EPA/IVM Lecture series: Professor Benjamin Cashore

Playing it Forward: Path Dependency, Progressive Incrementalism, and the Super Wicked Problem of Global Climate Change.

To participate in this event, please contact:  Dr. Eleftheria Vasileiadou

The most policy relevant work tends either towards analyses of costs and benefits of particular policy options, without assessments of how such policies are likely to develop in practice, or attempts to draw lessons by looking backwards to past institutional successes or failures.  While this research has value, we argue it is poorly suited for developing and assessing which policies are likely to work in practice or to create the solutions they aim for. 

To remedy this lacuna, we address three questions:  How should we characterize climate change in policy terms? What are the appropriate analytical tools to address such problems? What do those tools tell us about the types of policies that are likely to succeed or fail in reducing greenhouse gas emissions?

Benjamin Cashore is Professor of Environmental Governance & Political Science at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He is Director of the Yale Program on Forest Policy and Governance and is courtesy joint appointed in Yale’s Department of Political Science.