Obligations of governments to adapt to climate change: A case study of the social contract in the Bay of Plenty

Abstract

The idea of a social contract has its origins in Ancient Greek philosophy coming from famous thinkers such as Plato. It is described as being one of the fundamental aspects of a functioning democratic society that holds governments accountable to their citizens. Climate change, theoretically, could pose issues for the social contract because governments of today must plan further into the future than ever before due to the expected impacts of climate change. In essence, the accountability of a government towards its citizens is altered by climate change as the priorities shift from current issues to ones in the future, with great uncertainty. Additionally, scholars argue that different social contracts provide lenses to see how obligations for governments can differ in terms of the ideal expectations versus the reality. This research intends to explore this idea further by looking at how climate change adaptation may alter government accountability by using the lenses of three different social contracts that scholars have recently come up with. These lenses are the legal, practiced and imagined social contracts. To do this a case study was employed in the Bay of Plenty, in New Zealand, to look at how local and regional councils facilitate climate change adaptation responses. More specifically, this research looked at three different sectors of government activities in the region that influence adaptation responses. The first of these was how institutions facilitate adaptation responses. The second was how policies facilitate adaptation responses. The third was how council considerations of climate change facilitate adaptation responses. These three sectors were chosen as they lined up with the three social contract lenses that observe how government obligations may differ. By observing the differences between the obligations of these different social contracts, the research was able to gain insights on the expectations of governments versus what the reality is and how these were formed. The research did this through the application of empirical evidence obtained from semi-structured interviews with policymakers from several regional and district councils in the Bay of Plenty and a documentary analysis of relevant council policies.