Local climate governance and leadership

Abstract

Global crises, both sudden and gradual, challenges the traditional sector organization of local government. They require broader engagement, interaction, coordination and co-creation between a wider set of actors. This panel seeks to flesh out the consequences for local political and administrative leadership by drawing on studies of city climate leadership. Cities and municipalities are currently observed to take the lead globally and nationally in pursuing goals of resilient, low-carbon, and sustainable urban development. The failure of the Paris Agreement to become a substantive compact between nation states for addressing the climate crisis, has enhanced the role of cities as strategic actors and arenas for addressing a rapidly changing climate. Also smaller municipalities follow. In pursuing climate action and pathways towards a social just climate transformation of their cities, the local leadership have to develop a multitude of strategies and collaborative efforts to unleash resources across the public and private sectors. While we find an increasing number of empirical case studies that explore the emerging role of cities in climate governance, few comparative empirical and theoretical studies have investigated the more precise relationships between urban climate governance and collaborative approaches to sustainable urban futures in circumstances within which climate politics increasingly shapes urban policy agendas. This panel encourages papers exploring and discussing the following questions: • Do the climate crisis trigger a change in local public leadership (councilors/ mayors and administrative leadership)? • How are the local climate leadership performed, within the city administration, towards the citizenry and in inter-municipal cooperations? • Are the local leadership ensuring both climate sustainability and social sustainability in their local climate policy? • Are crises only constraints, or do they also help discover new innovative avenues at the local level (in public policies, in administration/organization, in multi-level relations, in service delivery, in democratic procedures and representation, in local politics, etc.)? • Have crises changed local democracy and how local governments relate to their citizens (e.g., local political leadership, political rules, etc.) and vice versa (electoral participation, participatory democracy, etc.)?

Title	Details
Unpacking climate adaptation policy and diffusion at the local level: Evidence from the State of Hessen	View Paper Details
Developing a typology of co-creational political leadership for urban climate governance	View Paper Details
A late wake up call: local climate policies in Warsaw Metropolitan Area	View Paper Details
How can ‘ordinary’ cities become climate pioneers?	View Paper Details
Racial justice in urban climate change governance	View Paper Details