Leadership and lesson-drawing in the European Union’s multilevel climate governance system

ABSTRACT

The important role that climate leaders and leadership play at different levels of the European Union (EU) multilevel governance system is exemplified. Initially, climate leader states set the pace with ambitious policy measures that were adopted largely on an ad hoc basis. Since the mid-1980s, the EU has developed a multilevel climate governance system that has facilitated leadership and lesson-drawing at all governance levels including the local level. The EU has become a global climate policy leader by example although it had been set up as a ‘leaderless Europe’. The resulting ‘leadership without leader’ paradox cannot be sufficiently explained merely by reference to top-level EU climate policies. Local-level climate innovations and lesson-drawing have increasingly been encouraged by the EU’s multilevel climate governance system which has become more polycentric. The recognition of economic co-benefits of climate policy measures has helped to further the EU’s climate leadership role.     

Tightening the grip: environmental governance under Xi Jinping

In the space of a few years, China’s global image with regard to environmental matters has significantly improved. Particularly since Xi Jinping’s coming-to-power in 2012 China’s reputation in the global climate change regime has improved markedly and it has gained accolades for a new determination to reverse environmental degradation at home. China’s incipient green transformation is partly due to a new actor constellation in environmental governance, a striking feature of which is the prominence of ad hoc campaigns that offer quick results but that may undermine the creation of law-based enforcement mechanisms in the long term. Another development – China’s increasing use of emerging technologies and big data analytics – has given rise to new forms of government-business alliances. These new players and innovative approaches have injected momentum into China’s environmental governance system and suggest that, contrary to conventional wisdom, authoritarian regimes can be responsive to citizen demands under certain circumstances. Yet it remains to be seen whether long-term environmental goals can be met, due to a pervasive lack of accountability, the weakening of civil society and heavy constraints on public participation.     

The green state and industrial decarbonisation

ABSTRACT

The large share of carbon emitted by energy-intensive industries in the extraction and processing of basic materials must be limited to decarbonise society and the economy. Ways in which the state can govern industrial decarbonisation and contributes to green state theory are explored by addressing a largely ignored issue: the green state’s industrial relations and its role in industrial governance. With insights from a Swedish case study, the tension between the state’s economic imperative and ecological concerns in greening industry are shown to persist. However, as the energy-intensive industry’s previously privileged position in the economy is weakening, industry is opened to decarbonisation strategies. While the case exposes a number of governance challenges, it also suggests potential areas where the state can pursue decarbonisation in energy-intensive industry and points the way to an active role of the green state in governing industrial decarbonisation and greening industry.     

Environmental policy innovations in China: a critical analysis from a low-carbon city

The Chinese state is squarely ‘back’ in the business of environmental governance with an increasing number of policy innovations or experiments to resolve environmental issues. These have been mostly enacted through the ‘experimentation under hierarchy’ framework, undergirded by compensation-for-performance incentive structures for local agents. Based on on-site ethnography in local China, a critical analysis is presented of low-carbon city policy experiments – one of the most prominent environmental policies introduced in the past decade. Using lessons from the agency theory, it is hypothesized that outcomes of these policy innovations are contingent on different policy dimensions. Although a number of positive outcomes have been achieved in output-oriented dimensions, the fundamental difficulty of specifying all aspects of complex, multidimensional work tasks involved in low-carbon city development has frequently led to policy unmaking. The findings raise important questions about China’s tendency to rely excessively on compensation-for-performance structures to promote environmental policies.     

Negotiating energy democracy in practice: governance processes in community energy projects

There is a growing ‘energy democracy’ (ED) movement which regards the transition to renewable energy as an opportunity for socio-economic transformation, as well as technological innovation. The literature on ED tends to associate greater democratic control of energy systems with increased community control over the means of energy generation and distribution. Nonetheless, this literature often assumes rather than demonstrates that the forms of governance it promotes are more democratic than the status quo. This analysis contributes to the emerging field of ED by assessing the complex and varied ways in which communities in Scotland practise energy governance. By focusing on three key governance processes (decision-making, accountability and dispute resolution), the importance of local contexts for the establishment and negotiation of democratic practices is demonstrated. This local specificity, however, also raises further questions regarding the universal applicability of the ED concept.     

Social representations of governance for change towards sustainability: perspectives of sustainability advocates

There is a substantial body of literature on public understandings of large-scale ‘environmental’ phenomena such as climate change and resource degradation. At the same time, political science and economics analyse the governance arrangements to deal with such issues. These realms of research rarely meet: there has been little research into people’s understandings of the governance of environmental change. This study adds a psychological perspective to governance research by investigating social representations of governance that promotes societal change towards sustainability, and related practices. It examines data from qualitative interviews with sustainability-interested people in seven European countries (n = 105). The analysis identified building blocks of representations suitable as an analytical framework for future research on governance representations. The diversity of their content reflected a range of pathways to societal change. Representations often seemed to have a creative function as a guiding vision for individuals’ own practices, but their wider transformative potential was constrained.     

Climate pioneership and leadership in structurally disadvantaged maritime port cities

ABSTRACT

Innovative climate governance in small-to-medium-sized structurally disadvantaged cities (SDCs) are assessed. Considering their deeply ingrained severe economic and social problems it would be reasonable to assume that SDCs act primarily as climate laggards or at best as followers. However, novel empirical findings show that SDCs are capable of acting as climate pioneers. Different types and styles of climate leadership and pioneership and how they operate within multi-level and polycentric governance structures are identified and assessed. SDCs seem relatively readily willing to adopt transformational climate pioneership styles to create ‘green’ jobs, for example, in the offshore wind energy sector and with the aim of improving their poor external image. However, in order to sustain transformational climate pioneership they often have to rely on support from ‘higher’ levels of governance. For SDCs, there is a tension between learning from each other’s best practice and fierce economic competition in climate innovation.     

Simulative governance: on the collaborative narrative of civil society participation in the CDM stakeholder framework

The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is often cited as an exemplar of new, hybrid forms of global environmental governance operating at the public–private interface. Practically, enacting this arrangement involves a wide range of non-state actors. This broad involvement is here assumed to mark a shift towards more polycentric and networked modes of governance in which agents collaborate as ‘stakeholders’ in the process of consensual rule-setting and implementation. Using post-political critique, the depoliticising effects of the stakeholder framework on civil society actors are interrogated, using formal and informal participation opportunities to raise concerns regarding specific CDM projects. The analysis suggests that the CDM’s collaborative narrative of stakeholding structurally fails to stimulate public (re)engagement and is, instead, a prime example of simulative governance that struggles to achieve the simultaneity of two incompatibilities: the participatory revolution and the post-political turn.     

The four faces of the environmental state: environmental governance regimes in 28 countries

The primary task for the environmental state is to address problems related to the market’s externalisation of environmental costs. It has four main resources at its disposal: regulation, redistribution, organisation, and knowledge generation. The way these four resources are deployed make up a state’s environmental governance arrangements. Using data on environmental regulation, taxes, public administrations, and knowledge production from 28 countries, and a hierarchical cluster analysis, four different types of environmental states are identified: established, emerging, partial, and weak. This is followed by some suggestions for further research on the environmental state in a comparative perspective.     

Governance via persuasion: environmental NGOs and the social licence to operate

The ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO) concept is increasingly associated with environmental activism in nations with prominent resource extractive industries. Environmental non-governmental organisations (ENGOs) deploy it as a campaigning strategy to contest corporate activity, in particular, the environmental sustainability of existing or planned commercial projects. Drawing on two prominent Australian ENGO campaigns – against Seafish Tasmania’s Abel Tasman vessel and Tassal’s proposed fish farm operations on Tasmania’s east coast – the SLO strategy is assessed in the context of the governance literature, arguing that it constitutes ‘governance via persuasion’, a mode that incorporates appeals to normative values. Australian SLO campaigns are primarily directed at the state, promoting opportunities for ENGOs to shape reviews and revisions to environmental regulation alongside governmental and corporate actors. SLO campaigns are therefore a contemporary expression of environmental strategies seeking regulatory change in contrast to ENGO-led private governance initiatives that often bypass the state.     

The environmental state at sea

Seas and oceans are confronted with a plethora of environmental problems, caused by land-based activities (agriculture, industries, and ports) and by maritime activities (such as shipping, fishing, oil and gas drilling, tourism, and navigational dredging). Environmental problems at sea challenge the efficacy of state sovereignty. Who is responsible, accountable, and regulates environmental and spatial problems at the level of regional seas, and what is the role of states in these processes of governance? In the regional seas and on the high seas, the environmental state is challenged by two developments: states become players at different levels, and states are confronted with the activities of big market players where they have no or little jurisdiction. The different forms of the environmental state in Europe’s regional seas and in the Arctic Ocean are examined.     

The effect of industry activities on public support for ‘fracking’

Research suggests that previous, current, and prospective extractive industry activities influence perceptions of new development. Studies that have drawn this conclusion, however, have usually focused on specific projects in specific communities. Here, these factors are examined on an aggregate, national scale. Combining geospatial data on extractive industry activities and survey data from a nationally representative sample (N = 1061), the influence of extractive industry activities on support for fracking is studied. While limited evidence is found for the impact of proximity to oil and gas wells or production on support for fracking, employment levels in the natural resources and mining sector in the respondent’s county and residence in an area experiencing active oil and gas development significantly increase support for fracking. The results highlight the role of spatial and community factors in shaping support for energy development.     

The territorialization of transnational sustainability governance: production,power and globalization in Iceland’s fisheries

To contribute to the literature on transnational sustainability governance hybrids, a new fisheries certification program in Iceland that was originally developed as an alternative to the non-governmental Marine Stewardship Council is examined. While this new program appears on the surface to constitute a purely nationalistic reaction against external non-state authority, the new governance institution is also non-governmental and incorporates international norms and institutions. To explain this new governance hybrid, Robert Cox’s International Political Economy approach to production and power is engaged. This approach theorizes the co-constitution of the social forces of production, state–society complexes and global governance. It is argued that the Icelandic case is not entirely localized or unique; it is part of a broader movement in which social forces of production respond to new market-oriented transnational sustainability governance institutions by developing territorially embedded but transnationally legitimate alternatives.     

What makes for good and bad neighbours? An emerging research agenda in the study of Chinese environmental politics

Tackling China’s grave environmental problems increasingly turns on questions of sub-national interjurisdictional relations. What are the conditions under which neighbouring localities cooperate in stewardship of the natural environment? What factors give rise to interjurisdictional conflict such as pollution spillovers? Through a combination of empirical and theoretical reflections, a research agenda to better understand these issues is outlined. First, China’s recent innovative approaches to the promotion of interjurisdictional cooperation are examined. An in-depth case study of interjurisdictional ecological protection ‘redline’ zones underscores the difficulties of inculcating environmental neighbourliness between local governments. Yet, a precise diagnosis of the problem remains elusive because too little is known about the underlying drivers of interjurisdictional relations in China. An analytical framework that draws insight from contemporary China studies and comparative environmental governance scholarship is offered for the study of interjurisdictional environmental relations in China.     

De facto governance: how authoritative assessments construct climate engineering as an object of governance

ABSTRACT

Analyses of climate engineering (CE) governance have accelerated in the last decade. A key claim is that CE remains a largely ungoverned space, with shared norms, institutional arrangements, and formal rules to regulate CE not yet present. In contrast, here it is argued that de facto governance of CE is underway, discernible in an ordering of this nascent field of inquiry by unacknowledged sources of steering. One key source of de facto governance is analyzed: high-level ‘authoritative assessments’ of CE. The focus is on how these assessments are constructing CE as an object of governance through demarcating and categorizing this emerging field of inquiry, and how this contributes to normalizing and institutionalizing CE research (and CE research communities). Scrutinizing the distinct nature and political implications of de facto governance, particularly of novel and speculative technological trajectories not yet subject to formal steering, remains a key task for governance scholars.     

Voluntary instruments for ambitious objectives? The experience of the EU Covenant of Mayors

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, innovative governance architectures have been progressively promoted across European Union (EU) environmental and climate policies with the purpose of improving the effectiveness of intervention through better cross-sectoral policy integration and increased involvement of sub-state and non-governmental actors in the policy process. By combining the theoretical insights of polycentric governance and the concept of usage, the case of the Covenant of Mayors (CoM) is analysed to uncover the extent to which this voluntary programme has empowered local authorities within the EU strategy for sustainable energy by encouraging coordination and learning. This illustrates how a range of policy variables determined the dynamics of the programme’s implementation in Italy and the United Kingdom.     

Globalization’s limits to the environmental state? Integrating telecoupling into global environmental governance

Globalization entails increased interdependence and interconnectivities among distal regions and social-ecological systems. This global interregional connectedness – telecoupling – gives rise to specific sustainability challenges, which require new governance solutions. Moving beyond ‘scaling-up’ governance to address global environmental problems, and exploring the implications of telecoupling for state-led environmental governance, ways the state can effectively address telecoupled environmental issues both within and beyond national borders are addressed, drawing on the example of soy trade between Brazil and Germany. This builds on recent contributions to the literature on governance of interregional ecological challenges to elaborate potential policy and governance options, ranging from classical bilateral, multilateral, and international agreements, to information-based, economic, and hybrid governance modes. While telecoupled environmental problems create governance challenges related to scale, knowledge gaps, coordination, and state capacity, the state has an important role to play. To explore this further, interdisciplinary inquiry is required that includes but moves beyond the state.     

Reinventing the bicycle: how calculative practices shape urban environmental governance

The concept of sustainability transitions has become increasingly prominent in academic and policy discourses during recent decades, but the importance of the link between knowledge-producing epistemic practices and urban governance has been underappreciated in this discourse. Based on a case study of cycling in Copenhagen between 1900 and 2015, and drawing upon a governmentality-inspired analytical framework, this research demonstrates that transformative governance may be initiated by epistemic practices that render urban systems visible in other ways. Urban cycling has been reconstructed over time in Copenhagen as a traffic safety ‘problem’, a component of the experiential and liveable city, and a health-producing (and hence economically valuable) regional transport mode. The research findings emphasise that epistemic practices can provide a powerful stimulus for creating changes in urban governance. The results also provide support for initiatives to broaden the terms of academic debate on sustainability transitions.     

The oil and gas sector: from climate laggard to climate leader?

ABSTRACT

The oil and gas industry has traditionally been reticent to engage with the issues surrounding climate change, typically being cast as a laggard. Yet, over recent years, the sector has begun taking on a more active role in climate governance, doing so in a variety of capacities – as initiators, catalysts and participants in industry-led or multi-stakeholder efforts. The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative is reviewed, as a case study to illustrate emerging climate leadership within the global oil and gas industry. In 2015, its members committed to a two-degree pathway. The paucity of research on the nascent role of oil and gas firms in climate governance is addressed.     

Who shapes local climate policy? Unpicking governance arrangements in English and German cities

A new framework for analysing subnational policymaking is applied to climate governance in the ‘twin towns’ of Newcastle upon Tyne and Gelsenkirchen. Low levels of resource interdependence between central and local government in England mean that Newcastle Council has to rely heavily on other horizontal actors to achieve its climate objectives. In contrast, Gelsenkirchen Council receives substantial support from higher tiers of government, which gives it greater control over policymaking within the locality. Greater independence between tiers of government can make it more difficult for subnational bodies to adopt the kind of ambitious policies that may be necessary to combat wicked and/or significant policy challenges such as climate change. Instead, interdependent ‘joint-decision’ systems, which facilitate mutual support across tiers of government, may be better equipped to ensure that subnational public bodies have the capacity to act appropriately.