Abstract
AbstractThe local level has gained prominence in climate policy and governance in recent years as it is increasingly perceived as a privileged arena for policy experimentation and social and institutional innovation. However, the success of local climate governance in industrialized countries has been limited. One reason may be that local communities focus too much on strategies of technology‐oriented ecological modernization and individual behavior change and too little on strategies that target unsustainable social practices and their embeddedness in complex socioeconomic patterns. In this paper we assess and compare the strategies of “low‐carbon municipalities” (top‐down initiatives) and those of “intentional communities” (bottom‐up initiatives). We were interested to determine to what extent and in which ways each community type intervenes in social practices to curb carbon emissions and to explore the scope for further and deeper interventions on the local level. Using an analytical framework based on social practice theory we identify characteristic patterns of intervention for each community type. We find that low‐carbon municipalities face difficulties in transforming carbon‐intensive social practices. While offering some additional low‐carbon choices, their ability to reduce carbon‐intensive practices is very limited. Their focus on efficiency and individual choice shows little transformative potential. Intentional communities, by contrast, have more institutional and organizational options to intervene in the web of social practices. Finally, we explore to what extent low‐carbon municipalities can learn from intentional communities and propose strategies of hybridization for policy innovation to combine the strengths of both models.
Highlights
With the window for reaching the Paris climate goals fast closing (UNFCCC, 2015), awareness is growing that climate policy must go beyond the energy sector and address the very principles of how modern societies organize their patterns of consumption and production
We aim to combine both dimensions by assessing the strategies of “low‐carbon municipalities” and by asking to what extent these strategies could be advanced through learning from “intentional communities,” such as ecovillages and eco‐oriented cohousing projects
We identify the patterns of intervention resulting from our coding of various measures and activities by low‐carbon initiatives. These patterns help us understand the ways and extent to which local climate governance measures intervene in social practices
Summary
With the window for reaching the Paris climate goals fast closing (UNFCCC, 2015), awareness is growing that climate policy must go beyond the energy sector and address the very principles of how modern societies organize their patterns of consumption and production Within this context, the local level has gained more prominence in climate policy and governance in recent years, both in academic and in policy domains (Bulkeley & Betsill, 2013; Lervik & Sutherland, 2017; Smedby & Quitzau, 2016). This is because the municipal, communal and local levels are perceived as privileged arenas for policy experimentation (Castán Broto & Bulkeley, 2013) and social and institutional innovation (Hargreaves, Hielscher, Seyfang, & Smith, 2013; Seyfang & Smith, 2007) The local level, it is assumed, has the potential to function as a “low carbon lab” (Heiskanen, Jalas, Rinkinen, & Tainio, 2015) and as an incubator and diffusion hotspot for successful innovations (Boyer, 2015). The role of intentional communities as “best practice” cases for sustainable living is increasingly being acknowledged by some governments, who are beginning to encourage them to exchange their experiences with the wider public (WBGU, 2011)
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