Are we there yet? Cities and the IPCC responding to climate change

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March 15, 2018
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Are we there yet? Cities and the IPCC responding to
climate change, by Ana Carolina Mauad
mundorama.net/
For the past days, the city of Edmonton in
Canada hosted the first IPCC
(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change) scientific conference focused on
cities with the aim to establish a global
research agenda that will lead to the first
IPCC special report on cities and climate
change to be published in 2028, under the
framework of the Seventh Assessment
Report (AR7). This conference was a
landmark since it was the first to place
cities in the center of the debate.
Nevertheless, several questions were
raised and we intend to address some of them here.
The main goal of the conference was to establish a global research agenda capable of setting
a common ground among practitioners, politicians, and academics around the themes
regarding cities and climate change. This is per se an audacious goal since scientists from
different fields tend to discord about the main themes/challenges, whether it is technological
innovations, social justice, global governance, institutions or none of these. Nonetheless, some
themes were constantly debated in Edmonton: adaptation, climate change risks, the need for
more accurate tools to measure mitigation efforts, technological innovations, green
infrastructure, production and consumption, informality, transportation, co-benefits, natured-
based solutions, smart cities, SDGs, youth participation and climate justice.
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It is important to remember that the IPCC has been producing scientific data to inform the
international community about climate change since 1988 and that the approach of IPCC
publications and conferences has been the traditional intergovernmental/United Nations
focused on national states as central actors. But since the late 1980s, cities have been gaining
ground in the international arena in multiple agendas, such as human settlements, health,
security and climate change. Therefore, the engaging of cities in the global governance of
climate change is part of a bigger picture, a long process of inclusion of local actors in
international relations. However, the IPCC recognition of cities as key actors and strategic
locus for action is under construction since the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5, 2014) leading to
the Edmonton conference and possibly culminating with the special report to be released in
2028.
In this scenario, the climate agenda has emerged as the most pressing one for cities and has
been boosted by transnational networks – another sign of the transformation of international
relations since the end of Cold War – such as C40 (Cities Climate Leadership Group) and
ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability). It seems that among many international
agendas, cities have found their “local” in the climate change matters and this may be because
localizing climate change in the city translates a problematic that may be too abstract for
many. For example, feeling the increase in the heat islands effect in megacities is easy as well
as it is to feel the impact of air pollution on people’s health due to a transportation fleet heavily
based on fossil fuels. At the same time, cities are great sources of GHG emissions and
municipal governments have the possibility to make policy choices that may have direct
implications in mitigating and adapting to climate change, with the co-benefit of improving life
quality. With this perspective, affirming that cities are key actors in the governance of climate
change may appear to be obvious, but this affirmation needs to be problematized in order to
better address their role in global climate change governance.
One of the literature gaps raised during the conference was regarding the implementation of
the cities climate actions. That is to say that little is known about what was executed by most
cities to mitigate their GHG emissions and to build resilient spaces – with the exception of
some Northern European cities. This is a major problem because how can scientist inform low
carbon development paths to cities if they do not have the data?
Subsequently, if one of the goals of the IPCC special report on cities and climate change is to
provide scientific evidence to inform policy decision making, it should include the level of
climate action implementation and provide tools to read and monitored it. This may seem like a
simple task, but it is not, one because it is not possible to develop a universal tool, regional
and local features should be taken into account when analyzing implementation. Nonetheless,
part of the Political Science and International Relations literature (BULKELEY; BETSILL, 2013;
CASTÁN BROTO; BULKELEY, 2013; DI GIULIO et al., 2017; MACEDO, 2017; PUPPIM DE
OLIVEIRA, 2009; ROMERO-LANKAO et al., 2015; RYAN, 2015) has already addressed
several of these inquires, providing some guidance to the decision-making process. Thus, the
first step to bridge the gap among different sectors addressing climate change should be to
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acknowledge what has already been produced by each actor. Again, this may seem to be
obvious, but one of the problems raised during the conference was how the practitioners
overlooked the research already published by academics, especially from social science.
Therefore, what can we expect from now on is the proliferation of studies in many different
areas about cities and climate change trying to fill the gaps in the literature raised during the
conference, and we also expect that International Studies scholars start digging in deeper into
this agenda.
Ultimately, what this informs in terms of International Relations? Are we there yet? The
international community cannot ignore any more cities as relevant actors in the global climate
governance. Despite a dramatic decline in global governance in the last two years – because
of the rise of nationalism, the strengthening power of autocratic leaders and the increase of
geopolitical rivalries (FRANCHINI et al., 2017) – the role of cities in low carbon development
and adaptation to climate change is more relevant than ever. So, yes, we are there already, at
a point that cities are recognized as relevant international actors. But on the other hand, there
is still a long and tortuous path to be followed by cities to establish their role in global climate
governance, and their relevance will be linked to the level of implementation of their
international promises to fight climate change. Therefore, observing climate actions
implementation by cities is crucial to communicate the new global research agenda and this
should be the focus of future studies. The discourse of “cities as climate leaders/pioneers” has
an expiration date if it does not find correspondence in reality. Therefore, if cities and also
transnational cities networks do not start offering solid and scientific based results, the
discourse of leadership and forerunners will lose its appeal.
Furthermore, in political terms, the movement of cities adopting intergovernmental
proceedings – such as the IPCC – may direct to a slow pace of responses or even to
immobilization. This can leave the mitigation and adaptation actions only in the rhetoric realm
and hold back a possible low carbon development. By adopting a modus operandi similar to
national states, cities may fall into the trap of assuming international commitments that are
unfeasible and that may lead to inaction. The IPCC reports are valuable scientific repositories,
but they do not directly lead to action, this is a political prerogative. Therefore, although IPCC
reports and conferences guards an important scientific role, we need to go beyond and
observe the climate actions put into practice by national and local governments as well as the
private sector, in order to tackle witch path are we tracing: to a gradual low carbon
development or to a disastrous intense carbon future.
Finally, the transformations in the dynamic of global governance require constant observation
from the International Relations academia in order to read these new processes and their
significance to the future of the Earth System, and to some extent to the relevance of our
discipline to read contemporary processes.
We may not be there yet in terms of a low carbon development in most of the cities, but there
is certainly a long and interesting path that will lead to the IPCC special report on cities and
climate change. Although the consequences of climate change can be already felt in cities, the
international community will have to wait almost a decade to access a comprehensive report
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on that. On our way, but not quite there yet.
References:
BULKELEY, H.; BETSILL, M. M. Revisiting the urban politics of climate change.
Environmental Politics, v. 22, n. 1, p. 136–154, 2013.
CASTÁN BROTO, V.; BULKELEY, H. A survey of urban climate change experiments in 100
cities. Global Environmental Change, v. 23, n. 1, 2013.
DI GIULIO, G. M. et al. Mainstreaming climate adaptation in the megacity of São Paulo, Brazil.
Cities, n. September, p. 0–1, 2017.
FRANCHINI, M; VIOLA, E.; BARROS-PLATIAU, A. The Challenges of the Anthropocene:
From International Environmental Politics to Global Governance. Ambiente & Sociedade, v.
20, n. 3, p. 177–202, 2017.
MACEDO, L. S. V. DE. Participação de cidades brasileiras na governança multinível das
mudanças climáticas. Tese doutorado Programa de Pós-graduação em Ciência Ambiental.
Universidade de São Paulo, 2017.
PUPPIM DE OLIVEIRA, J. A. The implementation of climate change related policies at the
subnational level: An analysis of three countries. Habitat International, v. 33, n. 3, p. 253–
259, 2009.
ROMERO-LANKAO, P. et al. Multilevel Governance and Institutional Capacity for Climate
Change Responses in Latin American Cities. In: JOHNSON, C. A.; TOLY, N.; SCHROEDER,
H. (Eds.). The urban climate challenge: rethinking the role of cities in global climate
regime. New York: Routledge, 2015.
RYAN, D. From commitment to action: a literature review on climate policy implementation at
city level. Climatic Change, p. 519–529, 2015.
About the author
Ana Carolina Mauad is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the University of Brasília.
How to cite this article
Mundorama. "Are we there yet? Cities and the IPCC responding to climate change, by Ana
Carolina Mauad". Mundorama - Revista de Divulgação Científica em Relações Internacionais,.
[Acessado em 15/03/2018]. Disponível em: <http://www.mundorama.net/?p=24506>.
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