ISSN 2348-3156 (Print) International Journal of Social Science and Humanities Research ISSN 2348-3164 (online) Vol. 10, Issue 3, pp: (220-234), Month: July - September 2022, Available at: www.researchpublish.com
International regimes as a pathway for implementing SDG interactions across climate change and biodiversity conservation Alizan Mahadi Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia and Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6948433
Published Date: 01-August-2022
Abstract: Policy integration across the domains of social, economic and environment has attracted interest as a policy response to sustainable development. However, progress on the integration agenda has been limited. The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aimed to break this stalemate by addressing the goals in an “integrated and indivisible manner”. This article undertook an empirical assessment to understand if, how and to what extent the SDGs influence domestic policy integration. It studies the interactions across biodiversity and climate, where previous studies highlighted that despite synergies across the issue area, institutional interlinkages and policy responses are fragmented. A causal mechanisms framework that identified six possible pathways to influence domestic policy integration was utilised. In investigating the establishment of the carbon market in Malaysia as a form of policy integration, the study found that international regimes, namely the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and influence of market forces were the key pathways of influence. These were largely explained by interest-based motivations. In this sense, the SDGs are likely to be used tactically to achieve interests of certain parties for issue linkages. Keywords: SDGs; policy integration; sustainable development; biodiversity; climate change.
1. INTRODUCTION Policy integration across the domains of social, economic and environment has attracted interest as a policy response to sustainable development (Jordan & Lenschow, 2010). Nonetheless, despite the need for integration of the pillars of sustainable development being enshrined since the first Rio Earth summit in 1992, the progress and extent of policy integration continued to be limited (Runhaar et al., 2020). The adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aimed to break this stalemate by addressing the goals in an “integrated and indivisible manner” (United Nations, 2015). The SDGs, in this sense are unique in being explicit to address the interactions across issue areas (Kanie & Biermann, 2017). This article set out to assess if, how and to what extent does the SDGs influence domestic policy integration. Despite the explicit agenda and principle as espoused in its integrated agenda, the SDGs, as an international goal setting agenda faces various challenges. The most pertinent of them is that the SDGs are voluntary and devoid of compliance mechanisms (Young, 2017)(Kanie & Biermann, 2017). Also, addressing interactions across issue areas are very complex, and are contextual. They are often dependent on the issue iteslf, geographic, and prevailing settings (Nilsson, Griggs, Visbeck, & Ringler, 2016; Tosun & Leininger, 2017). Finally, translating them to the domestic level will face challenges of breaking silos where governments often applay a logic of specialisation and task disaggregation for service delivery (A. Hezri, 2011). The interactions across the issue areas of biodiversity and climate change have gained scholarly interest in the past (Kemppinen et al., 2020; Kim, 2004; Mooney et al., 2009; Wan Razali & Awang Noor, 2012). Despite being within the
Page | 220 Research Publish Journals