Air Quality Climate Change Integrated Policy Climate Essay

Air Quality Climate Change Integrated Policy

Climate change has been a prominent issue in policy making since 20th century scientists discovered the detrimental effect of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. Being responsible for the well-being and longevity of their people, governments have attempted to create policies to help their countries mitigate problems associated with climate change. However, integration seems to have been problematic on a variety of levels. There appears to have been a fragmentary, or at best a compartmentalized approach to the various problems associated with climate change. Air quality, for example, has been addressed as a separate issue, while climate change had its own sent of policies and rules. On another level, governmental units assigned to these problems have also been compartmentalized. Governments themselves have tended to focus single units on climate problems within their countries. Neither these units nor collective governments have made an integrative effort to address climate change and air quality across the globe. Increasingly, however, authors and environmental critics have begun to understand the importance of integrated efforts to address climate change and all its related problems in a way that recognizes the interlocked effect of all the different environmental factors upon each other.

Ostrom (2009) holds that the simple recommendation of a single governmental unit is far from sufficient to address an environmental problem that manifests itself on a global scale. Climate change, for example, is a global problem that affects all people and all countries. For this reason, a single governmental unit, or even several single governmental units from individual governments cannot hope to address the problem on a scale that will be effective.Some specific problems related to this compartmentalized approach include the Carbon Development Mechanism, and the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) program, both of which were developed with the aim of addressing the climate change problem. The concern is, however, that both approaches form a fragmented approach, resulting in challenges. One of these includes the way in which the Carbon Development Mechanism can be manipulated in a way that increase natural resource prices, which could encourage the further exploitation of these already limited and dwindling commodities. Because neither is regulated by an integrated governmental network, both programs are vulnerable to the free-rider problem and other flaws, which is the main reason why Ostrom (2009), among many others, suggest what he refers to as a polycentric approach to the climate problems the world faces today.

It appears that Ostrom considers the integration of agents working on these problems to be of primary importance. According to the author, local, regional, and national stakeholders should work together at the national level to focus on the integrated nature and levels of the problem.

According to Ostrom (2009), the main advantage of such an approach is that research and development can occur on a much more rapid scale than the case is currently. Indeed, integrated research efforts can benefit form multiple inputs, which can be used as a springboard for further ideas, which would not be possible without integration.

One major challenge in….....