The ‘boomerang effect’: insights for improved climate action

Abstract

States have been negotiating climate mitigation actions centred around greenhouse gas emissions for several decades. In the wake of the Paris Agreement, a significant body of research has emerged reflecting on the unintended negative consequences of climate mitigation action. More recently, this research includes a focus on climate adaptation actions. The negative impacts have, together, been labelled ‘maladaptation’. Maladaptation as articulated in the literature takes many forms: e.g. displacement of communities from traditional lands such as forests and pasture, violent conflict at different scales, resource capture by elites. In this article, we argue in support of a careful delineation between local-level side effects of climate action and negative effects reaching back to the state (through different pathways and at different levels). The latter we label ‘boomerang effects’. We illustrate, through several examples, the pathways leading from climate action to local impact to boomerang effect, arguing that careful articulation of policy and program decisions, actions and effects upon the state provide support for improved policy making. Climate action is necessary, and necessarily must be better informed in order to achieve the broadest socio-ecological benefits possible.