Local energy agencies and cities’ participation in translocal climate governance

Abstract

When and under what conditions do cities commit to participating in translocal climate networks? This study examines the initial driving factors behind city participation in the Covenant of Mayors in Europe. Studying cities' adherence or non-adherence to transnational climate governance enhances our understanding of the links between local and national institutions, socioeconomic conditions, and transnational climate activities. Event history analyses of 261 cities in 27 European countries examine associations between when cities signed the Covenant and local and national political-economic factors. My analysis suggests that the existence of local energy agencies, other translocal climate network memberships, a high level of employment and the national adoption of renewable energy are factors that facilitate cities' participation in the Covenant. However, country-level drivers such as years of European Union accession, climate change awareness and gross domestic product growth are not as significant as cities' individual attributes.The results of the analysis testify to the growing significance of local institutional capacitiesknowledge, relational resources and mobilization-in expediting cities' participation in transnational climate governance.

Trading off benefits and requirements: How do city networks attract cities to their voluntary environmental programmes?

“…• Implementation Benefits (IM): City networks support the implementation of urban climate action through programmes of experimenting and piloting (Lee, 2018;Smeds & Acuto, 2018), support in accessing funds or directly providing funds (Bouteligier, 2010;Bulkeley et al, 2012) and helping in development plans and policies (Bellinson, 2018).…”

Local Actions for Reducing Global Greenhouse Gas Footprint: 10 Years of Covenant of Mayors Initiative

“…Single and small groups of municipalities play a leading role in the application of the SEAPs [51][52][53] and their economic investments are supported by citizens [54][55] even if issues and barriers are still remaining [56]. In the first decade of activity (2008-2017) CoM initiative has been joined by a total of 5996 signatories with 2020 target, 1024 with adaptation, 881 with 2030 targets.…”

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

“…Among the studies focused on specific territories, we can find works in France [63], in Denmark [64] and evaluations of the effectiveness of the SEAPs in Genoa in Italy [65], a work that evidences the type of measures implemented in Portugal [66], or studies that compare the implementation of CoMs in Italy and the United Kingdom, both with a qualitative and qualitative approach [67]. Other studies have investigated the motivations that lead governments to join city networks in the face of climate change [66,[68][69][70][71][72], the evaluation of involvement and participation through indicators [36,39], the creation of indicators for evaluating SEAPs based on energy efficiency [73] or the identification of good practices and guidelines to increase municipalities' own participation [4]. Unlike previous works, other works use multi-criteria analysis methodologies to support local administrations in SEAP programming [74], for scenario feasibility analysis [75] or for implementing decision support tools for local planning [76].…”

“…(iii) It is considered useful to improve the approach to adaptation as a new research challenge, and every effort must be made to incorporate it into decision-making processes [54], working towards the consolidation of transnational networks of knowledge and synergies [54,72] and the recovery of monitoring and information systems [54], and incorporating citizens as much as possible in the decision-making processes.…”