Climate pioneership and leadership in structurally disadvantaged maritime port cities |
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Authors: | Rüdiger K.W. Wurzel Jeremy F.G. Moulton Winfried Osthorst Linda Mederake Pauline Deutz Andrew E.G. Jonas |
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Affiliation: | 1. School of Law and Politics, University of Hull, UKR.K.Wurzel@hull.ac.uk;3. Department of Politics and Department of Environment and Geography, University of York, UK;4. Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Applied Sciences Bremen, Germany;5. Ecologic Institute, Germany;6. School of Environmental Science, University of Hull,Geography, UK |
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Abstract: | ABSTRACTInnovative 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. |
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Keywords: | Structurally disadvantaged cities climate pioneers leaders offshore wind energy jobs societal participation |
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