Search

Given the interconnectedness of climate change and sustainable development, policymakers and scholars have started to investigate how climate actions can contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and vice versa. To date, research has mainly focused on the national and international levels, while little is known about the interlinkages between climate actions and the SDGs at the transnational level. Not only nation states, but also non-state actors undertake ambitious actions designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to promote sustainable development. Using content analysis and network analysis techniques, we examine the interlinkages between the climate actions of 72 transnational initiatives and the 169 targets of the 17 SDGs. We find that actions of 71 initiatives contribute to achieving 16 SDGs, thus generating valuable co-benefits. Besides SDG 13 on climate action and SDG 17 on partnerships for the goals, transnational climate actions frequently address SDGs 9 on industry, innovation and infrastructure, SDG 7 on affordable and clean energy, and SDG 12 on responsible consumption and production. While SDG 3 on good health and well-being and SDG 4 on quality education are barely addressed, SDG 5 on gender equality is not at all covered by transnational climate actions. Additionally, the network reveals that SDG 9 is highly synergistic with many other frequently addressed SDGs and functions as an important connector between them. Finally, our results indicate that transnational initiatives fill a governance gap left by states with regards to SDG 12. Climate initiatives of non-state actors can thus complement state-led actions to implement the Paris Agreement and the SDGs jointly.

Combating climate change and transitioning to fossil-free energy are two central and interdependent challenges facing humanity today. Governing the nexus of these challenges is complex, and includes multiple intergovernmental and transnational institutions. This book analyses the governance interactions between such institutions, and explores their consequences for legitimacy and effectiveness. Using a novel analytical framework, the contributors examine three policy fields: renewable energy, fossil fuel subsidy reform, and carbon pricing. These fields are compared in terms of their institutional memberships, governance functions and overarching norms. Bringing together prominent researchers from political science and international relations, the book offers an essential resource for future research and provides policy recommendations for effective and legitimate governance of the climate-energy nexus. Rooted in the most recent research, it is an invaluable reference for researchers, policymakers and other stakeholders in climate change and energy politics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

A global transition towards renewable energy is key for a sustainable future, and effective global governance is required to make this possible. However, global renewable energy governance is often regarded as fragmented and ineffective. Existing research has provided useful insights into the multiplicity of governance goals and diversity in institutions, but an understanding of underlying frames is yet lacking. Frame analysis explores how actors interpret and define a problem in different ways, based on which different solutions can be put forward of which some are more adequate than others. It thus provides a compelling new angle to the scientific debate on fragmentation. This paper therefore poses the question how the global energy challenge and the role of renewables are framed throughout the overall institutional complex for renewable energy, among different institutional types, and across individual institutions. To facilitate the search for an answer, it applies an innovative computational method that allows for a large-scale and multi-level frame analysis. The results demonstrate that renewable energy institutions currently prioritize climate change, with a stronger growing focus on universal access to energy services, while undermining concerns of energy scarcity. Nevertheless, frames vary strongly across different levels of governance, and among various types of institutions. The paper therewith forms an important contribution to our understanding of global renewable energy governance and its fragmented nature.

Over the past twenty years, global efforts to combat climate change have become an increasingly complex matter. The central forum for multilateral, state-led climate governance, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has been complemented by numerous cross-border initiatives comprising both state and non-state actors, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs), firms, academia, cities, sub-national regions and international organizations. 2The broader institutional structure has developed from a single regime to a regime complex, 3 showing increasing signs of fragmentation and functional overlaps that threaten coherence and overall effectiveness. 4 In Ostrom’s words, global climate governance is best described as a polycentric system with ‘multiple governing authorities at different scales rather than a monocentric unit’. 5 However, while fragmentation is largely accepted in theory as a ubiquitous phenomenon in global climate governance, few empirical studies exist that map institutional complexity and consequently attempt to measure degrees of fragmentation or coherence. 6sures of institutional coherence or fragmentation in global climate governance. First, we present a mapping of all governance institutions that constitute the climate change regime complex, departing from Abbott and Snidal, Abbott and Keohane and Victor. 7 We include both international and non-state public institutions (for example, the UNFCCC and transnational municipal networks) as well as the broad range of bottom-up initiatives constituted by various mixes of actors, including firms, civil society, governments and international organizations. Second, we add the organizational, agent-based dimension of climate governance by showing how the institutional meta-structure is constituted by actors and their connections. To this end we have collected data on membership in all climate governance institutions that make up the regime complex, in total more than 10,000 unique organizations. As a third analytical step, we report on advances in measuring discursive structures in the climate change regime complex. Here we analyse how the 80 climate governance institutions relate to 4 pre-identified metadiscourses in environmental policy via their mission statements. In the discussion section we revisit the three complementary assessments of the current climate change regime complex to establish whether the overall institutional structure is fragmented, that is, polycentric, or rather centralized, that is, integrated. In the conclusions we reflect on how to advance this research agenda further.