implement the ‘right’ policies once the science of climate change is adequately proven, neither government commitment to implementing such policies, nor the state capacity to see such policies through to their logical outcomes, can be assumed as given. This paper examines the ‘political economy’ of country climate change strategies, by presenting findings on cross-country variation in the seriousness and success of governments in responding to environmental management obligations. As measures of environmental governance, we take the Index of Environmental Sustainability (ESI) developed by Yale University (Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy) and Columbia University (Center for International Earth Science Information Network) in collaboration with the World Economic Forum and the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, and the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), by the same authors. Again, as independent variables we include economic and demographic controls, but additionally examine the impact of social institutions in determining the robustness of country responses to environmental challenges, in particular such factors such as the development of a robust and independent civil society, that is capable of highlighting failures in environmental stewardship and lobbying for improvements in policies directed to such ends. Once again, we find that social institutions are important in patterning the seriousness of countries in managing climate change challenges.

Taken together, our findings suggests that as the climate change challenge moves from that of ‘proving the facts’ to that of ‘implementing change’, international policymakers, donors, and activists must increasingly focus on building domestic policy environments that are conducive to the delivery of more effective environmental legislation, and more comprehensive policy implementation on the ground level. In short, meeting the challenge of global climate change is likely to require substantial institutional capacity building, in addition to international development aid for projects directly aiming to achieve mitigation and adaptation goals.

# **<u>Section 1.0 Institutional Prerequisites of Natural Disaster Responsiveness</u>**

# **Empirical Literature on the Determinants of Natural Disaster Responsiveness**

The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters has defined a natural disaster as a ‘situation or event which overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request to national or international level for external assistance; an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction and human suffering’ (CRED 2004). Over the last several decades a considerable literature on such disasters has emerged from human geography, sociology, anthropology and economics (Mitchell 1999; Hewitt 1997; Blaikie et al. 1994; Varley 1994; Twigg and Bhatt 1998). Whereas early research on natural disaster risk arose from the natural sciences and stressed geographic and climatic factors as determinants of population risk, more recent work from within the approach known as ‘vulnerability analysis’ asserts that for there to be a disaster there has to be not only a natural hazard, but also a vulnerable population. This has shifted the locus of research 3