How to make them walk the talk: governing the implementation of energy and climate policies into local practices

Annika Mattissek,Cindy Sturm

doi:10.5194/gh-72-123-2017

Abstract

Abstract. Urban policy mobility has become a lively field of research in recent years. One important argument has been that policies do not travel from place to place unmodified, but are transformed in the process of their implementation. Drawing on a research project on adaptations of climate protection policies in German cities we elaborate how discourse studies and work on governmentality can be brought into resonance with the policy mobility debate. We suggest that these theoretical concepts can be used to explain why, despite the growing number of laws and recommendations in this context, local adaptations of climate policies vary significantly between different cities. We argue that the concept of governmentality is particularly well suited to grasping the discrepancies between discursively produced guidelines and actual planning practices and to conceptualising these planning practices as effects of competing and often conflicting technologies of government.

Highlights

Humanity is [...] facing two main challenges that urban centres can help address: there is a need to adapt to climate change, but there is an urgent need to mitigate those human-induced forces driving climate change
3 Links to research in policy mobility. In this field of tension between the development of nationwide political guidelines on the one hand, and concrete practises on the other hand, an important question arises: why do policies “arrive” in such different ways, and how are these policies transposed to the local level? This is linked to the debate on urban policy mobility, which has been established, in the Anglophone context in particular, within the last couple of years (Baker and Temenos, 2015; Cochrane and Ward, 2012; McCann, 2011; McCann and Ward, 2015; Peck and Theodore, 2001)
With Münster and Dresden as the two cities selected as case studies, we have shown that national policies of energy and climate-protection objectives and strategies result in different policy outputs in individual cities, even though climate protection and climate change adaptation seems to be widely supported

Summary

Introduction

Humanity is [...] facing two main challenges that urban centres can help address: there is a need to adapt to climate change, but there is an urgent need to mitigate those human-induced forces driving climate change. With respect to the concrete implementation of intended objectives and norms, cities play a important role as they contribute extensively to primary energy consumption and global emissions (UNEP and UN-HABITAT, 2005), and the projected effects of climate change become especially visible here (heatwaves, flooding, storms, etc.) This raises the question of how urban development and urban planning policies can meet the objectives of energy and climate policies. Sturm: How to make them walk the talk broad consensus on the need for climate protection in general and, respectively, climate change adaptation, a considerable discrepancy exists between politically formulated climate change and energy transition goals and norms, and their concrete implementation in particular contexts Notwithstanding this discrepancy, academic discussions on implementation of national energy and climate policy have mainly focused on practical and application-oriented aspects.

Same same but different: climate and energy policies in Münster and Dresden

Links to research in policy mobility

Forms of controlling practises in urban development policy

Conclusions