ABSTRACT
Climate change is increasingly recognized to be the most challenging environmental problem facing humanity. Its potential impacts are both grave and broad ranging, with implications for agricultural production, water supply, forests, biodiversity, human health and international security. The need for mechanisms to guarantee compliance and sufficient resources for implementation may be considered generic policy concerns. In the case of climate policy, a particular concern is to ensure policy continuity and predictability over extended periods of time. While apparently ambitious climate policy objectives have been adopted in various jurisdictions, the extent to which these have been prioritized over competing demands has been questionable. The chapter discusses the term ‘effective’ has been used as a standard by which to judge the climate change governance framework, but never concisely defined. It is in the nature of wicked problems, however, that the effectiveness of dealing with them is always open to interpretation and contestation.
