Implementing Local Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation Actions: The Role of Various Policy Instruments in a Multi-Level Governance Context

Abstract

Abstract:Recently, considerable focus, e.g., in the fifth IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Assessment Report (2014) has been trained on why adaptation and mitigation have not been developed more than at present, with relatively few local government actions taken compared with, for example, more discursive policy agreement on the importance of the issue of climate change. Going beyond a focus on general limits and barriers, this comment suggests that one important issue is that climate change has not yet been sufficiently integrated into the state regulative structure of legislation and policy-making. A comparison between three cases suggests that local developments that are not supported in particular by binding regulation are unlikely to achieve the same general level of implementation as issues for which such regulative demands (and thereby also requirements for prioritization) exist. This constitutes an important consideration for the development of adaptation and mitigation as policy areas, including on the local level.Keywords: climate change; adaptation; mitigation; local government; municipality; Finland; Norway; Denmark Challenges of Climate PolicyWhile increasing focus is placed on policy development in relation to climate change, it is yet unclear as to how successful or efficient these efforts developed so far are in terms of tackling climate change, both mitigation and adaptation. In reviewing the progress of adaptation, the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes that implementation has so far been relatively limited [1] and discusses multiple potential limitations and barriers to this. With regard to mitigation, the need for further development within international commitments, as well as national and sub-national development, is highlighted. To a large extent, then, the social complexity of implementation and gaining political will for the development in the face of multiple stressors may be regarded as limiting progress towards managing climate change [2][3][4]. This limitation means that there is a need to problematize the structure of implementation further.

Adaptive capacity of the Pearl River Delta cities in the face of the growing flood risk: Institutions, ideas and interests

“…The study also contributes to the literature by shedding more light on the importance of the relations across levels of government (see e.g. Keskitalo, 2016;Westerhoff et al, 2011) and of the local contextual factors such as planning practices (see Chu et al, 2017), urban political economic contexts and state-society interactions (Chu, 2018). It brings new insights from the Chinese megacities that are hardly covered in this literature, and yet are already severely affected by climate change impacts and do surprisingly little to mitigate them.…”

“…Multi-level governance perspective underscores that decision-making on policies involves multiple interdependent actors operating at different levels of government, from national to local (e.g. Hooghe & Marks, 2003;Keskitalo, 2010;Keskitalo et al, 2016;Westerhoff et al, 2011). Multi-level governance, thus, provide the canvas for the operation of a spatial planning system, which is "the ensemble of institutions that are used to mediate competition over the use of land and property, to allocate rights of development, to regulate change and to promote preferred spatial and urban form" (ESPON, 2018).…”

“…Consequently, climate adaptation has emerged as a new priority on the global urban policy agenda (Revi & Satterthwaite, 2014), its success depends on coordinated action at multiple scales (e.g. Keskitalo et al, 2016) and on the presence of adaptive capacity. The latter can be understood as "the ability of systems, institutions, humans and other organisms to adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities, or to respond to consequences (IPCC, 2014, p. 118).…”

The diffusion of climate change adaptation policy

“…While adaptation duties have only begun to emerge through the EU's legal framework, in some countries, national legislation obliges subnational jurisdictions to become active in adaptation (Bisaro, Bel, Hinkel, Kok, Stojanovic, & Ware, 2020b; Tompkins et al, 2010). For example, Keskitalo et al (2016) illustrate that Danish municipalities are, per national regulation, required to set up adaptation strategies, even if the national government cannot enforce their implementation, whereas Finnish municipalities are not obliged to develop such strategies. Aguiar et al (2018) found in a survey of local adaptation strategies in Europe that many originated from implementing European and/or national policy.…”

Governing climate change: polycentricity in action?

“…For example, the limited powers of local governments and discursive conflicts among networks of state and non-state actors over how to frame climate policy can challenge the ability of cities to take a leading role in climate change planning (Bulkeley and Betsill, 2005; see also Chapter 5). Keskitalo et al (2016), for example, observe that in Nordic countries, limited leadership from national governments has partially contributed to a pattern of soft and voluntary adaptation policy approaches at the local level, and limited observable success in advancing adaptation implementation. The authors argue that this points to the need to integrate adaptation requirements into more traditional regulatory regimes and instruments that can be more directly enforced by the state.…”