TY - JOUR
A1 - Hickmann, Thomas
A1 - Widerberg, Oscar
A1 - Lederer, Markus
A1 - Pattberg, Philipp H.
T1 - The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat as an orchestrator in global climate policymaking
JF - International review of administrative sciences : an international journal of comparative public administration
N2 - Scholars have recently devoted increasing attention to the role and function of international bureaucracies in global policymaking. Some of them contend that international public officials have gained significant political influence in various policy fields. Compared to other international bureaucracies, the political leeway of the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has been considered rather limited. Due to the specific problem structure of the policy domain of climate change, national governments endowed this intergovernmental treaty secretariat with a relatively narrow mandate. However, this article argues that in the past few years, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat has gradually loosened its straitjacket and expanded its original spectrum of activity by engaging different sub-national and non-state actors into a policy dialogue using facilitative orchestration as a mode of governance. The present article explores the recent evolution of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat and investigates the way in which it initiates, guides, broadens and strengthens sub-national and non-state climate actions to achieve progress in the international climate negotiations.
Points for practitioners
The Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has lately adopted new roles and functions in global climate policymaking. While previously seen as a rather technocratic body that, first and foremost, serves national governments, the Climate Secretariat increasingly interacts with sub-national governments, civil society organizations and private companies to push the global response to climate change forward. We contend that the Climate Secretariat can contribute to global climate policymaking by coordinating and steering the initiatives of non-nation-state actors towards coherence and good practice.
KW - climate change
KW - environmental policymaking
KW - intergovernmental relations
KW - international bureaucracies
KW - sub-national and non-state actors
Y1 - 2021
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/0020852319840425
SN - 0020-8523
SN - 1461-7226
VL - 87
IS - 1
SP - 21
EP - 38
PB - Sage
CY - Los Angeles, Calif. [u.a.]
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Hickmann, Thomas
A1 - Lederer, Markus
T1 - Einleitung: Harald Fuhr - visionärer Grenzgänger mit Leidenschaft, Eingebung und Augenmaß
JF - Leidenschaft und Augenmaß : sozialwissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf Entwicklung, Verwaltung, Umwelt und Klima : Festschrift für Harald Fuhr
Y1 - 2020
SN - 978-3-8487-5249-2
SP - 13
EP - 21
PB - Nomos
CY - Bade-Baden
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Hickmann, Thomas
A1 - Elsässer, Joshua Philipp
T1 - New alliances in global environmental governance
BT - how intergovernmental treaty secretariats interact with non-state actors to address transboundary environmental problems
JF - International environmental agreements: politics, law and economics
N2 - The past few years have witnessed a growing interest among scholars and policy-makers in the interplay of international bureaucracies with civil society organizations, non-profit entities, and the private sector. Authors concerned with global environmental politics have made considerable progress in capturing this phenomenon. Nevertheless, we still lack in-depth empirical knowledge on the precise nature of such institutional interlinkages across governance levels and scales. Building upon the concept oforchestration, this article focuses on the relationship between specific types of international bureaucracies and actors other than the nation-state. In particular, we investigate how the secretariats of the three Rio Conventions reach out to non-state actors in order to exert influence on the outcome of international environmental negotiations. Our analysis demonstrates that the three intergovernmental treaty secretariats utilize various styles of orchestration in their relation to non-state actors and seek to push the global responses to the respective transboundary environmental problems forward. This article points to a recent trend towards a direct collaboration between these secretariats and non-state actors which gives rise to the idea that new alliances between these actors are emerging in global environmental governance.
KW - global environmental governance
KW - institutional interplay
KW - intergovernmental treaty secretariats
KW - orchestration
KW - Rio Conventions
KW - non-state actors
Y1 - 2020
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10784-020-09493-5
SN - 1567-9764
SN - 1573-1553
VL - 20
IS - 3
SP - 459
EP - 481
PB - Springer
CY - Dordrecht [u.a.]
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Hickmann, Thomas
A1 - Stehle, Fee
T1 - The Embeddedness of Urban Climate Politics in Multilevel Governance
BT - a Case Study of South Africa’s Major Cities
JF - The journal of environment & development : a review of international policy
N2 - Numerous scholars have lately highlighted the importance of cities in the global response to climate change. However, we still have little systematic knowledge on the evolution of urban climate politics in the Global South. In particular, we lack empirical studies that examine how local climate actions arise in political-administrative systems of developing and emerging economies. Therefore, this article adopts a multilevel governance perspective to explore the climate mitigation responses of three major cities in South Africa by looking at their vertical and horizontal integration in the wider governance framework. In the absence of a coherent national climate policy, Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban have developed distinct climate actions within their jurisdictions. In their effort to address climate change, transnational city networks have provided considerable technical support to these cities. Yet, substantial domestic political-economic obstacles hinder the three cities to develop a more ambitious stance on climate change.
KW - climate change
KW - developing and emerging economies
KW - local climate policy making
KW - multilevel governance
KW - South Africa
KW - transnational city networks
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1177/1070496518819121
SN - 1070-4965
SN - 1552-5465
VL - 28
IS - 1
SP - 54
EP - 77
PB - Sage Publ.
CY - Thousand Oaks
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Elsässer, Joshua Philipp
A1 - Hickmann, Thomas
A1 - Stehle, Fee
T1 - The Role of Cities in South Africa’s Energy Gridlock
JF - Case Studies in the Environment
N2 - South Africa’s energy sector finds itself in a gridlock situation. The sector is controlled by the state-owned utility Eskom holding the monopoly on the generation and transmission of electricity, which is almost exclusively produced from domestically extracted coal. At the same time, the constitutional mandate enables municipalities to distribute and sell electricity generated by Eskom to local consumers, which constitutes a large part of the cities’ municipal income. This is a strong disincentive for city governments to promote reductions in energy consumption and substantially limits the scope for urban action on energy efficiency and renewable energies. In the present case study, we portray the current development in South Africa’s energy policy and trace how deadlocked legal, financial, and institutional barriers block the transition from a coal-based energy system toward a greener and more sustainable energy economy. We furthermore point to the efforts of major South African cities to introduce low-carbon strategies in their jurisdictions and highlight key challenges for the future development of the country’s energy sector. By engaging with this case study, readers will become familiar with a prime example of the wider phenomenon of national political–economic obstacles to the progress in sustainable urban development.
Y1 - 2018
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1525/cse.2018.001297
SN - 2473-9510
VL - 2
IS - 1
SP - 1
EP - 7
PB - University of California Press
CY - Oakland
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Höhne, Chris
A1 - Fuhr, Harald
A1 - Hickmann, Thomas
A1 - Lederer, Markus
A1 - Stehle, Fee
ED - Nuesiri, Emmanuel O.
T1 - REDD plus and the reconfiguration of public authority in the forest sector
BT - a comparative case study of Indonesia and Brazil
JF - Global Forest Governance and Climate Change
N2 - Since the 1980s, central governments have decentralized forestry to local governments in many countries of the Global South. More recently, REDD+ has started to impact forest policy-making in these countries by providing incentives to ensure a national-level approach to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Höhne et al. analyze to what extent central governments have rebuilt capacity at the national level, imposed regulations from above, and interfered in forest management by local governments for advancing REDD+. Using the examples of Brazil and Indonesia, the chapter illustrates that while REDD+ has not initiated a large-scale recentralization in the forestry sector, it has supported the reinforcement and pooling of REDD+ related competences at the central government level.
Y1 - 2018
SN - 978-3-319-71946-7
SN - 978-3-319-71945-0
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71946-7_8
SP - 203
EP - 241
PB - Palgrave
CY - Basingstoke
ER -
TY - JOUR
A1 - Fuhr, Harald
A1 - Hickmann, Thomas
A1 - Kern, Kristine
T1 - The role of cities in multi-level climate governance
BT - local climate policies and the 1.5 degrees C target
JF - Current opinion in environmental sustainability
N2 - The past two decades have witnessed widespread scholarly interest in the role of cities in climate policy-making. This research has considerably improved our understanding of the local level in the global response to climate change. The present article synthesizes the literature on local climate policies with respect to the 1.5 degrees C target. While most studies have focused on pioneering cities and networks, we contend that the broader impacts of local climate actions and their relationship to regional, national, and international policy frameworks have not been studied in enough detail. Against this backdrop, we introduce the concept of upscaling and contend that local climate initiatives must go hand in hand with higher-level policies and be better integrated into the multi-level governance system.
Y1 - 2017
U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2017.10.006
SN - 1877-3435
SN - 1877-3443
VL - 30
SP - 1
EP - 6
PB - Elsevier
CY - Oxford
ER -