Banca de DEFESA: Karen de Oliveira Silverwood-Cope

THE GOVERNMENT DECISION-MAKING PROCESS OF NATIONAL POLICY ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Keywords: public policy, multiple streams, decision making, environment, climate change, national climate change policy. 

This project refers to agenda setting situated in the field of public policies agenda setting. The object of study is the agenda setting of the National Climate Change Policy. The general objective of the research is to apply the Multiple Streams Model, proposed by Kingdon (2011), in an investigation of causal mechanisms of the agenda setting of the instruments for the implementation of the National Policy on Climate Change (PNMC). The investigation assumes that the casual mechanisms were triggered by the convergence of the streams with an operating policy entrepreneur. The empirical research is applied with the method of process tracing, with qualitative research and content analysis on data collected through documentary research and interviews with key informants. The results indicate that a government agenda was heterogeneous across the period and between the areas of action plan, monitoring, and financing of the National Climate Change Policy. Three different periods were identified in the National Climate Change Policy, determined by central events: the first period, from 2009 to 2103, consists of the emergence of the policy, with the advent of the Law and formulation of sectoral plans; the second period, from 2014 to 2018, was marked by the formulation of the National Determined Contribution (NDC) of the Paris Agreement of the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the third period, from 2019- 2020 was marked by the rise of a conservative government that denies climate change and the COVID 19 pandemic. Across periods, international influence was decisive in the formation of streams. The causal mechanisms for agenda setting were the interest of actors in obtaining international resources, whether through international cooperation projects or market mechanisms and to ensure visibility and reputational projection in multilateral environmental forums. Institutions, mainly international, had a stabilizing influence on the agenda setting. This influence balanced the unpredictability and uncertainty of the national context, allowing windows of opportunity for agenda setting and decision-making processes.