The ICLEI Cities for Climate Protection Programme: Local Government Networks in Urban Climate Governance

Abstract

This chapter looks at the role of transnational local government (LG) networks in urban climate governance, where the term urban includes cities, towns and other metropolitan municipalities. Local authorities are recognised as one of the nine major groups in Agenda 21 and included in the UN Commission of Sustainable Development (UN 2009). LG was officially recognised as a governmental stakeholder at the 2010 COP 16 climate summit and United Nations (UN) meetings now include LG interests in global climate agreements. LGs have been actively engaged in climate change policies since the early 1990s. Cities and other municipal authorities have prepared climate change action plans and strategies addressing local mitigation and adaptation measures. Many LG authorities, particularly cities, are members of national and transnational municipal networks addressing climate change such as International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI), The Covenant of Mayors (Europe), US Mayors Climate Protection Agreement (USA), and C40 Cities (global megacities). These LG climate networks focus on informing members about best practice methods, learning about climate change issues and representing municipalities at national, continental and international levels and at climate forums. Hence, ‘networking within and across municipal [and national] borders has become commonplace in local and regional climate governance’ (Granberg and Elander 2007: 545).KeywordsClimate Change PolicyClimate ActionClimate ProtectionClimate GovernanceClimate NetworkThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.