Multi-level Climate Governance Research Articles

Stakeholder-driven carbon neutral pathways for Thailand and Bangkok: integrated assessment modeling to inform multilevel climate governance

Thailand has established a target of carbon neutrality by 2050. Reaching this goal will require coordination and collaboration between stakeholders spanning sectors and scales, including energy system decision makers, land managers, and city planners. Robust decarbonization scenarios incorporating current plans and targets, additional measures needed, and trade-offs between strategies can help stakeholders make informed decisions in the face of uncertainty. Through iterative engagement with decision makers at the city and national levels, we develop and analyze carbon neutral scenarios for Thailand that incorporate Bangkok’s role using a global integrated assessment model. We find that Thailand can reach carbon neutrality through power sector decarbonization, energy efficiency improvements, widespread electrification, and advanced technologies including carbon capture and storage and hydrogen. Negative emissions technologies will also be needed to offset Thailand and Bangkok’s hardest-to-abate CO2 emissions. Bangkok, as a major population and economic center, contributes significantly to Thailand’s energy demand and emissions and can therefore play an important role in climate change mitigation. Accordingly, our results underscore the importance of subnational climate action in meeting Thailand’s carbon neutral goal. Our analysis also indicates that without sustained land-based carbon sequestration, much more mitigation effort will be needed in Thailand’s energy sector, including at the subnational scale, to reach carbon neutrality. These insights can help stakeholders identify priorities, consider tradeoffs, and make decisions that will impact Bangkok and Thailand’s long-term climate change mitigation potential. This analysis demonstrates how stakeholder engagement in integrated assessment modeling can facilitate and inform multilevel climate governance.

The role of multi-level climate governance in urban transport politics

Throughout the 20th century, the automobile industry developed based on the production of vehicles for private use, powered by fossil fuels. As a result, the transport sector is the one that uses the most energy in Brazil (32.5%) and the second most emitting greenhouse gases (GHG), reaching 13% of total national emissions. The main challenges in the transition to decarbonization in this segment are in Brazilian cities, where 84% of the population lives and whose road mode is predominant in the movement of people and goods. As a measure to adapt and mitigate climate impacts, local governments are investing in new mobility technologies, such as ride-sharing, biofuels and electric and autonomous vehicles. Althought the convergence between technological transition and climate policies is still diffuse and fragmented, requiring integrated and multi-level governance processes. To deepen the understanding of this scenario in the Brazilian context, this article plans to identify the main actors involved in the process of transition to sustainability in the Brazilian urban transportation sector based on a systematic review of the literature applied to the case study of urban passenger mobility in the megacity of São Paulo.

Multi-level climate governance: examining impacts and interactions between national and sub-national emissions mitigation policy mixes in Canada

ABSTRACT Jurisdictions use an assortment of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Climate policy mixes have often evolved through the ad hoc layering of new policies onto an existing policy mix, rather than deliberate design of a complete policy portfolio. This can lead to unanticipated interactions between policies which can support or undermine policy objectives and is further complicated where climate policy is implemented at multiple jurisdictional levels. In the context of Canada and its four most populous provinces, we examine the development of climate policy mixes across jurisdictional levels between 2000 and 2020 and evaluate policy interactions. We develop an inventory of 184 climate policies, and examine each in terms of instrument type, implementation timing, technological specificity, and expected abatement. We evaluate interactions between overlapping policies both within jurisdictional levels (horizontal) and across jurisdictional levels (vertical) for their impact on emissions abatement using a policy coherence analysis framework. We find that subsidies and R&D funding were the most abundant policies (58%), although pricing and flexible regulation are expected to achieve the most abatement. Sub-national jurisdictions have often acted as policy pilots preceding federal policy implementation. We evaluate 356 policy interactions and find 74% are consistent in adding abatement. Less than 8% have a negative impact by reducing abatement, although vertical interactions between federal and provincial policies were more often negative (11%) than horizontal interactions at the federal (<3%) or provincial (<2%) levels. Although the impact of many interactions is unknown (13%), we generate interaction matrices as a foundational roadmap for future research, and for policy-makers to consider potential interactions when designing and assessing policy effectiveness. Key policy insights Climate policy mixes have expanded and diversified over the period 2000–2020 across jurisdictions in Canada. Sub-national jurisdictions have often acted as policy ‘pilots’ by implementing policy before the adoption of similar national level policy. Climate mitigation policy interactions are predominantly supportive toward achieving additional emissions abatement. Vertical interactions between federal and provincial policy can undermine the additionality of policy effort by sub-national jurisdictions. These findings emphasize the need for better coordination in climate policy mix design between national and sub-national jurisdictions.

Paradiplomacy of cities in the Global South and multilevel climate governance: evidence from Brazil

Paradiplomacy of cities in the Global South and multilevel climate governance: evidence from Brazil

Jurisdictional approaches to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in Brazil: Why do states adopt jurisdictional policies?

Although the role of subnational governments in multi-level climate governance is recognized by scholars and policymakers, we still know little about whether and why some subnational jurisdictions in the Global South decide to engage in decentralized climate action. This article yields new insights on this question by explaining variations in the decision of Brazilian states to establish legal frameworks for jurisdictional REDD+, enabling them to receive transnational climate finance, in the early stages of the emergence of REDD+ in Brazil between 2007 and 2017. We draw on key informant interviews with policy entrepreneurs and actors to understand the roles played by (1) the transnational pathways of influence associated with the regime complex for REDD+ and (2) the strategies adopted by state-level policy entrepreneurs in subnational REDD+ readiness policy processes in Brazil in five case studies (Amazonas, Acre, Mato Grosso, Pará and Amapá). According to respondents, credible market incentives were the key influence for state governors to adopt a jurisdictional framework to channel REDD+ funds, but transnational norms and material assistance played important mediating roles. The perceived credibility of market incentives was influenced by: (1) the presence of policy entrepreneurs at the state level; (2) the timing of strategies employed by policy entrepreneurs; (3) the policy beliefs held by the governor regarding environmental issues; and (4) evidence regarding availability of REDD+ finance for states.

Climate Change Litigation: Chronicles from the Global South. A Comparative Study

The battles against climate change are being fought at the international level; on the domestic front; on the streets and in the courts. Climate change litigation is one such effort. The global expansion in climate litigation gives substance to claims of a transnational climate justice movement that casts courts as important players in shaping multilevel climate governance. Climate change litigants, lawyers, and judges of one country are taking their cue from their counterparts in other countries. However, only the efforts of the Global North have received prominence. The rest of the world is slated to be sleeping silently. The authors aim to de-bunk this myth. In doing so, the authors endeavour to highlight important contributions by the Courts in the Global South in furthering the jurisprudence of climate change litigation.

The challenge of integrating subnational governments in multilevel climate governance: the case of Mexico

ABSTRACT Climate change (CC) actions need to happen at multiple scales, with coordination between horizontal and vertical levels of governance. Achieving national determined contributions signed as part of the Paris Agreement depends on the power of national and subnational governments to implement effective CC policies. Using a framework based on three power categories: power by design, pragmatic power, and framing power, we analyse how different types of power across multiple levels of government entities operate within various sectors in an emerging economy. Specifically, we analyse the multilevel governance in Mexico’s federal system. Our sample comprises six states (out of 32) and 18 municipalities and considers two mitigation sectors (transport and urban solid waste) and the adaptation domain. We find evidence of more robust climate policy at the state level delivered through power by design (policy instruments) and pragmatic power (to implement actions), but weak power performance at the municipal level. The sectoral analysis shows more consistent adaptation policies than mitigation policies. The power imbalances across the three categories are relevant because the quantity and coherence of designed policy instruments and actions can be contrasted with the capacity to implement actions, which depends on the availability of resources and political will.

Incorporating coastal blue carbon into subnational greenhouse gas inventories

The climate mitigation potential of coastal blue carbon including mangroves, seagrasses and tidal marshes have been widely recognized, and guidelines for incorporating coastal wetlands into greenhouse gas inventories released by IPCC in 2014 make it possible to bring coastal blue carbon into multilevel climate governance regimes. However, the intricate guidelines and inadequate data block governments from accounting and reporting their coastal blue carbon in inventories. In this research, we integrated and simplified the equations and assumptions of IPCC inventory guidance on coastal wetlands, and took Hainan province of China as a case study by (1) formulating a land use change matrix from high resolution satellite imagery for the years of 2010 to 2020, (2) compiling dataset of emission factors for coastal wetlands of Hainan, and (3) estimating CO2, CH4, and N2O emissions from coastal wetlands in Hainan. We reveal that the mangroves’ area increased from 4,190.7 ha in 2010 to 4,644.1 ha in 2020, with a net increase of 483.9 ha from tidal flats and aquaculture ponds. The weighted average EFAGB and EFsoil of Hainan is 61.7 MgC ha-1 and 227.4 MgC ha-1, respectively,estimated from peer-reviewed literature in both Chinese and English. The annual average net CO2 emission of mangroves of Hainan is -26974.3 MgCO2e yr-1. CO2 emission from mangrove deforestation and N2O emission from shrimp aquaculture in coastal aeras may offset the efforts of coastal wetlands conservation and restoration. Countries and sub-country regions are encouraged to bring coastal blue carbon into greenhouse gases inventories as soon as possible, and to take a bottom-up strategy to initiate the task at a local level.

Introduction

AbstractAcknowledging the exponential growth and global dimension of climate litigation, this introductory piece to this Special Section starts by situating this phenomenon in the context of the scholarly debate on polycentric and multi-level climate governance. It highlights both the strategic use of climate litigation as a tool to establish responsibilities and push for a more ambitious mitigation and adaptation agenda, but also as an opportunity to better understand the role of courts in public policy governance. The second part of the article then proceeds to discuss the main findings arising from the various contributions grouped in this section, and concludes by arguing that further research is needed in order to properly understand the role and contribution of climate change litigation to transnational climate governance.

Multi-level climate change planning: An analysis of the Italian case

As recognized by the Paris Climate Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), local and subnational regions are crucial actors to achieve international mitigation and adaptation commitments. Scientific literature and empirical evidence point at multi-level climate governance as a crucial factor to engage subnational levels in the achievement of national and international objectives. This work focuses on the multi-level climate governance arrangements in Italy to investigate how Italian regions/provinces/cities are contributing to the achievement of national commitments. To this purpose, the paper undertakes a review of the climate policies of different tiers of government adopted to date and of the interrelationships among them. The results of the analysis show that the effective coordination between the different government levels should be strengthened to further incentivize and support initiatives at the local level. Results also show the relevant role played by international regional and city climate networks in boosting local and regional climate planning in Italy.

Multilevel Climate Governance, Anticipatory Adaptation, and the Vulnerability‐Readiness Nexus

AbstractAdapting to the social, economic, environmental, and health threats resulting from climate change requires successful multilevel governance and improved decision‐making processes. In this study, we evaluate explanatory relationships that support climate change adaptation. Based on the existing literature, we develop and apply a mixed‐methods approach to examine refined drivers of the vulnerability‐readiness nexus. This study examines the context of multilevel governance and the role of anticipatory adaptation in coping with climate risks at the county level in the U.S. Mississippi River Basin between 1990 and 2010. Our focus is on adaptation to climate change within the context of multilevel governance. Our results suggest that anticipatory adaptation and higher levels of regional capacities are particularly effective in adapting to climate change.

Coordinated planning effort as multilevel climate governance: Insights from coastal resilience and climate adaptation

Using flood risks and potential impacts of sea level change within the U.S. Great Lakes region over the past 20 years, we explore the association between coordinated planning effort as a form of multilevel climate governance and community resilience attributes under climate risk. Content analysis and coastal adaptation principles allowed us to evaluate coordinated planning effort at county and state levels to derive a horizontal or vertical coordination index which was then used to evaluate if synergies generated among plans were correlated with climate risk mitigation and enhanced adaptation to climate change. Further, we incorporated evaluation results of varied community resilience characteristics and coordinated planning effort metrics in the context of climate change. Empirical results suggest that the extent of coordinated planning effort at the county and state levels is closely associated with coastal community resilience and climate change adaptation.

Urban Climate Politics in Emerging Economies: A Multi-Level Governance Perspective

Several scholars have pointed to the increasing salience of cities in the global endeavour to reduce dangerous climate change to 1.5°C. However, we still lack systematic comparative analyses on how urban climate initiatives evolve in different political-administrative systems of countries in the global South and what role transnational city networks play in that context. This question is specifically important with regard to the role of cities in contributing to reaching the targets of the Paris Agreement. Against this backdrop, this article explores the vertical and horizontal integration of cities’ climate actions in the multi-level climate governance landscapes in Brazil, India, Indonesia and South Africa. We contend that while transnational city networks provide significant support to cities in some cases, their tools and practices can only reach their full potential where they encounter committed local administrations and when they are not constrained by domestic political-administrative and economic factors.

Multi-Level Climate Governance in Bangladesh via Climate Change Mainstreaming: Lessons for Local Climate Action in Dhaka City

Over the last three decades, Bangladesh has implemented various initiatives to address different climate change impacts. In a multi-level governance arrangement, addressing climate change impacts is often constrained by climate change mainstreaming. In Bangladesh, a crucial question that arises is how mitigation and adaptation efforts are addressed at both national and sub-national levels. This paper examines the integration of climate change issues into national, sectoral, and city development plans with a particular focus on Dhaka using a framework developed based on the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) climate change mainstreaming guidelines for national development processes. The review finds evidence that mainstreaming of climate change is strong in national and sectoral development plans and has been incremental since 2002. However, climate change mainstreaming in Dhaka city development plans is moderate, especially in terms of climate risk and opportunity assessment, institutional arrangement, and capacity building for climate action. To augment existing efforts at mainstreaming at the sub-national level, the paper suggests the need to build sub-national level climate capacity with particular attention to institutional coordination and cooperation among agencies at different levels of development planning and to establish a national financing arrangement that allows sub-national agencies to harness climate finance.

Vietnam’s Policies on Climate Change: Practical Implementation and Some Challenges

This study analyzes climate change policies and highlights encouraging practices as well as continuing challenges of effective multilevel climate governance in practice. The research is based on a quantitative analysis method using the outcomes from multi-stakeholders, policy-makers, researchers and representatives from non-governmental organizations. Study results touched on the following areas: (1) Vietnam’s policies on climate change, (2) multilevel activites implemented to copewith climate change, and (3) some barriers impedingthe implementation of climate change policies in practice.The study is written for both policy-makers and development practitioners working in Vietnam to facilitate development of multi-stakeholder, multilevel partnerships that are grounded in community engagement from the outset, with the aim of overcoming barriers to translate policies more effectively into on-the-ground action.

Transnational Climate Litigation: The Contribution of the Global South

AbstractSince the conclusion of the Paris Agreement, climate litigation has become a global phenomenon, casting courts as important players in multilevel climate governance. However, most climate litigation scholarship focuses on court actions in the Global North. This Article is the first to shine a light on the Global South's contribution to transnational climate litigation. Analysis of this experience is essential if transnational climate jurisprudence is to contribute meaningfully to global climate governance, and to ensuring just outcomes for the most climate-vulnerable.

Subnational politics of the urban age: evidence from Brazil on integrating global climate goals in the municipal agenda

As nations agreed on a bottom-up approach to establish the Paris Agreement in 2015, Non-state Actors (NSAs) became increasingly acknowledged as key players in the implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). In a mostly urbanised world, local governments have a major part to play in designing and implementing climate policies that will help overcome carbon lock-in and enable the transition to a sustainable low-carbon future. Transnational municipal networks (TMNs) have a well-documented history of contributing to multilevel climate governance and supporting experiments in local climate action in many countries. In Brazil, urban climate experimentation has increased since 2005 and accelerated after 2015. Based on empirical evidence from a national survey and two Brazilian metropolises, the study demonstrates that TMNs have been drivers of the municipal climate agenda in Brazil, but there is no evidence so far that urban governance experiments have resulted in significant greenhouse gas emission reductions. Furthermore, the collective impact of cities' experimentation on the national climate agenda is yet to be verified. In light of multilevel climate governance and the urban experimentation conceptual framework, we contend that while there is no documented evidence that local climate action has affected Brazil's ability to meet its mitigation goals, cities' paradiplomacy and policy experiments have strengthened a multilevel approach to climate governance and contributed to positive change towards a sustainable transition. Furthermore, a closer look at policies across scales and their interactions will help our understanding of how to improve t'he institutional framework for climate governance in Brazil and secure GHG emission reductions, thus contributing to global goals beyond 2020.

Multi-level Climate Governance: Polycentricity and Local Innovation

The polycentric approach constructed according to Elinor Ostrom’s theory is a suitable substitute as a pluralistic mode of governance with the objective of reclaiming the former degree of faith of the citizens and communities that had been shaken by the failed climate change initiatives implemented on a global scale. Centering its attention on the lower levels of governance, the polycentric approach offers wide scope for improving the innovative steps that can positively affect the entire global climate system through acquisition of knowledge and learning, especially in the instances of energy transition like the German Energiewende (Renewable Energy Revolution) and the Barcelona Local Energy Agency that are devised for implementation through the active involvement of the local communities. The current study discusses the application of the polycentric approach to multi-level climate governance, particularly highlighting the importance of local innovation as the means to control the global climate crisis, harnessing the collective effort to secure substantial levels of reliability and cooperation between the stakeholders and institutions.

Multi-level Climate Governance: Polycentricity and Local Innovation

Abstract: The polycentric approach constructed according to Elinor Ostrom’s theory is a suitable substitute as a pluralistic mode of governance with the objective of reclaiming the former degree of faith of the citizens and communities that had been shaken by the failed climate change initiatives implemented on a global scale. Centering its attention on the lower levels of governance, the polycentric approach offers wide scope for improving the innovative steps that can positively affect the entire global climate system through acquisition of knowledge and learning, especially in the instances of energy transition like the German Energiewende (Renewable Energy Revolution) and the Barcelona Local Energy Agency that are devised for implementation through the active involvement of the local communities. The current study discusses the application of the polycentric approach to multi-level climate governance, particularly highlighting the importance of local innovation as the means to control the global climate crisis, harnessing the collective effort to secure substantial levels of reliability and cooperation between the stakeholders and institutions.

Cities as leaders in EU multilevel climate governance: embedded upscaling of local experiments in Europe

ABSTRACTThe success of local climate governance in Europe depends not only on leading cities but also on the dynamics between leaders, followers, and laggards. Upscaling local experiments helps to close the gap between these actors. This process is driven by the increasing embeddedness of cities and their networks in EU multilevel governance. Embedded upscaling combines horizontal upscaling between leading cities with vertical upscaling between leaders and followers that is mediated by higher levels of government, and hierarchical upscaling that even reaches the laggards. Various types of upscaling, their combinations, and their impacts are analyzed. Networks have become denser and networking has intensified. City networks and their member cities have become embedded in national and EU governance, lost authority and depend more and more on regional, national, and European authorities.