Ten years after Copenhagen: Reimagining climate change governance in urban areas

Abstract

In this review, we take stock of the last decade of research on climate change governance in urban areas since the 2009 conference in Copenhagen. Using a systematic evaluation of academic publications in the field, we argue that the current moment of research has been shaped by two recent waves of thought. The first, a wave of urban optimism, which started in 2011 and peaked in 2013, engaged with urban areas as alternative sites for governance in the face of the crumbling international climate regime. The second, a wave of urban pragmatism, which started in 2016, has sought to reimagine urban areas following the integration of the “sub‐national” as a meaningful category in the international climate regime after the 2015 Paris Agreement for Climate Action. Four themes dominate the debate on climate change governance in urban areas: why there is climate action, how climate action is delivered, how it is articulated in relation to internationally reaching networks, and what implications it has to understand environmental or climate justice within urban settings. Calls to understand the impacts of climate change policy have fostered research on climate change politics, issues of power and control, conflicts, and the inherently unjust nature of much climate policy. What is largely missing from the current scholarship is a sober assessment of the mundane aspects of climate change governance on the ground and a concern with what kind of cultural and socio‐economic change is taking place, beyond comparative analyses of the effectiveness of climate policies. This article is categorized under: Policy and Governance > Governing Climate Change in Communities, Cities, and Regions

Power in resilience and resilience's power in climate change scholarship

“…Although the recommendations above may well be compelling from a conceptual as well as theoretical perspective, the methodological angles of how to examine and overcome power asymmetries in daily resilience building remain ambiguous and the harnessing of scholarly advances for practical achievements challenging. There is an abundance of empirical work that demonstrates how citizen participation in climate resilience decision making can go unquestioned (Castán Broto & Westman, 2020) and how community‐led committees and other seemingly participatory engagements often fail to be inclusive (Koslov, 2019; Woroniecki et al, 2019) or reinforce existing hierarchies across and within scales (Buggy & McNamara, 2016), for instance via elite domination (Córdoba Vargas et al, 2020; McDonnell, 2020). To overcome such pervasive shortcomings, recent methodological advances in resilience scholarship underscore the need to nourish political capabilities and political spaces; the aim is to actively contest exploitative and oppressive power dynamics while mobilizing alternative, emancipatory subjectivities that are needed to negotiate inclusive and equitable resilience in practice and deliberate possible transformative pathways (e.g., Ensor et al, 2021; Matin et al, 2018).…”

Thinking Urban Transformation through Elsewhere: A Conversation between Real-World Labs in São Paulo and Hamburg on Governance and Practical Action

“…Transition management [5][6][7] Structures that nurture niche development, experimental spaces for innovation and learning [8][9][10] Element of niche development embedded in structuration processes Transformative science [11,12] Reflexive learning spaces that combine practice and scientific perspectives [13][14][15][16] Physical research infrastructure…”

“…"Spillover" here means that the RWL triggered, initiated or influenced any instrument or activity within another mode of governance (e.g., a planning process, a new partnership or an enabling activity). The spillover is then critically scrutinized as to whether it is likely to enhance long-term transformative change or instead cement 'business as usual' [11,29], thus responding to one of the research gaps shown in Section 2 above.…”

“…Both themes recognize that RWLs may open new spaces and trigger change in terms of governance but also in terms of (non-instrumental) practical action in the city. With respect to both themes, we will critically scrutinize whether the RWLs reinforce dominant institutional settings and actor constellations ("fit-and-conform") or "stretch-and-transform" them [11,29,58].…”

Urban Governance and Decision-making under Climate Change: a Critical Review of Frameworks, Methods and Tools from the Perspectives of Ecological Economics and Sustainability Science

“…Large cities are hotspots of climate impacts and vulnerability, which requires particularly responsible and well-calibrated action (Hunt & Watkiss, 2011). Despite signifi cant progress in urban climate governance over the past decade, it often remains constrained, fragmented and ineffective in regards to the magnitude and scope of the challenges faced by cities, which has led to the context where old, new and emerging frameworks, methods and tools coexist, complement each other, as well as clash and compete (Broto & Westman, 2020).…”