Covenant Of Mayors For Climate Research Articles

Measuring It, Managing It, Fixing It? Data and Rights in Transnational and Local Climate Change Governance

AbstractThe Paris Agreement, related intergovernmental decisions, and transnational climate change governance initiatives mobilize data as a means of measuring, managing, and addressing changing climatic conditions. At the same time, the Paris Agreement formally acknowledges the human rights implications of the unfolding climate crisis. Given the reliance on data and rights in climate change governance, the aim of this article is twofold. Firstly, it analyzes how processes of datafication at transnational and local levels promise, yet struggle, to render the climate governable. Secondly, the article critically reflects on the capacity of human rights to complement datafied governance processes meaningfully – specifically, in what ways rights can (and cannot) alleviate local concerns regarding datafication. Methodologically, the article develops a perspective that foregrounds situated sense-making and experience in place. It is based on an empirical case study of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, a transnational alliance of cities that have committed to working towards the goals of the Paris Agreement; and it engages with ethnographic literature that conceptualizes rights as lived forms of meaning-making, articulation, struggle, and resistance. Attending to place, the article confronts problematic assumptions about the universality, neutrality, and representativeness of data and rights, raising critical questions about their capacity to ‘govern’ climate change.

ДОСЛІДЖЕННЯ ВИКОРИСТАННЯ АЛЬТЕРНАТИВНИХ ВИДІВ ПАЛИВА НА ПОЛТАВЩИНІ

The possibilities of using energy-resource solid household waste, agricultural waste, logging waste from forestry enter-prises, green waste from landscaping and growing energy crops as alternative renewable fuels to meet the goals of small-scale heat and power generation in Poltava Oblast are investigated. To study this issue, the specialists from the Departments of Applied Ecology and Nature Management and Heat and Gas Supply, Ventilation and Heat Power En-gineering of National University "Yuri Kondratyuk Poltava Polytechnic" were invited to join the project and a new specialization "Renewable Heat and Power Engineering, Alternative Fuels and Environmental Protection" was opened in the specialty 183 "Environmental Protection Technologies". The problem was included in the strategic development plan of Poltava region and included in the development of the Action Plan for Sustainable Energy Development and Climate of Poltava City Territorial Community until 2030 in accordance with the European initiative "Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy". The assessment of the bioenergy potential may become a significant environmental and economic basis for improving the regional bioenergy sector in Poltava Oblast in the future. A complex of methods of system analysis and the method of data analysis has been applied to achieve the goal of the research. An analysis of modern international literary sources, an analysis of the morphological composition of municipal and green waste, and an analysis of the energy potential of plant biomass were reviewed. As a result of research, the scientific and applied task of using local energy resources at the level of each individual community of the Poltava region, taking into account ecological, economic and social development, has been formulated and substantiated. Ref. 10, figure. Keywords: energy security, environmental security, alternative fuels, renewable energy sources, energy crops, solid household waste, small-scale energy, environmental impact.

Analysis of the Final Energy Use by Sectors in City of Vidin

According to the initiative "The Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (CoM)" and within the framework of the EU-funded "Positive Energy Areas Project", the Municipality of Vidin should establish a "Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan". The city's sustainable energy development plans aim to reduce CO2 emissions by 40% up to 2030 and develop a comprehensive climate change adaptation strategy at the local level or integrate it into existing plans. The initiative envisages actions both for mitigating climate change and also for climate adaptation at the local level. This paper presents the results of the first part of the process for establishing the "Sustainable Energy and Action Plan of the Municipality of Vidin", including the assessment and calculation of the final energy use in the city by the different sectors. The research aims to present the main data sources necessary for СО2 emissions inventory at the city level and to process, validate, and analyze used statistical data for defining the final energy use by different sectors in one Bulgarian municipality. The purpose of this assessment is to determine final energy use by different sectors and by types of energy sources. The results from the analysis and evaluation of the final energy use in the sectors "Residential buildings", "Municipal buildings", "Industry", "Tertiary buildings", "Public lighting" and "Transport" will serve to conduct a baseline of CO2 emissions inventory, which is a part of the “Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan”. These results also could help the local authorities and key energy players to identify and implement the most suitable measures and actions for climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Emission of greenhouse gasses from 2010 to 2020—Good intentions vs. reality

Three main indicators, i.e., the net greenhouse gas emissions, the net greenhouse gas emissions from land use and forestry, and the population covered by the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy signatories have been suggested by Eurostat as indicators for the description of the climate action—the Sustainable Development Goal 13. The present study describes the ranking of the 27 European Union member states plus the combined EU based on a simultaneous inclusion of all three indicators. It turned out that the covenant indicator was the most important. Thus, subsequently, a ranking of the countries based on a) the covenant indicator and b) the greenhouse gas emission indicators was compared elucidating virtually no correspondence, i.e., signing a covenant with a lot of good intentions is not reflected in a decreased or reduced emission of greenhouse gases. The discrepancy between the political will and the actual action is unambiguous.

And climate change

The contribution presents the results of a research project carried out within the main framework of the “Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan” for the Ravenna Municipality, one of the signatories of the “Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy”. The project goal is to provide decision makers and city planners with landscape-oriented strategies capable of improving the territorial resilience vis-a-vis climate change impacts in the next decades. The research focuses on the construction of future alternative scenarios on a 2100 horizon. From their comparison, a short-term vision (2050) open to alternative developments has been designed. The study provides an overall view, on a municipal scale, of the main adaptation actions that can be implemented; then, it tests their potential effectiveness on smaller case-studies illustrating some recurring landscape units of the territory.

The role of the municipalities in achieving the EU’s sustainable energy transition

Greenhouse gas emissions are clearly responsible for the intensification of climate change, the largest share of which can be attributed to energy production and use. The European Union aims to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. This energy transition by 2050 is called the energy transition. One of the European Union's best-known energy and climate organisations is the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (CoM). This publication evaluates the role of municipalities in the energy transition with the help of the analysis of the Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAP) document prepared by the Hungarian municipalities joining the alliance, especially from 16 submitted cities point of view. When planning the area-by-area reductions formulated in their mitigation action plans, they realistically perceive the extent of their direct intervention opportunities, they expect a greater proportion of the planned measures from local actors, so they can help achieve the goals by their exemplary operation, organizing awareness-raising events and finding sources of funding. Through their indirect role in local energy management, municipalities are important actors in achieving the EU's energy transition.

Bridging climate change science and policy through TMNs in Turkey: CoM as a boundary-object

Abstract This paper qualitatively investigates one of the influential transnational municipal networks, Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (CoM)’s position in three Turkish municipal governments in bridging the climate change science and climate change policy gap. In the last two decades, the importance of science-based policymaking for climate mitigation and adaptation and transnational municipal networks empowered by municipalities that guide city policies linked to international agreements has been recognized. In this paper, we argue that CoM has acted as a boundary-object in producing climate change policies and plans in Turkish municipal governments. However, CoM has done so to a certain extent; their effectiveness was limited due to the general atmosphere on climate change policies in Turkey. We substantiate this claim through a two-layer examination: a case-specific analysis of three municipalities and semi-structured interviews with thirteen experts in climate change policy-related issues.

Walking the Talk: Why Cities Adopt Ambitious Climate Action Plans

Why do some municipalities adopt ambitious climate action plans and others do not? This study examines United States cities that have signed the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy, to identify the factors that have led some of them (37 percent, 63 cities) to adopt ambitious (Net Zero) climate action plans. It finds that two factors make the most difference: (a) whether the city has a paid city employee (or department) dedicated to environmental/energy management and (b) whether the city has a university. Other factors, such as per capita income, city revenue, state funding, size, partisan orientation, and membership in international climate networks, did not significantly influence how ambitious a city's climate action plan was. This study combines a statistical analysis of the signatory cities with a qualitative study Middletown Connecticut to explain why city energy managers and universities can have such a positive effect on city climate action.

Global Covenant of Mayors, a dataset of greenhouse gas emissions for 6200 cities in Europe and the Southern Mediterranean countries

Abstract. The Paris Agreement has underlined the role of cities in combating climate change. The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM) is the largest international initiative dedicated to promoting climate action at a city level, covering globally over 10 000 cities and almost half the population of the European Union (EU) by end of March 2020. The fifth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report notes that there is a lack of comprehensive, consistent datasets of cities' greenhouse gas (GHG) emission inventories. In order to partly address this gap, we present a harmonised, complete and verified dataset of GHG inventories for 6200 cities in European and Southern Mediterranean countries, signatories of the GCoM initiative. To complement the reported emission data, a set of ancillary data that have a direct or indirect potential impact on cities' climate action plans were collected from other datasets, supporting further research on local climate action and monitoring the EU 27 (the 27 member states of the EU) progress on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13 on climate action. The dataset (Kona et al., 2020) is archived and publicly available with the DOI https://doi.org/10.2905/57A615EB-CFBC-435A-A8C5-553BD40F76C9.

The Italian Experience of the Covenant of Mayors: A Territorial Evaluation

European climate policy, since the 1990s, has developed incrementally and supported programs, plans and actions for sustainable, clean and secure energy. Additionally, climate-change adaptation issues have been tackled through Mayors Adapt since 2016. The Covenant of Mayors (CoM), a volunteer movement of local administrators established in 2008, set a target of a 20% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2020. The CoM has launched a new season on energy planning in Europe based on Sustainable Energy Action Plans (SEAPs), defining actions for selected intervention sectors. The aim of the work was to evaluate the state of the Italian CoM signatories, assessing the results achieved in terms of the Municipalities involved (CoM signatories), the SEAPs developed and the Monitoring Reports submitted. Specifically, the analysis of the Monitoring Reports data represents a relevant step needed in order to formulate some critical appraisals concerning the performance level of CoM adoption at a national scale, in terms of the commitment levels, goals achieved and actions completed or in progress. The paper also compares national figures with a regional detailed survey developed for the Basilicata Region. It represents a benchmark useful for interpreting the general results derived from the CoM official data and a marker for pointing out suggestions for improving the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM) adoption procedures.

A comparative analysis to depict underlying attributes that might determine successful implementation of local adaptation plans

Current trends in climate change indicate that the impact on the most vulnerable systems will increase. Urban areas, which concentrate population, economic activity and infrastructures, are sometimes at high-risk locations. Yet they are to be considered as vulnerable systems in need of harmonized structures supporting their efforts towards mitigating climate effects and/or adapting their territories to them. One current structure is the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (CoM) initiative, tackling in a global and harmonized way local adaptation to climate change. Do CoM cities that developed acceptable climate change adaptation plans have similar characteristics? It is still unclear which might be the drivers or key attributes potentially leading to successful planning within the initiative. In this paper, we explore attributes of the first 51 cities that have submitted their adaptation plans to CoM, in order to identify common elements among accepted plans. Therefore, our hypothesis is that there must be attributes determining the acceptance of adaptation plans. In order to do so, the cities were classified as compliant and non-compliant with the CoM principles. Fisher’s and Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were applied to identify attributes that are statistically different between both groups. Results show that the engagement of multiple stakeholders and citizens, particularly at the local level, might significantly facilitate the acceptance of adaptation plans in the initiative. We also found that the benefits of stakeholder and citizen engagement could be greater in small municipalities because citizens and stakeholders have more opportunities to participate.

ClimActor, harmonized transnational data on climate network participation by city and regional governments

Cities and regions have become increasingly engaged in global climate change governance. They are pledging their own climate mitigation targets and participating in membership networks that typically are transnational in nature and engage thousands of subnational governments. Researching these growing trends in participation has been difficult due to the disparate and inconsistent nature of this self-reported data. To facilitate future analyses of these actors, we introduce ClimActor, the largest harmonized global dataset of more than 10,000 city and regional governments participating in networks like the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, C40 Cities for Climate Leadership, ICLEI Local Leaders for Sustainability, among others. We include key contextual information on each actor’s population, geographic location, and administrative jurisdiction to facilitate disambiguation of potential overlaps in actions or emissions. We also provide a series of cleaning functions based on phonetic and fuzzy string matching algorithms within an open-source R package to make it easy for anyone to immediately use the ClimActor dataset with other relevant data.

Group discussions on how to implement a participatory process in climate adaptation planning: a case study in Malaysia

The frequency and intensity of extreme climate events are increasing all around the world, due to climate change. Climate adaptation strategies are therefore needed, since mitigation strategies alone are not sufficient to avoid serious impacts of climate change. However, adaptation to climate change is not straightforward, as it is highly influenced by diverse and conflicting interests as well as epistemological (or scientific) uncertainties. Therefore, a minimum requirement for its success is the active participation of stakeholders and citizens in the adaptation policy cycle. This paper presents a case study on a participatory process involving civil servants from different municipalities in Malaysia, in Southeast Asia, with a view to considering the optimal level of engagement that is required for climate adaptation planning. The exercise consisted of a Focus Group session, where participants were asked to discuss the level of stakeholder and citizen participation that should be adopted within the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy initiative. Contrary to authors' expectations, the participants tended to suggest medium to high levels of participation in the planning process. During the dialogues, a walking activity through the city, aimed at identifying hotspots of climate risks and defined as “safety walks”, was one of the ideas proposed as a high-potential participatory method, spreading in the adaptation framework. Safety walks could complement climate modelling and enhance the robustness of climate risk assessments.

Distinguishing policy surveillance from policy tracking: transnational municipal networks in climate and energy governance

ABSTRACT The challenges related to climate change and energy issues have induced a growing number of actors to participate in governance arrangements of information-sharing and mutual policy-learning. In recent years the increasing availability of data on policy outputs and outcomes has enabled researchers to observe variation in these governance arrangements of transnational municipal climate networks (TMCNs). To capture this variation, we rely on two ideal types of policy information systems: policy tracking (PT) and policy surveillance (PS). Focusing on two TMCNs active in energy governance, our qualitative analysis attests the existence of these two modes of monitoring and reporting greenhouse gas emissions. The Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy exemplifies how PS schemes can standardize scoring methodology and facilitate policy compliance and enforcement. In contrast, Energy Cities fits the typology of a PT system that aims to showcase local initiatives and mutual learning.

Contribution of University to Environmental Energy Sustainability in the City

The environmental energy sustainability of universities has aroused great interest in recent years. In this study, environmental impact assessment tools are used to analyse the environmental impacts of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) since 2015 and to identify reform scenarios to make the university more sustainable. University campuses can be considered to be small cities that impact the environment of the cities where they are located. The environmental impacts of the UPV/EHU Gipuzkoa campus and the impacts on the city of Donostia-San Sebastián in which the university is located are analysed. The environmental impacts are calculated using simulation tools based on three-dimensional models of the university campus and the city. These results are compared with actual impact results from monitoring. The simulation results differ from the monitoring results but provide a rapid determination of the best future scenarios for a more sustainable university by taking the impacts on the city into account. This study enables the university to align its efforts with the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy.

European Strategies for Adaptation to Climate Change with the Mayors Adapt Initiative by Self-Organizing Maps

The European Union (EU) has assigned municipal governments a key role in the transformations needed to achieve its climate and energy objectives. One of the main initiatives of the EU has been the “The Covenant of Mayors”, launched in 2008, with impacts beyond Europe due to integration with the “Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy”. This research focuses on local measures to adapt to climate change, verifying their differences between themselves, and aims to identify and characterize patterns in the different adaptation strategies examined. Further aims are (i) the collection of good practices, framed in the Mayors Adapt initiative, managing multidimensional data from the context and from its adaptation proposals; (ii) the classification of strategies in profiles and patterns using artificial neural networks based on the previous variables; (iii) the characterization and comparison of such profiles. The results substantiate the existence of several well-differentiated approaches, connected with their geographical context, vulnerability and politics. These results provide valuable information for its interpretation and for the planning of climate change adaptation actions, highlighting the value of the creation of networks of institutional collaboration targeted at each strategic framework.

The interplay between urban mitigation and adaptation strategies to face climate change in two European countries

The growing recognition of the contribution of urban areas to adaptation and mitigation strategies implemented in response to climate change has led to several policy initiatives. Among others, the “Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy” is the most acknowledged, providing local governments with the opportunity to overcome the mitigation-adaptation dichotomy and enhance urban resilience. In this context, the main aim of this paper is to analyse the synergy between adaptation and mitigation actions in some European Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans at an urban level. We will do this through: (1) the proposal of a novel classification model of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures, which will be capable of classifying, in a common way, the best practices carried out at an urban level; and (2) a comparison of the best climate change management practices carried out by two European countries (Italy and Spain). The classification model is based on three urban sectors: (1) Urban Adaptation and Health (UA&H), (2) Transport & Infrastructure (T&I), and (3) Energy (NRG). Urban management measures have been classified as soft (more focused on environmental information), gray (more focused on buildings), and green (more focused on nature-based solutions). The overall comparative analysis between Italy and Spain shows that in large and medium-sized Italian cities, mainly soft (52%) and green (28%) adaptation measures have been integrated into local energy-environmental planning in combination with mitigation actions. However, in both countries, decisions regarding the type of measures to be implemented are taken independently of the size of the city. This paper, in line with other research, highlights the importance of nature-based solutions as a first step in the integration process between adaptation and mitigation strategies at an urban level.

“Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy” as a Local Government Policy

“Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy” as a Local Government Policy

Transformative innovation policy: Addressing variety in an emerging policy paradigm

This paper presents an analytical framework for assessing the emergence of a new policy paradigm labelled “transformative innovation policy”, which can be seen as layered upon, but not fully replacing, earlier policy paradigms of science and technology policy and innovation systems policy. The paper establishes conceptual diversity in this emerging policy paradigm. Despite a common agenda for transformative change, there are notable differences concerning the understanding of the innovation process. Two global initiatives to promote such new innovation policies, Mission Innovation and the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, are used to illustrate how different articulations of transformative innovation policy are expressed in practice. These may be seen as a positive expression of the breadth of the emerging policy paradigm. While there are grounds for such a positive reading, this paper ends with a caution by stressing the political nature of paradigm change and the strong legacy of an economic, firm-centred and technology-oriented tradition in innovation policy. It makes a plea for more emphasis on a broader conceptualization of transformative innovation, and suggests that a socio-technical understanding of innovation provides several appropriate analytical concepts that can help to shape our thinking and understanding of transformative innovation policy.

Transnational Municipal Climate Networks and the Politics of Standardisation: The Contested Role of Climate Data in the New Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy

This article analyses the formation of a new global network, the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM), by two existing initiatives, the EU-based Covenant of Mayors and the UN-supported Compact of Mayors. While this merger of two transnational networks provides evidence for the increased coordination and standardisation of transnational municipal climate action, this remains a contentious and incomplete process. The article identifies different modes of transnational climate governance that have contributed to conflict between the founding networks and zooms in on the role of municipal climate data. Using empirical evidence, it analyses the contested politics of municipal climate data, including the role of the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories (GPC) as a standard tool, the definition of a common target, and the inclusion of financial actors. Concerns over the reshaping of public-private boundaries and the possible commodification of public data are identified as major obstacles for the (EU) Covenant of Mayors, which consequentially seeks to remain as independent as possible within the new GCoM. Data politics emerges as a crucial factor for the future direction of transnational municipal climate policy and the ongoing processes of standardisation and coordination.