Connecting (urban) carbon neutrality and UK place-based climate action? The role of climate commissions

The move towards carbon neutrality is vital for tackling anthropogenic climate change and limiting temperature rise, protecting our ecosystems, fostering sustainable economic and social development, enhancing public health outcomes, and moreover, creating a more equitable society for everyone. In the UK, there is, on the face of it, a robust legal framework for achieving carbon neutrality. For example, the Climate Change Act (2008) initially set a target of reducing emissions by 80% by 2050, compared to 1990 levels and an amendment to the Act in 2019 set a target of net-zero emissions by 2050, making the UK the first major economy to enshrines such a target into law. Notwithstanding other related UK legislation that feeds into the carbon neutrality agenda, local or urban scale action – which can also be described as ‘place-based’ action – will play a significant role in the UK’s drive for carbon neutrality.

An important area of research interest for social science climate scholars is the need to examine how new forms of local and/or urban climate governance experimentation act as an ‘enabler’ or ‘barrier’ to place-based climate action. For this blog, I am just exploring the role of climate commissions as a barrier to urban carbon neutrality, by reflecting upon the findings of a recent British Academy funded ‘policy insights’ project. This project, supported by the Place-based Climate Action Network (PCAN), gathered evidence on the governance, policy, networked and scalar relationships between climate commissions and local, national, and international climate agendas and focused on three research questions:

1. What are UK climate commissions doing to address local climate mitigation and/or adaptation through the lens of ‘place-shaping’?
2. How are commissions adopting an inclusive and/or pluralistic approach when engaging different sectors through place-based governance innovations?
3. How are these innovations shaping (or being shaped by) local, national, and international climate policy agendas?

Through answering these research questions, the respondents revealed some interesting insights into the role played by climate commissions as a governance barrier to urban carbon neutrality (or net zero, although there are some differences between the two terms, see here). The methods used in this project consisted of a survey, in-depth interviews, and a ‘policy insights’ networking workshop. The survey was co-designed by the project team of Candice Howarth (LSE, UK), Andrea Armstrong (Silent Spring Consultants) and me, and it comprised of 25 open and closed questions. The questionnaire was circulated during May to July 2023 via PCAN networks to existing UK Climate Commissions (England, Scotland and Northern Ireland), the PCAN Plus network and the JISC Critical Geography Forum. We received 21 questionnaire responses: 10 representatives from Climate Commissions from across the UK; three from local authorities, one from a county council, one from a university hospital and six from local climate action organisations/networks. Of these, 11 agreed to be interviewed in-depth, and a further 16 people attended the policy insight networking workshop at LSE at the end of the project in September 2023, where we specifically explored RQ3 on the relationship of climate commissions and different policy and governance scales (local/urban, national, international) for understanding the enablers and barriers for place-based climate action.

So, firstly you may be asking what is a climate commission? They have been defined as [organic] area-based partnerships bringing together people from the public, private and civic sectors to work collaboratively with the local authority to help drive climate action. In doing so they can act as:
i) An independent, evidence-based adviser providing impartial, robust evidence and advice to influence policy and monitor the delivery and progress of climate action.

ii) A convener of conversations – bringing together disparate organisations and individuals to take action on addressing climate change in their cities.

iii) A facilitator of action – beyond convening, creating the spaces that enable action.

In the last 5 years or so, climate commissions have sprung up across the UK as shown in the figure below, both organically and in part, due to the work programme and impact of PCAN. Commissions can help translate local authority climate policy into action ‘on the ground’ to bring about transformative, place-based change for both climate mitigation in terms of governance working towards carbon neutrality, but also through promoting local adaptation planning and actions too, like assessing what current and future climate vulnerability/risks will be experienced the most within a local authority jurisdiction. Hence, commissions are having an increasingly significant role in shaping place-based climate action and climate governance experimentation in different geographical and urban contexts across the UK.

So, what were our project findings with respect to climate commissions acting as barrier to urban climate neutrality? Well, the first important finding is that climate commissions were very pro-active in supporting a climate neutrality agenda, although our respondents referred to this as a ‘net zero agenda’, most probably due to UK government policy discourse that uses the term net zero rather than carbon neutrality. You might say “well this is not a barrier[!]”, and it isn’t, but what it does reveal is that other aspects of local climate action – like adaptation planning – are not being acted fully upon by climate commissions in the same way as net zero, which doesn’t bode well for future place-based climate action in the UK. The table below shows our findings for each research question with respect to the role of climate commissions acting as a barrier to place-based climate action, with specific reference to how this relates to urban carbon neutrality.

To conclude, our examination into climate commissions as barriers to urban carbon neutrality revealed various tensions at the urban scale, inter alia, a lack of resourcing (not just financially, but people too), weakened governance support, a lack of engagement and taking responsibility between significant actors from the public, private and third sectors and a lack of integration between carbon neutrality and adaptation planning. However, these barriers should not just solely be seen as just an urban or local scale issue, even though there remains more work to be done at this scale; rather existing urban tensions in carbon neutrality are exacerbated, and in some cases, could be caused by the ways in which climate policy is framed at national and international policy scales and translated down to the local/urban scale. Urban stakeholders engaged in carbon neutrality work need to realise that effectively achieving urban carbon neutrality is not a fundamentally urban phenomenon that can be democratically solved locally within the confines of climate mitigation policy imperatives. Consideration of future adaptation planning, for example, is equally important if carbon neutrality is to be successful. Furthermore, stakeholders need to tease out the myriad of ways in which understanding achieving urban carbon neutrality as a ‘climate politics of scale’ can go some way to tackling carbon neutrality across different urban areas. Hence, a starting point for doing this could include various governance and policy recommendations that traverse local(urban), national and international scales:

1. Provide more resource and support for the development and running of local climate commissions to further enhance their support of local climate action, provide a ‘safe’ convening space for stakeholders and help keep local climate action actors to account on achieving urban carbon neutrality.
2. Engage more and directly with local citizens either through engagement with the Commission, deliberative democratic processes (e.g., citizen assemblies and juries) and inviting them to be part of the Commission.
3. National government needs to support and engage more directly with local businesses in ramping up local carbon neutrality initiatives.
4. Promote integrated approaches to climate action that consider adaptation and mitigation activities together rather than in siloes.
5. More recognition at national government level of place-based climate action and the vital role it plays or can play in informing and delivering policy on both carbon neutrality and adaptation to extant and future climate risks.
6. More deep dive research is required to understand local/urban perceptions of national and international climate policies; the barriers to translating and incorporating national and international climate policies locally and how to solve perceived scalar climate policy challenges of complexity, fragmentation and disconnection and ensure climate policies are relevant to local/urban places.

Dr. Andrew P. Kythreotis
Department of Geography and Lincoln Centre for Ecological Justice
University of Lincoln, UK