Climate and Environment

This research project has a focus on identifying and studying the forms of regulation that affect the climate and environment, which may be an important alternative to the international climate negotiations between states. The focus has been to identify alternative regulatory mechanisms that are widespread, which means that it is affecting many businesses, communities, households, etc. So far the project has focused on the activities of municipalities - public actors through binding decisions are able to regulate the behavior of many other nodes, and the business of insurance and informal insurance - private forms of regulation which through incentives also reaches out to many other actors, private and public. The focus is on the role insurance plays internationally (UNEP insurance initiative, the insurance role of the UNFCCC negotiations, the 'Carbone Discolusure Initiative', etc.), and the role of insurance in two selected countries, South Africa and Norway. The project focuses on studying this field with an expanded insurance term that captures both the formal insurance and the many informal mechanisms of insurance in poor communities and in the informal economy. The emphasis is on understanding the interplay between insurance and government regulation and the effects this has on climate and environment.

Central to this project is also the focus of 'resilience' as a way of approaching the issue of sustainable development. The emphasis is on studying the conditions for resilience (robustness, ability to absorb disturbances and to innovation and development) in both the social and ecological systems. It is believed that climate change makes it important to study how we can support and rebuild resilience in socio-ecological systems. It is therefore important to compare the dynamics and processes that strengthen or weaken the resilience of social and ecological systems and the connection between them. A starting point is that the resilience concept is about to be a term that increases the opportunity for communication and discussion across disciplinary boundaries and between social and natural sciences.

Contact: Jan Froestad