Rolland — Volume 62, Issue 4

Anthropogenic climate change drives increases in frequency, severity, and spatial extent of extreme weather events, yet policy responses face a paradox: global scientific consensus on climate risks coexists with policy failure at the international scale, while local policy-makers better positioned to craft effective responses face greater scientific uncertainty about local extreme weather projections. Rolland et al. theorize this disconnect through a "triangle of impossibilities" framework borrowing from economic literature on collective action. The article examines how scientific uncertainty, spatial scale, and collective action problems interact to shape policy success or failure. Global climate governance, evidenced by the Kyoto Protocol and United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, shows limited effectiveness despite strong scientific understanding at continental scales. Conversely, local and regional policy-makers, though facing granular scientific prediction gaps, overcome coordination constraints and achieve remediation and mitigation goals more readily. The article draws on ecosystem management and governance theory to propose collaborative, multi-scale institutional innovations that remain adaptive to new knowledge while pursuing integrated ecosystem-based solutions. This framework guides lawyers and policy-makers toward best practices that account for scientific constraints and political feasibility at different governance levels.

Topics: Environmental Law · Administrative Law

Keywords: climate change · extreme weather events · collective action problem · ecosystem governance · policy scale · scientific uncertainty · Kyoto Protocol