HARRIET BULKELEY OPINION The climate challenge


Cities around the world are experimenting with initiatives to address climate change, explains Professor Harriet Bulkeley, ESRC Climate Change Fellow


voluntary commitments by cities to reduce their Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions over 20 years ago, several thousand have committed to action. More recently, the challenges of adapting to


R


the impacts of climate change at the urban level are also being recognised through urban planning. Over the past ten years, the research community has documented the challenges of governing climate change at the urban level, pointing to a persistent gap between rhetoric and reality. Dependent on strategies of self-governance and enabling or persuading others to act, municipalities have often lacked the powers and resources to take adequate action to address climate change. At first it may appear that despite growing


international recognition of the urban dimension of the climate change challenge, cities can do little to respond. But against this backdrop of the gap between the promise of the commitments, plans and policies of municipalities and the realities of increasing GHG emissions and urban vulnerabilities, the number of initiatives in cities to address climate change appears to be proliferating. Whether this relates to wholesale eco-


developments, community-based renewable energy schemes, new sustainable corporate buildings, infrastructure renewal projects or the like, urban landscapes are increasingly littered with attempts to forge a response to climate change. Through a survey of documentary evidence from a sample of 100 cities globally, the Urban Transitions project found over 620 ‘climate change experiments’ that were specifically seeking to intervene in the built environment, energy, water, waste and transport systems of cities in order to address climate change. The sample represents diverse urban characteristics, with cities from across different world regions. Analysis of the experiments across the sample shows that they started recently – 79 per cent since the Kyoto Protocol was ratified in 2005. Also, there is no significant variation across different regions of the likelihood of experimentation taking place, and common urban indicators such as GDP or population do not explain variation between cities. Importantly, while most urban climate change


experiments are led by municipal authorities (66 per cent), analysis shows that other actors are also critical to their development and deployment; 42 per cent of the sample of experiments had some form of private sector involvement, while 19 per


ESPONDING TO CLIMATE CHANGE in the world’s cities is now recognised internationally as an ‘urgent agenda’ (World Bank 2010). Since the first


cent included some level of involvement from community-based actors. Faced with limited formal capacity, it appears that ‘experimentation’ is a new way in which public and private actors are seeking to address climate change at the urban level. For the most part, such experiments may provide the means through which new strategic efforts to secure critical infrastructure and ensure access to energy and other resources are being pursued at the urban level. Other experiments frame the climate change issue in very different ways, offering alternative visions of what it might mean to be a low-carbon or climate-resilient city.


“ The number of initiatives in


cities to address climate change appears to be proliferating


Analysis of experimentation in Bangalore,


Berlin, Hong Kong, Monterrey and Philadelphia shows that it is a result of current economic constraints. For example, in the US, initiatives such as the Solar City programme and the ‘Coolest Block’ contest in Philadelphia have benefited from federal government economic stimulus funds. Experimentation also results from opportunities such as the Towards Zero Carbon housing development in Bangalore, aimed at the rising middle class population of the city. In neither case does climate change


”


experimentation pose a radical challenge to the liberal environmentalism or economic order on which it is based. Instead it puts such logics to work to create new forms of climate governance. Elsewhere, for example in the numerous examples of Transition Town initiatives or in the provision of low-carbon, low-cost energy and housing systems in cities in the Global South, climate change experimentation is a way to address issues of social and environmental justice. As urban responses to climate change gather momentum, these experiments point to a new form of governance where boundaries between public and private are fluid, and where the potential for contestation and conflict is ever present. n


i


Professor Harriet Bulkeley holds an ESRC Climate Change Leadership Fellowship – Urban Transitions: climate change, global cities and the transformation of socio-technical systems Email h.a.bulkeley@durham.ac.uk Telephone 0191 33 41940 Web www.dur.ac.uk/geography


SPRING 2012 SOCIETY NOW 21


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32