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Recent years have seen a considerable broadening of the ambitions in urban sustainability policy-making. With its Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 11 Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable, the 2030 Agenda stresses the critical role of cities in achieving sustainable development. In the context of SDG17 on partnerships, emphasis is also placed on the role of researchers and other scientific actors as change agents in the sustainability transformation. Against this backdrop, this article sheds light on different pathways through which science can contribute to urban sustainability. In particular, we discern four forms of science-policy-society interactions as key vectors: 1. sharing knowledge and providing scientific input to urban sustainability policy-making; 2. implementing transformative research projects; 3. contributing to local capacity building; and 4. self-governing towards sustainability. The pathways of influence are illustrated with empirical examples, and their interlinkages and limitations are discussed. We contend that there are numerous opportunities for actors from the field of sustainability science to engage with political and societal actors to enhance sustainable development at the local level.
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.
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.
The past few years have witnessed the emergence of a plethora of transnational climate governance experiments. They have been developed by a broad range of actors, such as cities, non-profit organizations, and private corporations. Several scholars have lately devoted particular attention to voluntary global business initiatives in the policy domain of climate change. Their studies have provided considerable insights into the role and function of such new modes of climate governance. However, the precise nature of the relationship between the various climate governance experiments and the international climate negotiations has not been analyzed in enough detail. Against this backdrop, the present article explores the interplay of a business sector climate governance experiment, i.e. the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) with the international climate regime. On the one hand, the article underscores that the GHG Protocol has filled a regulatory gap in global climate policy-making by providing the means for the corporate sector to comprehensively account and report their GHGs. On the other hand, it reveals that the application of the GHG Protocol guidelines depends to a large extent on the existence of an overarching policy framework set up by nation-states at the intergovernmental level. Only if private companies receive a clear political signal that stringent mandatory GHG emission controls and a global market-based instrument are at least likely to be adopted will they put substantial efforts into the accurate measurement and management of their GHGs. Thus, this article points to the limits of climate governance experimentation and suggests that business sector climate governance experiments need to be embedded in a coherent international regulatory setting which generates a clear stimulus for corporate action.
Much of the literature in the field of international relations is currently concerned with the changing patterns of authority in world politics. This is particularly evident in the policy domain of climate change, where a number of authors have observed a relocation of authority in global climate governance. These scholars claim that multilateral treaty making has lost much of its spark, and they emphasize the emergence of transnational governance arrangements, such as city networks, private certification schemes, and business self-regulation. However, the different types of interactions between the various transnational climate initiatives and the intergovernmental level have not been studied in much detail and only recently attracted growing scholarly interest. Therefore, the present article addresses this issue and focuses on the interplay between three different transnational climate governance arrangements and the international climate regime. The analysis in this article underscores that substate and nonstate actors have attained several authoritative functions in global climate policy making. Nevertheless, the three case studies also demonstrate that this development does not imply that we are witnessing a general shift of authority away from the intergovernmental level toward transnational actors. Instead, what can be observed in global climate governance is an ongoing reconfiguration of authority, which apparently reaffirms the centrality of the international climate regime. Thus, this article points to the need for a more nuanced perspective on the changing patterns of authority in global climate governance. In a nutshell, this study shows that the international climate regime is not the only location where the problem of climate change is addressed, while it highlights the persistent authority of state-based forms of regulation.
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is a prominent example of the mix of public and private authority in global climate policy-making. While national governments hold the supreme authority in the CDM, the oversight and daily supervision of the project-based mechanism have been delegated via an intergovernmental body to private corporations that evaluate the environmental performance of individual CDM projects. By focusing on the CDM as a particular instance of private authority in global climate governance, this article analyses the consequences associated with the delegation of authority to private actors. The article critically assesses the role of private auditing corporations, labelled Designated Operational Entities, in the regulatory framework of the CDM and points to serious trade-offs which accompany the privatisation of authority. The article's findings suggest that the promise of innovative modes of governance to increase the effectiveness of international regulation is seriously compromised by the profit-seeking behaviour of private actors. Hence, the article underscores the need to reconsider the balance between public and private authority in global (climate) governance.
Wissenschaft hat einen großen Anteil daran, internationale Umweltprobleme auf die politische Tagesordnung zu bringen und Maßnahmen zu ihrer technischen Lösung zu entwerfen. Dies gilt sowohl für den Abbau der Ozonschicht als auch für den Klimawandel. So relevant die Generierung von wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen in diesen Feldern ist, so komplex ist die Interaktion zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik und so schwierig ist es, Verlässliches darüber zu sagen. Thomas Hickmann analysiert das Verhältnis von Wissenschaft und Politik in internationalen Umweltregimen aus einer neuen Perspektive. Er untersucht nicht den Einfluss wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnisse auf die Politik, sondern rückt die Frage in den Fokus, inwieweit Regierungen Einfluss auf die Wissenschaft nehmen, um nationale Interessen durchzusetzen. Diese Perspektive wurde in der Forschung bislang weitgehend vernachlässigt, weshalb eine systematische Analyse dieser Frage in der Literatur fehlt.
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.