Measuring the effectiveness of the Covenant of Mayors on the reporting of climate hazards by Municipalities

Yeray Hernandez,Gustavo Naumann,Paulo Barbosa

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05043

Abstract

The European Commission established the Covenant of Mayors (CoM) initiative in 2008, aimed at involving and supporting mayors to encourage accomplishing the European Union (EU) climate mitigation and energy targets. In 2014, the Mayors Adapt initiative was set up in order to promote the climate adaptation pillar. Whereas the mitigation pillar is more developed and peer-reviewed literature can be found, adaptation is still lagging behind, not to mention the absence of information on the effectiveness of the CoM concerning the development of climate adaptation plans. This paper aims at presenting a thorough analysis of climate hazard data declared by CoM signatories as well as the degree of regional agreement of those signatories when reporting climate data. Thus, we assume that the signatories belonging to the same climate region should report similar climate hazard data for both current and future timeframes. Using a new statistical method for measuring the variability of categorical data, we determine that, overall, the signatories show low agreement within climate regions. Hence, we conclude that the CoM, in the corresponding part of climate risk assessment, is not as effective as it could be desired. Furthermore, several recommendations are proposed to improve the current reporting.

Highlights

The Covenant of Mayors (CoM) initiative was established by the European Commission in 2008, aimed at involving and supporting mayors to encourage accomplishing the European Union (EU) climate mitigation and energy targets (CoM, 2019)
A consistent climate hazard assessment is fundamental to develop risk assessments that will inform the climate adaptation plans, since the adaptation actions proposed by the Municipalities emerge as an informed decision linked to the climate risk output
Due to the knowledge accumulated by the authors in the assessments carried out and feedback reports delivered so far, we have hypothesized a list of possible causes for the low agreement detected in the analysis presented in the previous section

Summary

Introduction

The Covenant of Mayors (CoM) initiative was established by the European Commission in 2008, aimed at involving and supporting mayors to encourage accomplishing the European Union (EU) climate mitigation and energy targets (CoM, 2019). In 2014, the Mayors Adapt initiative was set up in order to promote the climate adaptation pillar. Mayors Adapt encouraged local governments to support the development and implementation of climate adaptation actions. In 2015, the mitigation and adaptation pillars were merged to support the implementation of the EU 40% GHG-reduction target by 2030, adopting an integrated approach to climate change mitigation and adaptation, and ensuring access to secure, sustainable and affordable energy for all. In 2016, the CoM joined forces with the Compact of Mayors initiative, resulting in the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM, 2019). The GCoM has already involved over 10,000 signatories, covering around 800 million inhabitants (GCoM, 2019)

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