Integrating Climate Change into Governance at the Municipal Scale: An Institutional Perspective on Practices in Denmark

Wejs, Anja

doi:10.1068/c1215

Cited by 96 publications

(42 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…These considerations suggest that the possibility of "mainstreaming" or integrating climate change into an existing regulative context can not be taken as given, but should rather be problematized with regard to what can be done at what level of regulation and use of instruments, within the existing regulative context and the competing priorities or requirements that may exist [54,55]. These findings are partly supported elsewhere, as it has been found that, despite significant possibilities for the municipal level to self-organize such as through providing leadership on climate issues or utilizing planning instruments available on the local level, measures have often retained a relatively soft, guiding character [1, 22,30,[56][57][58]. While successful examples can be seen for instance in the Netherlands, it could be argued that the high level of integration of water issues into legislative and planning systems [59] and their application in well-resourced larger cities, such as Rotterdam, as well as related existing spatial planning mechanisms and processes, together pose a context of well-developed instruments and practices without which the integration of adaptation in these cases cannot be understood [2].…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 61%

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

Keskitalo¹,

Juhola²,

Baron³

et al. 2017

Sustainable Cities

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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.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 61%

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

Keskitalo¹,

Juhola²,

Baron³

et al. 2017

Sustainable Cities

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“…The second was the presence of a climate change policy entrepreneur. Many studies on the development of climate change mitigation and adaptation policies in cities have identified that such individuals help drive action on these issues in their cities through recruiting others to support their efforts (Bulkeley & Kern, 2006;Burch, 2010;Collier & L€ ofstedt, 1997;Kalafatis, Grace, & Gibbons, 2015;Lambright, Chagnon, & Harvey, 1996;Mukheibir & Ziervogel, 2007;Roberts, 2008;Wejs, 2014). I also included a measure of the number of natural disasters that a city experienced from 2000 to 2014.…”

Section: Independent Variable Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing Climate Change Policy Adoption and Its Extension across Areas of City Policymaking

Kalafatis¹

2017

Policy Studies Journal

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Public policies increasingly address complex problems such as climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation that require forging connections across existing areas of policy activity. Despite the emerging prominence of these types of policymaking challenges, more research is needed to understand policy responses to them. In this paper, I use survey responses from 287 cities and a hurdle model to comparatively examine the factors that underlie the adoption of climate change mitigation and adaptation as issues influencing city policymaking and their extension across areas of city policymaking. I find evidence that while social change, crisis, and conditions supporting nascent coalitions were associated with adoption, extension across areas of policymaking was associated with the city?s prevailing political economy as well as the resources for expanding communities of interest. In the process, I offer empirical evidence for existing similarities and differences in cities? considerations about climate change mitigation and adaptation; particularly that the number of policymaking areas influenced by mitigation was associated with financial factors while the number influenced by adaptation was associated with socioeconomic ones.

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“…One example is the research of Wejs (Wejs, 2014;Wejs and Cashmore, 2014;. The above lists of barriers are useful as a starting point, but require further elaboration.…”

Section: Explanations For the Performance Of Epi Strategiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a Systematic Framework for the Analysis of Environmental Policy Integration

2014

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Environmental policy integration (EPI) refers to the incorporation of environmental concerns in non-environmental policy sectors. EPI aims to avoid conflicts between environmental and other policy objectives and to enhance environmental policy by directly targeting the driving forces of environmental degradation. In practice, however, the potential of EPI has not been fully utilized. Scientific knowledge of EPI is found in several, largely isolated, bodies of literature (on EPI, climate policy integration and environmental impact assessment/strategic environmental assessment) and does not provide an adequate answer to the question of what EPI strategies work, where and why. A systematic framework based on comparative empirical research is required to contribute to more effective EPI strategies. In this paper we formulate a research agenda for the development of such a framework on the governance of EPI that is robust, i.e. builds on other theories of environmental governance and policy change and that envisages large-scale, international comparative empirical analysis. Copyright policy integration, policy cooperation and policy coordinationconcepts related to (but not necessarily coincident with) EPI 7 :• political factors (commitment, leadership, etc.); • institutional and organizational factors (similarity of structures, central coordination, etc.); 7 In their terms, policy cooperation is about collaboration between policy actors from different sectors, which may result in adjustments of sectoral policies to avoid contradictions and to make them 'mutually enforcing' or even policy integration, i.e. one joint policy for the sectors involved. Source: Arts et al., 2012: 1250025-21.Figure 1. Perceived effect of EIA on the integration of environmental concerns in decision-making in The Netherlands (left) and the UK (right). Source: Arts et al. (2012) 238H. Runhaar et al. 1. To what extent are environmental concerns incorporated in non-environmental policy sectors? 2. What EPI strategies have been employed in these sectors and for what reasons have these strategies been chosen? 3. To what extent have the EPI strategies at issue contributed to a reduction of environmental pressure? 4. To what extent is it possible to transfer promising EPI strategies to other sectors and countries, in view of the sector-and context-specificity of governance strategies and their performance? 5. Which new hypotheses can be formulated about the performance of EPI strategies and its main explanatory factors? 240H. Runhaar et al.

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Integrating Climate Change into Governance at the Municipal Scale: An Institutional Perspective on Practices in Denmark

Cited by 96 publications

References 51 publications

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

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

Comparing Climate Change Policy Adoption and Its Extension across Areas of City Policymaking

Towards a Systematic Framework for the Analysis of Environmental Policy Integration

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