Christine Wamsler
Professor, Docent, appointed Excellent Teaching Practitioner (ETP)
Entangled Cities : Transnational Municipal Climate Networks and Urban Governance
Author
Summary, in English
During recent decades, a number of TMCNs have emerged. These networks aim to improve the governance of climate change related issues in their member municipalities. Many German cities and municipalities have joined these networks, and today more than half of the German population (44 million people) lives in municipalities that are members of at least one of these networks. Despite the wide proliferation of TMCNs, research on their impact has remained unsystematic, and important aspects of their impact have been neglected by existing research.
This thesis aims to close this research gap by tackling the impact of TMCNs on urban climate governance in a systematic manner through a variety of methods (including a survey, interviews, field visits, observations, literature and webpage analyses). My research focuses on the local level of climate governance, in particular on the perspective of urban climate managers, because they are key actors who link local climate governance to TMCNs. This perspective has been neglected thus far by research on TMCNs.
My results show that urban climate managers use their city’s membership in TMCNs mostly for fostering internal governance of climate issues. Specifically, membership in TMCNs is used by climate managers to support internal mobilisation on climate policies, to formulate emission reduction goals, and to institutionalise climate trajectories by, for example, creating new positions in the administration. Interaction between the local and the network level, such as project support provided by the networks, is seen as relevant but less important than previously expected. In addition, in sharp contrast to research findings in other contexts, actors in German cities seldom use the city’s memberships in these networks for green city branding purposes. Another important finding is that the interests of actors in member cities can differ significantly from staff of TMCNs, which might be due to funding issues. Networks have to rely on external funding (e.g., from the European Union or national funding schemes) to maintain their staff and infrastructure, and thus the expectations of actors in cities are sometimes not met, as is the case of the Covenant of Mayors.
By shifting the perspective to the local (or operational) governance level I am able to draw attention to impacts of TMCNs which so far have been overlooked. Based on my results, I argue that research in the field of TMCNs needs to pay more attention to internal processes at the local level of climate governance, including political struggles and contestations, else we risk missing important impacts of these networks on urban climate governance.
Department/s
- LUCSUS (Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies)
Publishing year
2016-09-28
Language
English
Full text
Document type
Dissertation
Publisher
Lund University
Topic
- Other Social Sciences
Keywords
- transnational municipal climate networks
- local climate governance
- urban development
- climate change mitigation
- climate change adaptation
- Germany
Status
Published
Supervisor
- Stefan Anderberg
- Christine Wamsler
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISBN: 978-91-982201-2-4
- ISBN: 978-91-982201-1-7
Defence date
28 October 2016
Defence time
10:15
Defence place
Ostrom, Josephson building, Biskopsgatan 5, Lund
Opponent
- James Evans (Professor)