Global climate change: changing policy approaches <p>The emergence of climate change as a policy issue occurred in the 1980's resulting from recurrent scientific assessment providing reasonable evidence on the impact of human activities on regional and global climacteric conditions (IPCC, 2004). Consistency of such scientific arguments led the United Nations Development Program and the World Meteorological Organization to jointly create the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988, aiming to provide periodic state-of-the-art scientific evaluation. </p><p>The conceptual framework followed by the IPCC was grounded on the presumption that scientific research could be oriented, &quot;in linear fashion, to fill gaps in the existing knowledge base. Once the gaps were filled, and uncertainties either reduced or eliminated, policy makers could rationally apply the products of science to formulating policy responses.&quot; (Jasanoff et al, 1998). </p><p>A traditional conception of the relationship between science and policy-making was presumed sufficient for an effective response to such a large scale environmental problem: changes could be best understood by identifying a set of causal forces, both natural and social; mapping, measuring and analyzing those causes would contribute to predict their effects; aggregating them through large scale quantitative techniques of modeling would comprise a longitudinal perspective; using these inputs as policy variables would provide for sensitive and effective responses. </p><p>Nevertheless, it soon became clear that traditional policy-analytical approaches would not contain a problem of such dimension: scale, complexity and interconnectedness of the causes of climate change, as well as its consequences, &quot;tested science's incremental and discipline based approaches to investigating nature&quot; (idem:2); at the same time, it confronted the capacity of institutions, both national and international, to build policy consensus on the diagnosis, as well as on adequate measures to be followed.&nbsp; </p><p>As a response, the IPCC created three working groups that would provide, in the following decades, periodic reports on available scientific information on climate change (WG I), environmental and socio-economic impacts of climate change (WG II) and formulation of response strategies (WG III) . Underlying their constitution, as well as the development of their scientific programs, is the presumption that policy design and implementation processes must be submitted to scientific enquiry, especially when a large scale process of socio-political and economic change, as well as new forms of governance, are considered necessary. </p><p>Policy Analysis: analyzing governance systems We therefore propose three conceptual approaches to design a policy analysis framework for climate change, presuming its subsequent application to the urban areas of Lisbon and Amsterdam: </p><p>-Science &amp; Decision-making: social studies of science largely contributed to demystify the potential of linear and disciplinary based approaches to policy issues (Jasanoff et al, 1998); the diversity of scientific, argumentative, institutional and material resources at play in contemporary decision making processes create non-linear complex systems (Constanza et al, 2001), highly dependent on contextual variables and subject to value orientation (Flyvbjerg, 2001); sustainability issues increment the complexity of such variables, introducing the time frame as an essential component: confronted with knowledge limitations, policy analysis and policy making are required to deal with prediction in a time of uncertainty (particularly evident in climate change issues). </p><p>-Norms, Rules &amp; Institutions: transnational polycentric networks of governance, in which power is disperse, create an &lsquo;institutional void': &quot;there are no generally accepted rules and norms according to which policy making is to be conducted&quot; (Hajer, 2003:175); environmental problems and policies combine the &lsquo;institutional void' with the complexity of the human - ecosystem relationship (Constanza et al, 2001); transition from &lsquo;classical-modernist' governance systems to deliberative governance (Hajer et al, 2003; Fung et al, 2003), self governance (Ostrom, 1990; Hess et Ostrom, 2002) or global governance (Kaul et al, 1999) is confronting both policy makers and policy analysts on the processes of institutional capacity building and design with scale, quality and linkage issues. </p><p>-Information &amp; Communication: group size, as well as mutually perceived action between social actors, were identified in 1968 as key variables for collective action (Olson, 1971); from the analyst's perspective, &lsquo;collaborative dialogue' in policy making is addressed today as a gap filling process concerning the &lsquo;institutional void' (Connick et al, 2003; Healey, 1997); on the other hand, the perception that complex systems can adapt to rapid change and even move to higher levels of performance has introduced new insight on collective action analysis (Connick et al, 2003): biological, economical, political and social elements are mutually dependent and determine the success or failure of resource management systems (Ostrom, 2002); linkage becomes, therefore, a central issue on policy making and policy analysis, thus bringing communication and information studies to the realm of policy analysis agenda (Booher et al, 2002; Innes, 1998). </p><p>&nbsp;</p>