Climate change governance is becoming more polycentric. From the global to the municipal level, an unprecedented number of actors are addressing climate change. But will polycentric governance generate significant emissions reductions? What brings disperse action together to build cumulative outcomes capable of limiting climate change to well below two degrees of warming? How will actors in different institutions and jurisdictions be able to learn from one another and thereby generate significant governance synergies? These important questions relate directly to the vexed question of policy evaluation, an underappreciated, but potentially highly consequential element of polycentric climate governance. In spite of substantial growth of evaluation activity and theorization, its role in assessing and possibly improving climate governance has been insufficiently explored. This chapter introduces the book, which tackles this challenge head-on by developing new, cutting edge theory and then conducting an empirical test in the context of the European Union, Germany and the United Kingdom.

Despite being an authoritarian state, China has adopted a quasi-federalist system to combat climate change. This chapter first introduces the structures and operations of China’s quasi-federalist system. Vertically, there are five hierarchical levels of bureaucracy. Horizontally, there are party committee, government, and environmental and ecological agencies at each level. Power is dynamically distributed vertically and horizontally. This chapter elaborates on the five mechanisms embedded in the quasi-federalist system, namely a target-responsibility system, the inclusion of environmental performance in local officials’ promotion assessment, fiscal incentives, the central inspection system for ecological and environmental protection, and public participation. We then conduct a case analysis of the low-carbon pilot policy in China to explain how each mechanism functions at each stage of the policy process. It shows that China’s quasi-federalist system in climate governance features centralized decision-making, supervision, and evaluation, together with decentralized implementation. China’s environmental quasi-federalism has allowed local governments to experiment with diverse and innovative solutions to climate change, but it has also experienced some challenges as demonstrated in the fragmented patchwork of policies at local levels of government. Overall, China’s environmental quasi-federalism has been effective in climate governance even though it has some drawbacks.

The Introduction discusses the relevance of federalism to different aspects of climate governance. Drawing on the existing literature, we review the key advantages and disadvantages that federalism may offer for the adoption of ambitious climate policies.

Climate change governance in Spain is framed between international commitments and EU legislation and encompasses several levels of government and stakeholders. Numerous climate strategies and policies have been adapted at all territorial levels over the last decade, however, there are no formal vertical channels of influence for Autonomous Communities (ACs) or local actors on policy formulation at the federal level, which limit climate policy diffusion at the vertical dimension. Moreover, the coordination mechanisms for the implementation of climate policies are not very effective and do not consider the early phases of public action nor the participation of all involved authorities. However, the ACs and local governments have ample room for policy experimentalism in adapting their climate change strategies to the peculiarities of their different territories. In this regard the Spanish State of Autonomies has provided a favourable context for policy experimentalism in climate change governance, but not a favourable framework for effective decision-making between levels of government.

This chapter reflects on key findings in this book and how they enhance understanding of the relationship between climate governance and federalism around the world. federalism and federal-type arrangements work in crosscutting ways, facilitating climate governance in some respects, hindering it in others. Divided jurisdiction’s effects vary according to a range of institutional, political, social, economic and geographic factors.

India’s federal structure is unsuited to the localized demands of climate governance. It is highly centralized, with a federal government that enjoys fiscal, bureaucratic, and jurisdictional powers greater than in more classical, decentralized federations. Indian states, however, are responsible for several areas crucial to climate action, from water and health to the emissions-intensive electricity sector. This makes elaborate forms of cooperation between the two levels essential. In this chapter, we show that the federal system has organically begun evolving some institutions and practices to keep up with the demands of climate change, including climate-specific financing and capacity flowing from the centre to the states, and instances of bottom-up experimentation and learning. But these developments are uncoordinated and lack strategic direction; policies appear and fade away with regularity, unpegged to long-term goals or a plan to rectify top-heaviness in Indian climate federalism.

South Africa adopted a system of decentralised government more than two decades ago. This government’s ability to see to collaboration and cooperation across line functionaries, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary is put to the test by, among others, the demands of an adequate national response to climate change and an established practice of centralised governance. This chapter gives an overview of the practice of federalism in South Africa; the country’s climate change profile; the way the federal government system links up with the demands of climate change governance; and a case study of tangible decentralised climate governance practices and developments. The focus is specifically on the challenges and opportunities presented by the multiple forums for law, policy and decision-making, rather than on matters of experimentation and diffusion. The chapter concludes with a brief assessment of the government’s performance thus far and suggestions for moving forward on its climate-resilient development trajectory.

Switzerland genuinely pushes for stronger climate policies in international negotiations and during the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conferences of the Parties (UNFCCC). In contrast, when it comes to domestic regulation it tends to wait for, and align itself with, the positions of the European Union (EU). In fact, rather than a climate ‘pusher’, Switzerland is more accurately described as a ‘follower’ of the EU on climate matters. This chapter takes this observation as a starting point, aiming to unpack the advantages and disadvantages offered by the Swiss federal structure in both enabling and hindering effective and sustainable climate governance. We show that the fragmented nature of the Swiss polity, with its 26 constituent units (cantons) and some 2,000 municipal polities with each more or less autonomy in key policy areas, is not in itself an obstacle. However, tackling the complexity arising from such a multilevel structure is time consuming, at best. We find that the high degree of decentralisation has facilitated locally tailored solutions and policy innovation in particular regarding climate adaption, but inter-jurisdictional coordination and learning is limited and subnational policies do not compensate for an absence of ambitious climate mitigation policy at the national level.

This chapter examines the role that the Indian judiciary has played in advancing climate action and environmental governance. This chapter traces the judiciary’s contributions through a few landmark judgements and its relationship to varieties of environmentalism in India. India’s environmental movement, and the lawyering that supports it, oscillates between environmentalism of the poor and exclusionary conservation, where the human rights of forest-dwelling and other local communities are often violated. Moreover, though the judiciary in India has been a site of progressive environmental jurisprudence, it has nonetheless produced jurisprudence that violates the human rights of vulnerable communities. The judiciary is very often left to choose between the two competing strains of environmentalism and responding to the needs of development. These pressures, I argue, will shape the decisions the judiciary is likely to make in the context of climate change. Yet, this chapter ultimately argues that courts can play an important role in climate change governance if they adopt a more sensitive approach to questions of climate justice.

This book is for readers who are frustrated with the chronically slow action by governments and other actors to stem climate-changing pollution and to deal effectively with its manifestations and future consequences. Much as a physician diagnosing a patient with multiple diseases would aim to treat the most life-threatening pathologies before moving on to lesser problems, the focus here is on the most important pathologies of climate governance – those that are vital to understanding and identifying therapies and remedies. (Much of climate governance up to now has focused on many significant but lesser pathologies.) A few of the remedies for climate governance that are proposed here may at first appear to border on the idealistic. However, they are practicable because they are premised on promoting the interests of the actors involved. They will not harm the interests of states or their citizens; to the contrary, they will promote their long-term security and well-being. Promotion of self-interest is not the only thing that motivates governments, corporations or individuals to do the right thing. But it helps.