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Climate Governance in Cities - Leading Societies Towards Climate Neutrality

In order to translate high ambitions into fair and sustainable realities, cities need to engage deeper not only in ‘what’ they are aiming for but also ‘how’ to create the needed transformative change alongside other actors. This ‘how’ is a question of governance. In this piece, we break down what climate governance is in cities, why governance is key, four modalities to use as a lens for looking at it, and how to strengthen and apply climate governance in your city.

Introduction to Climate Governance

There is a gap between the current state of play and the world we wish to live in. Within this gap, there are multiple dimensions: climate and ecosystem crisis, social inequalities, economic imbalances, reckoning with new emerging technologies, geopolitical threats, rising migration and displacement, pressure on democratic structures and practices, and more. It has become increasingly unavoidable that these interconnected, interdependent challenges require an interconnected approach. Climate governance aims to help governments and societal actors cross this gap using a holistic lens, and cities are one of the key players in pushing action towards a more desirable future. 

For decades, cities have been seeking solutions to different problems to improve their current and future residents’ lives. The importance of cities’ role in addressing the climate crisis -  the ‘why’ - has been well established, but attention has increasingly shifted to the complex and contextualised question of ‘how’. This is where governance comes in, and why we are seeing an increasing focus on it in both dialogue and concrete practice. It also signifies the recognition that cities cannot seek only one-off, sticking-plaster solutions but rather are motivated to engage in the deeper work of questioning and reimagining how they should best build the personal and institutional capacities to establish a sustainable, enduring challenge-tackling ability. 

In short, climate governance comprises not only governing specifically to address the climate crisis, but also the reality of governing also on other matters – such as education, health, employment, the urban environment, and wellbeing –  which are nevertheless set in the frame of a changing world. For cities, navigating this world means not only reactively responding to emerging problems but also proactively leading their city towards a desirable future by finding opportunities and tackling barriers, as well as leveraging the power of other actors in the city beyond the city organisation, other cities and multi-level governance to do so as much as possible. 

 

A Lens for Climate Governance

In order to unpick how your city is currently approaching different challenges and reflect upon your approach, a lens is needed. Based on dialogue with various cities across Europe, we identified four interconnected modalities of climate governance which help to look at the different levels and ways that change can be pursued via prompting key questions.

It is necessary to provide two nuances: firstly, these modalities are interconnected meaning that there is overlap between them and none of them can produce transformative change alone, and secondly, these modalities are a heuristic or guide, meant to initiate thinking but further depth and contextualisation is needed within each city to fully engage with how to create change. Nevertheless, each modality introduces key questions for how cities can recognize their agency, redefine their role, and identify where to intervene to increase their capacity to lead the societal transformation that must occur in the next decade.

 

 

 

Here is a more detailed description of each of the modalities: 

1. Domain-specific governance 

This refers to the ‘hard’ governance of systems, processes, and strategies in specific domains (e.g.  land use planning, investments, infrastructure development, and public procurements). This raises key questions for cities around how to systematically embed climate thinking and methods in hard governance and how to institutionalise processes to monitor progress and adjust interventions based on climate thinking. For example, REALLOCATE is a Horizon Europe project supporting the EU Cities Mission by focusing on experimenting with inclusive sustainable urban mobility solutions across 10 European cities including supporting cities in using governance to transform their approach and decision making.

 

2. Cultural change

Even the best-designed process or system won’t unlock a gridlock if people don’t know how to implement it or why they should adopt it. The second modality, cultural change, focuses on the ‘softer’ governance of the culture, mindset, and capacities of the organisation and the people within it. From city leadership to on-the-ground practitioners, a collaborative, experimental mindset must be developed to embrace the collective learning journey of a mission. One example of how to break gridlock and drive forward action is the Humble Governance model built by Demos Helsinki, Professor Charles Sabel from Columbia University, and the Prime Minister’s Office of Finland. The model has been applied, for example, being contextualised to how it can support cities’ space-making for dialogue with citizens and stakeholders in the NetZeroCities’ Framework for Spaces for Encounter guide. 
 

Together, the first two modalities capture the most foundational elements of governance within a city administration. Many elements of these overlap with each other: for example, the positioning of climate within a city’s structure and departments can show the culture and mindset it has towards climate and mandating efforts to address it.

However, engagement with how other actors operate and interact is needed for cities to not only act themselves, but to enable and steer cross-societal actions and collaborations to meet the scale of climate neutrality and other societal challenges.

 

3. Capacity for city ecosystem leadership

The third modality concerns the capacity for city ecosystem leadership which refers to how cities interact with and incentivize their broader city ecosystem. As the city administration itself does not have the levers and resources needed to reach climate neutrality alone, it must shift its role from only being an implementer to also being a convener and enabler that demonstrates strong directionality. Cities steering coherent action within their ecosystem including motivating and incentivising citizens, business communities, and other actors to act with collective agency and accountability is key to a mission-oriented approach. For example, in their ideal form, Climate City Contracts (CCCs) are an ecosystem-aligning mechanism that helps cities to build both the knowledge basis of and commitment to ambitious climate goals by engaging citizens and organisations in both the design of their goals and portfolio of solutions. 

 

4. Multi-level governance

Finally, in order to best pursue climate neutrality and other societal challenges, dialogue, knowledge exchange, and action across multiple levels of governance is essential. For cities, this refers to governing collaboration between cities in different forms (e.g. one-on-one, networks) and for different purposes (e.g. knowledge sharing, joint projects) as well as city-national and city-EU governance. Cities often struggle to navigate and harness different levels of governance impactfully, and to identify how exactly to use the many different city networks and initiatives available to them. There are also many challenges related to multi-level governance: for example, mismatches in ambition levels between governance levels resulting in national-level regulative and/or funding barriers for cities. Cities’ role in multi-level governance is ripe for remodelling in order to redefine how they can lead dialogue in national and transnational fora and best spread and connect the lessons of their mission into new places. 

 

Together, the four modalities provide an initial lens through which a city can reflect upon their current approach and build an understanding of the gaps and opportunities they have. Also, the modalities help in mapping whether there are gaps in climate governance, or whether cities' efforts in different modalities are aligned. Large scale transformation requires different governance mechanisms to pull in the same direction.   

 

Why governance? 

Shifting governance practices, mindset, culture, structures, and processes means ensuring the ‘how’ within city government aligns with the ‘what’ of intended actions. As mentioned, cities cannot seek only individual and isolated solutions but rather are motivated to engage in the deeper work of questioning and reimagining how they should best build the personal and institutional capacities to establish a sustainable, enduring challenge-tackling ability. 

Transforming the way cities address and govern climate-related challenges involves the building of capacities, knowledge, and systems which can be used to address other challenges - such as social inequality and democratic involvement - in an interconnected manner. Systematically exploring, testing, and institutionalising new governance approaches into city government is essential to steering collective action of the whole city ecosystem and leading dialogue beyond.

Within the context of the EU Cities Mission, mission-oriented innovation can be understood as governance rather than policy, as both cities’ own missions and the Cities Mission itself involve rewiring ways of working and orchestration of capacities, knowledge, and systems towards climate neutrality

 

How to strengthen and apply Climate Governance in your city….

If you are a city representative reading this, the good news is that you are already on the journey of leading your city towards a more positive and sustainable future. To push actions and abilities further, there are ways of reflecting and identifying new potentials within and across departments: 

  1. Align on your goals and vision for your city and how climate governance can help you to drive this forward with different actors. For example, the Climate Hall Lyon 2030 - building a collective vision to achieve climate neutrality by 2030 and applying storytelling to connect with local realities.  
  2. Identify and imagine how climate governance operates in your city including which departments lead on climate matters but also how societal challenges can be a part of all work and departments.
  3. Synthesise your current and aimed governance approach into a model in order to help capture vision of how your city government can operate in a compelling and applicable way that can facilitate discussion, alignment, and collaborative action. 
  4. Build institutional connections that can amplify progress including connecting to the places that climate governance will matter the most (e.g. strategy, steering, policy processes, budget) and forming a network of transformative leaders and practitioners across government who can learn together. For example, Leuven 2030: An NGO founded by the city of Leuven is a membership-based network organisation that aims to break the silos and structural barriers of traditional city collaboration and to enable collaborative climate and innovation governance (see Leuven’s CCC). 
  5. Gather, synthesise, and activate the knowledge you have to fully harness the collective human capabilities and change potential you have within your city. 

 

Resources:

In addition to climate-specific regulations and processes, climate governance includes elements such as citizen engagement and co-creation, development of social innovations, uptake of new technical solutions, and introduction of new partnerships and policies. Below you can find the key resources developed for some of these topics within the NetZeroCities project. 

Quick reads:

Case studies: 

Methods 

Tools 

  • Climate finance tool helps cities to find the right funding for climate action. 
  • Social innovation toolkit includes a guideline and set of tools to support and boost social innovation initiatives.
  • Engagement strategy tools help you find the right services to engage and activate the citizens and urban stakeholders in your local ecosystem.
  • Transition team playbook is a guide to develop a city’s ability to lead a collective endeavour: to orchestrate a climate transition.

Deliverables    

Publications 

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