptive way. In order to achieve this, we argue for a clearer social contract between citizens and the state. We discuss how COVID-19 has demonstrated that behaviours can change abruptly, that these changes come at a cost, that we need a ‘social mandate’ to ensure these changes remain in the long-term, and that science plays an important role in informing this process. We suggest that deliberative engagement mechanisms, such as citizens’ assemblies and juries, could be a powerful way to build a social mandate for climate action post-COVID-19. This would enable behaviour changes to become more accepted, embedded and bearable in the long-term and provide the basis for future climate action. Keywords Behaviour change · Climate change · COVID-19 · Deliberative governance · Social mandate
* Candice Howarth [email protected] 1
Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK
2
Shared Future, Manchester, UK
3
Climate Outreach, Oxford, UK
4
Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
5
Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformations, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
6
Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
13
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C. Howarth et al.
1 Introduction There has been no shortage of commentary on what we can learn from the COVID-19 pandemic for climate change. The pandemic has caused misery, loss and hardship across the world, and should emphatically not be seen as a model for climate action. However, early polling suggests that cleaner air, less traffic, a less frantic pace of life and a less wasteful relationship with food are seen as positive side-effects of the lockdown policies (Pritchard 2020). Thus, there may be opportunities to bed-in and maintain certain types of behaviour changes that would be positive low-carbon steps. There are also tentative signs that the public recognises the need for a response to climate change that mirrors the ambition of our response to the pandemic (Stone 2020). But there are also serious risks that after having had a ‘taste’ of restrictions on travel and consumption ch
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