Ambitious urban climate policy

Abstract

Cities play a key role in daily human life. Over half of the world population lives in cities and this will only become more. Cities can be seen as the main polluters and the main victims of climate change, but also as leaders for climate action. These leaders are willing to start tackling climate change, especially trough making ambitious climate policy through target setting. However, cities differ greatly in how ambitious their climate policy and climate targets are. While more physical and social aspects of cities and their relation to climate policy are covered in literature, governance related variables are less researched. This research focuses on what governance conditions explain variation in ambition in urban climate policy terms of target setting. This is done by conducting a fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) using three conditions explaining whether a city is ambitious in its climate policy or not. The conditions assessed are whether a city is collaborating with international climate networks, whether the mayor of the city is left-wing oriented, and whether the emission data of the city is up-to-date. To what extent a city is collaborating with international climate networks is analyzed by their membership to C40, ICLEI and GCoM. Expected is that all three conditions together lead to ambitious climate policy in terms of target setting. Using a carefully selected selection of 64 cases, the fsQCA is conducted. The main finding is that high collaboration in combination with up-to-date data or left-wing oriented mayor in combination with up-to-date data are sufficient for the outcome. Up-to-date data is a necessary condition for ambitious climate policy. The three conditions together, however, are not sufficient for the outcome.