Climate-poverty governance nexus in Sub-Saharan Africa: a window of opportunity for regime-shift?

Albeit both extremely crucial from the perspective of planetary well-being, climate change and sustainable development are governed by different sets of institutions, policies, goals and targets. Recently, a nexus approach has been increasingly applied by scholars referring to connections between several policy efforts, including NDCs under the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals to identify unintended spillovers and co-benefits. While the use of the nexus concept undoubtedly provides fruitful ground for further research, it has been critiqued for its conceptual vagueness (Wichelns 2017), disregard of the socio-political circumstances and the prevalence of techno-managerial approaches (Weitz et al 2017). At the same time, there is still very little we know about the effects of governance interactions between climate and poverty efforts in a global South context. The main purpose of this article is twofold. Firstly, to assess ambition in the alignment between two separate policy agendas, the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda in Sub-Saharan African countries. Secondly, to explore the extent of turning existing ambition into implementation in selected countries, embracing the key role of political rationalities. In doing so, the article explores the extent (substantive, strategic) and the quality (synergy, trade-off, conflict, neutral) of interactions. It is presumed that interactions can either be substantive or denoted as strategic linkages. Substantive interactions could have the potential of a regime shift and institutionalization in the climate-poverty nexus. Applying theories of regime- and norm-shifting, the paper investigates whether there is a substantial shift driving the management of trade-offs and synergies in the climate-poverty governance nexus, and the quality of interactions in the governance nexus. The novelty of the research lies in its aim to better grasp the gap between ambition and implementation by assessing the extent of governance interactions, and identify enabling conditions that would help policy-makers close the gap in a developmental global South setting. The paper makes significant contributions to existing scholarship on how objectives are set in the sustainable development agenda, and particularly poverty reduction without undermining climate efforts in a socio-economic context heavily shaped by externalities. To this end, the paper uses content analysis to observe institutionalized commitments on climate and poverty in Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Sustainable Development Plans (NSDPs) in Sub-Saharan African countries. Additionally, primary data will be generated in the form of a survey, conducted with key decision-makers and stakeholders to acquire detailed information on the climate-poverty nexus at multiple levels of governance (national, international) with various types of actors (national and international policy-makers, transnational and private actors, as well as non-state actors and NGOs). The article argues that the causes of the persistent gap between ambition and implementation cannot be solved solely by effective policy design involving interconnected policy areas. Rather, it is necessary that policymakers address the common drivers of persistent and pressing policy issues in a joint, systematic manner through norm- and regime-shifting.