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Globale Gesellschaft und internationale Beziehungen Ariel Macaspac Hernandez Taming the Big Green Elephant Setting in Motion the Transformation Towards Sustainability Globale Gesellschaft und internationale Beziehungen Series Editor Thomas Jäger, Köln, Germany More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/12384 Ariel Macaspac Hernandez Taming the Big Green Elephant Setting in Motion the Transformation Towards Sustainability Ariel Macaspac Hernandez German Development Institute & University of Duisburg-Essen Bonn, Germany This book is an open access publication. The book manuscript corresponds to the written requirement (“Habilitationsschrift”) submitted by the author to achieve the “Lehrbefähigung” for Political Science. The completion of the Habilitationsschrift was supported by the German Federal Ministry on Education and Research (BMBF) through the Fellowship Grant at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Coop- eration Research in 2016 and 2017 as well as by the German Development Institute. ISSN 2626-2339 ISSN 2626-2347 (electronic) Globale Gesellschaft und internationale Beziehungen ISBN 978-3-658-31820-8 ISBN 978-3-658-31821-5 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31821-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021. This book is an open access publication. Open Access This book is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropri- ate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this book are included in the book’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the book’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations. Responsible Editor: Stefanie Eggert This Springer VS imprint is published by the registered company Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Abraham-Lincoln-Str. 46, 65189 Wiesbaden, Germany For Sisa—my ever-loyal companion Preface “The solution often turns out more beautiful than the puzzle.” Richard Dawkins Thinking about where I came from, I cannot help but be extremely grateful for how different puzzle pieces fell into places to pave the way for an academic path. Where I come from, the best thing that was possible was to only fnish high school, fnd a job and spend a lifetime trying (and failing) to get to the other side of the wall. In this world, life is solely defned by extreme poverty, violence and resignation. And yet, I found solace in reading books, particularly books on his- torical events and politics. My passion for knowledge was awoken and I started to ask questions—sometimes too many and too critical. When my guardian forced me to leave high school at the age of 14 and pushed me into working as a waste picker in a neighboring dumpsite, this passion for knowledge served as the rock of my resistance. She falsely and maliciously denounced me as a drug addict to get me expelled, but with the help of my teachers, she was proved to be lying. She eventually agreed under the condition that I worked to pay for my school expenses, which I was already doing for years. I eventually moved out at 16 to pursue my B.A. studies in Philosophy with the help of the Marian Missionaries of the Holy Cross and a scholarship grant from the university treasurer, Father Rob- erto Pinto, O.P., of the University of Santo Thomas in Manila. With unimaginable luck, perseverance, and the good intentions of sponsors, scholarship committees, and mentors, many years later I wrote this manuscript as a requirement for a pro- fessorship qualifcation degree. I am now, fnally, where I want to be. In the last eleven years, I have explored different “training grounds” to collect the necessary academic and professional expertise as well as the methodological and technical skills to enable me to see different views and versions of the big- ger picture. My employment (2008–2010) as a researcher and program coordina- tor of the Processes of International Negotiations (PIN) Program, which, during vii viii Preface my time, was hosted by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) (now hosted by the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg), was my frst academic training ground. The PIN steering commit- tee members at that time, Prof. Dr Gunnar Sjöstedt, Prof. Dr I. William Zartman, Prof. Dr Oliver Faure, Ambassador Franz Cede, Prof. Dr Rudolf Avenhaus, Prof. Dr Rudolf Schüssler, Prof. Dr Mark Anstey, Paul Meerts, Prof. Dr Fen Osler Hampson, Prof. Dr Valerie Rosoux, Mordechai Melamud, and Prof. Dr Victor Kremenyuk accepted me as one of their own. Working with these bright minds was very illuminating and is something I would recommend highly. The projects that I coordinated, such as the Caspian Dialogue, the research on climate change negotiations, and the large-scale simulation of the point-of-entry negotiations for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization were the frst cases of negotiations that I became familiar with. Eventually, the negotiation perspective and systems analysis as a method of scientifc inquiry became the main founda- tions of my academic profle. I also learned how to develop negotiation games to better explain the challenges of multilateral decision-making. I internalized the idea that conficts and differences are not part of the problem, but are opportu- nities to advance human well-being. Here, my eyes were trained to look at pro- cesses. It was also during these frst years that I fnished my doctoral studies at the University of Vienna in Austria and afterwards my second PhD at the Univer- sity of Cologne in Germany. While the frst thesis was on identity-building in the Philippines, the second was on facilitating decision-making processes. My super- visors Prof. Dr. Eva Kreisky and Prof. Dr. Thomas Jäger trained me to ask the appropriate questions and seek and fnd the probable answers to these questions, but to still doubt the answers that I found. I learned that when answers become self-evident, they cease to be useful. Afterwards, I was employed as a (post-doc) researcher at the Institute for Infrastructure and Resources Management (IIRM) at the University of Leip- zig (2011–2014). As part of the Faculty of Economics and Business Manage- ment Science, this training ground made me realize that there are different entry points to understanding problems. My main task at IIRM was to support Prof. Dr Thomas Bruckner in his function as the coordinating lead author of the chapter on energy systems of the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Third Working Group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This position exposed me to management styles based upon knowledge cooperation. In addi- tion, I assisted him in his lectures on the integrated assessment of the impacts of climate change by preparing obligatory readings, writing the script and the reader Preface ix for the lecture, standing in for the professor when he was away and conducting his lectures, formulating questions for the examinations, evaluating students’ outputs (exams, term papers) and supervising eight master’s theses. As I under- took a course in pedagogy during my master’s studies, I particularly enjoyed supporting the faculty’s two master’s degrees: The Joint International Master of Sustainable Development and the German-Russian Double Master of Interna- tional Energy Economics and Business Administration. In my free time, I took additional courses and received training in scenario-building and scientifc mod- els such the TIMES-VEDA modeling course offered by the Energy Technology Systems Analysis Program (ETSAP), which is part of the International Energy Agency (IEA). Fortunately, my four-year position as Chapter Scientist (Assistant) of the IPCC AR5 chapter on energy systems required me to read thousands of articles, books, and reports on the role of energy systems in mitigating climate change and reading the work of these and other authors allowed me to synthesize everything that is known (and still unknown) about the related issues. In addi- tion, I was tasked with reading, collecting, evaluating, classifying and even pro- posing responses to more than 6,000 pieces of feedback and reviews of hundreds of experts from all over the world for the different drafts of the chapter. This task in particular developed my understanding of the critical aspects behind techni- cal issues, as well as the policy relevance of technological innovation. After two years, I was already confdent enough to teach more than 500 students in more than 15 seminars and lectures on climate change, energy systems and energy & environmental politics not only at the University of Leipzig, but also at other uni- versities in Spain, Estonia, Mexico, Jamaica and the Philippines, which was made possible by EU teaching mobility programs.

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