OECD Environment Working Papers

ISSN :
1997-0900 (en ligne)
DOI :
10.1787/19970900
Cacher / Voir l'abstract
This series is designed to make available to a wider readership selected studies on environmental issues prepared for use within the OECD. Authorship is usually collective, but principal authors are named. The papers are generally available only in their original language English or French with a summary in the other if available.
 

Cities, Climate Change and Multilevel Governance You or your institution have access to this content

Auteur(s):
Jan Corfee-Morlot1, Lamia Kamal-Chaoui1, Michael G. Donovan1, Ian Cochran1, Alexis Robert1, Pierre-Jonathan Teasdale
Author Affiliations
  • 1: OCDE, France

Date de publication
02 déc 2009
Bibliographic information
N°:
14
Pages
125
DOI
10.1787/220062444715

Cacher / Voir l'abstract

Cities represent a challenge and an opportunity for climate change policy. As the hubs of economic activity, cities generate the bulk of GHG emissions and are thus important to mitigation strategies. Urban planning will shape future trends and the concentration of population, socio-economic activity, poverty and infrastructure in urban areas translates into particular vulnerability to increased climate hazards. City governments and urban stakeholders will therefore be essential in the design and delivery of cost-effective adaptation policies. Further, by empowering local governments, national policies could leverage existing local experiments, accelerate policy responses, foster resource mobilization and engage local stakeholders. This paper presents a framework for multilevel governance, showing that advancing governance of climate change across all levels of government and relevant stakeholders is crucial to avoid policy gaps between local action plans and national policy frameworks (vertical integration) and to encourage cross-scale learning between relevant departments or institutions in local and regional governments (horizontal dimension). Vertical and horizontal integration allows two-way benefits: locally-led or bottom-up where local initiatives influence national action and nationally-led or top-down where enabling frameworks empower local players. The most promising frameworks combine the two into hybrid models of policy dialogue where the lessons learnt are used to modify and fine-tune enabling frameworks and disseminated horizontally, achieving more efficient local implementation of climate strategies.
Mots-clés:
environmental policy, supply chain, eco-innovation, globalisation, competitiveness
Classification JEL:
  • Q51: Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics / Environmental Economics / Valuation of Environmental Effects
  • Q54: Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics / Environmental Economics / Climate; Natural Disasters; Global Warming
  • Q56: Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics / Environmental Economics / Environment and Development; Environment and Trade; Sustainability; Environmental Accounts and Accounting; Environmental Equity; Population Growth
  • Q58: Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics / Environmental Economics / Government Policy
  • R00: Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics / General / General