Multidisciplinary Composition of Climate Change Commissions: Transnational Trends and Expert Perspectives

Abstract

Climate change governance has metamorphosed from multilateral pacts such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement to the enactment of country-specific dedicated legislation for mitigation and adaptation. A common feature of this phenomenon is the establishment of an expert committee on climate change, or simply, a climate change commission (CCC). For effective climate change governance, a multidisciplinary CCC will play a key role. The objective of this study is to inquire into the multidisciplinary requirements of a CCC and how multidisciplinarity can influence the efficacy of climate governance measures. Accordingly, it inquires into transnational circumstances on the disciplinary/multidisciplinary composition of CCCs and samples the perspectives of over 120 climate policy experts—through a structured survey—to draw insights into how countries could establish a suitable multidisciplinary CCC in legislative and policy processes. Key results from transnational circumstances and expert perspectives reveal the propriety of establishing CCCs to drive robust mitigation and adaptation policies. As the study shows, multiple countries have already incorporated diverse domains and backgrounds of expertise in the composition of their CCCs. Furthermore, our experts’ survey reveals overwhelming support among respondents (98%) for CCCs, and all those who support these commissions believe they should be, to some degree, independent and multidisciplinary. Experts’ perspectives reveal a spectrum of specific desirable multidisciplinary categories—legal, physical science, biosciences, energy and engineering, economics, planning, social sciences, ethics, governance, health, and communication. We also highlight some caveats regarding multidisciplinarity and reflect on the existence of quasi-institutions across countries without dedicated CCCs.