Urban Governance of Climate Change within the United Nations: Orchestration or Competition?

At the UNFCCC 26th Conference of Parties (COP), cities and regions of the world called all nations for multilevel collaboration action. Urban actors appealed to the collective responsibility in dealing with challenges related to climate change. How was it possible that subnational governments encourage nations for collaborative actions based on their understanding of collective responsibility and does that kind of understanding coincide with the perspective of states as the actors that bear primary responsibility in the UNFCCC regime? For years, cities have been actively embraced by numerous UN treaties and mechanisms in dealing with climate change. Since 1995, cities raised their voices at COPs and their advocacy evolved. The recent COP26 in Glasgow included a global mayoral forum called the Multilevel Action Pavilion. It was held at the same, barrier-free area with the core COP and resulted in multiple official interventions with the main COP’ program. In addition, cities have gained a special status among non-state actors inside the UN system when global city networks left their representation at the ECOSOC and have become counterparts for thematic UN programs. Nowadays, the three largest global city networks, ICLEI, C40, and UCLG play the role of advisory bodies of particular UN’s structures dealing with climate change. As illustrated above, the UN’s structures in the area of climate change have become highly interrelated with urban actors. Yet, the public position of the UN on cities’ role in tackling climate change remains to be cautious. The intergovernmental nature of the UN and the contestation of the global municipal movement against rigid climate change policies of national governments creates a significant tension. Therefore, the research question of the inquiry is the following: What does the appearance of a new actor mean for climate change? Is multilevel action including also subnational and local levels of governance a solution to orchestration of climate change action or a way to increased competition among involved actors? I argue that the UN’s structural interrelation with urban actors forms a new norm. The intentions of actors to influence the evolvement and meaning of this norm might cause a competition among all interested stakeholders. The paper applies the methodology of constructivism in international relations to explain the transformation of climate change governance under the appearance of cities as a new actor. At first, the paper aims to understand the structural change of the UN’s agencies and programs related to climate change agenda. Secondly, it aims to analyze the accountability of cities in reports of major city networks. The applied methods include the qualitative content analysis of reports of three major city networks, ICLEI, UCLG, and C40 in the period 2005-2020 and semi-structured interviews with UN and cities’ representatives. The preliminary results provide evidence that the “urbanization” of the UN’s climate change processes goes in line with the growth of global accountability of cities. The detailed evaluation of the effects of these two processes on the UN’s climate change regime will be conceptualized in the final results of the study.