Investigating patterns of local climate governance: How low‐carbon municipalities and intentional communities intervene in social practices

Abstract

The local level has gained prominence in climate policy and governance in recent years as it is increasingly perceived as a privileged arena for policy experimentation and social and institutional innovation. However, the success of local climate governance in industrialized countries has been limited. One reason may be that local communities focus too much on strategies of technology‐oriented ecological modernization and individual behavior change and too little on strategies that target unsustainable social practices and their embeddedness in complex socioeconomic patterns. In this paper we assess and compare the strategies of “low‐carbon municipalities” (top‐down initiatives) and those of “intentional communities” (bottom‐up initiatives). We were interested to determine to what extent and in which ways each community type intervenes in social practices to curb carbon emissions and to explore the scope for further and deeper interventions on the local level. Using an analytical framework based on social practice theory we identify characteristic patterns of intervention for each community type. We find that low‐carbon municipalities face difficulties in transforming carbon‐intensive social practices. While offering some additional low‐carbon choices, their ability to reduce carbon‐intensive practices is very limited. Their focus on efficiency and individual choice shows little transformative potential. Intentional communities, by contrast, have more institutional and organizational options to intervene in the web of social practices. Finally, we explore to what extent low‐carbon municipalities can learn from intentional communities and propose strategies of hybridization for policy innovation to combine the strengths of both models.

Performance of local level planning policies for reducing greenhouse gases: insight from new buildings in Scotland

“…The GHG policies studied were based on production ratio (against baseline) instead of how much GHG emission was avoided based on consumption and/or design elements that drive GHG emissions. Other scholars have also explained how GHG policies could achieve deeper abatement by shifting focus from technology-oriented efficiencies to strategies that target practices and patterns that underpin GHG production (Hausknost et al , 2018).…”

Transformative pragmatism: How a diversity of Leitbilder is harnessed for rural transformation in Réiden, Luxembourg

“…Réiden differs from other paradigmatic places such as Totnes in the United Kingdom or German Ecovillages. Unlike these intentional communities (Hausknost et al, 2018) “surrounded by reality” (North, 2014), which attract people aspiring specific sustainable or spiritual forms of life (Jaeggi, 2013) and that may thus serve as an avant‐garde for community transformations, Réiden has a mainstream and conservative citizenry. In Réiden, we see diverse citizens associating with one another pragmatically rather than purposively across social milieus and political affiliations.…”

“…Initiatives like those in Réiden are often conceptualized as grassroots or social innovations (Haxeltine et al, 2016; Moulaert et al, 2005; Seyfang & Smith, 2007). Studies assess such initiatives' relation to social change and development from various perspectives: including post‐growth or utopian experiments for post‐carbon, post‐capitalist futures (Brown et al, 2012; Feola & Nunes, 2013; Hausknost et al, 2018; Taylor Aiken, 2017a). Critical regional development identifies initiatives' potentials as tools of (neo‐)endogenous rural development in the absence of public infrastructure and economic and demographic decline (Cochrane, 2010; Hadjimichalis & Hudson, 2014; Neumeier, 2017; Pike, Rodríguez‐Pose, & Tomaney, 2007).…”

‘Small stories of closing loops’: social circularity and the everyday circular economy

“…While they can return positive results (e.g. see Gustavsson and Elander 2017;Hausknost et al 2018), their ability to meaningfully reduce individual and household environmental impacts across services (water, energy, food) is patchy and often make very small-and indeed sometimes partially counter-productive-differences to collective resource uses and disposal (e.g. Changing Markets Foundation 2018; Lawrence and McManus 2008).…”