Abstract
This paper explores the extent to which participatory budgeting (PB) contributes to climate change adaptation and mitigation, based on an analysis of initiatives from 15 cities and regions in the global South and North. PB contributions are far from marginal, with significant investments decided by local people. The paper highlights some of the numerous innovations introduced to integrate PB into climate adaptation and mitigation efforts. Through a scrutiny of 4,400 PB projects, the research identified six categories of climate-related projects encompassing hardware as well as software approaches, such as awareness-raising activities, community-based early warning projects and research. The paper advocates for solidarity PBs for climate justice, and raises awareness of the huge (and as yet largely untapped) potential for this to help address the dramatic impacts that climate change has on millions of people’s lives. It also points to questions for future research.
Highlights
This paper explores the extent to which participatory budgeting (PB) contributes to climate change adaptation and mitigation.(1) PB is defined as a mechanism or a process through which citizens are actively involved in decisions about the spending of public resources, or otherwise associated with the decision-making process
Little research has explored the link between PB and responses to climate change.(2) But a significant amount of literature over recent decades has explored the relationship of PB with Agenda 21 and sustainable environments,(3) including accounts of the iconic case of Porto Alegre, Brazil.(4) Multi-city or comparative approaches on the subject are much less common, and these have mostly been carried out in a national context, as for instance the 2017 analysis of PB in three Polish cities.(5) In relevant recent discussions, PB and climate change have been a topic at two Professor Yves Cabannes is an urban specialist, activist and scholar
Two exceptions were Our Money, Our Planet: Engaging Citizens in the Climate Emergency through Participatory Democracy, including a report of a series of co-design workshops held between June and September 2019, jointly published by PB Partners and Shared Future in 2019; and the seminal methodological guide in French on PB and climate change published by ENDA Ecopop [ENDA Ecopop (2015), Guide Méthodologique Climat et Budget Participatif]
Summary
Y (2020), Contributions of Participatory Budgeting to Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation: Current Local Practices across the World and Lessons from the Field, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), Barcelona, available. The paper’s first objective is to understand what is happening in the field It describes the engagement of 15 cities or regions of quite different sizes and types from both the global North and South (Figure 1) that are implementing PB in ways that address climate change adaptation and mitigation. Territorial or place-based PB initiatives are conducted at the neighbourhood, district, commune or city level, and are the most common PB cases globally, as well as in this sample.(15) While climate change-related projects are eligible for PB funding, obviously, the likelihood of implementing them depends on people’s priorities and their vote. Thematic or sector-based PB relates to the allocation of resources to specific sectors such as education, basic services, health, employment, housing, transport, etc., usually at the city or district level This is illustrated, with regard to climate change, by the Metz eco-citizen PB or Bordeaux’s sustainable development PB. One of its sources of inspiration was Lisbon’s green PB for schools,(16) launched in 2019, as a pilot in four public schools in Lisbon; it should be expanded to all public schools in the future
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