ABSTRACT

The climate change issue is a complex, so-called ‘unstructured’ policy problem (Dunn 1994). There is disagreement among stakeholders concerning the status of climate science and the underlying values as well as the opportunities for policy intervention. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the scientific body that supports the current climate change regime, stated in 1996 that the balance of evidence suggests that a human-induced climate change is occurring, although many uncertainties remain. The so-called ‘sceptics’ challenge this view (Boehmer-Christiansen 1994; IPCC 2001) and focus on the unreliability of climate models, the invalid generalizations and extrapolations of climate data, and alternative theories to explain global warming. In addition, there is wide disagreement on values (Gupta et al. 2003). Different stakeholders – industrialized countries, developing countries, industrial groups and non-governmental organizations – start from different ‘value systems’ on the basis of which they promote or put into critical perspective the need to protect the climate system. The main contradiction in this perspective is the one between economic and ecological values, both mobilized by different interests.