LIST OF PANELS

Social and political awareness of the need for climate action has increased globally, and in recent years many climate change policies and laws have been adopted across all levels of government. Despite this, however, progress on achieving key climate action goals is slow and uneven. Emissions reduction commitments under the Nationally Determined Contributions are inadequate to reduce emissions in line with either the 1.5C or 2C temperature targets set out in the Paris Agreement, and annual global emissions continue to grow, albeit at a slowing rate. The 2022 UN Environment Emissions Gap Report concludes that there is currently no credible pathway forward to achieve the temperature targets in the Paris Agreement given current policy commitments and action. Similarly, implementation of adaptation responses to address the unavoidable consequences of climate change continues to lag growing risks, and current evidence demonstrates that adaptation remains fragmented and incremental. Worryingly, evidence on the emergence of maladaptive outcomes is growing. Accelerating effective implementation of climate action policies is crucial to reduce future climate risks, particularly for those risks that exceed our ability to adapt.

This panel examines the policy implementation gap between climate action goals and realized emissions and resilience pathways. Much of the climate policy literature focuses on processes, principles and outcomes associated with policy planning and design. There is less research on the mechanisms that drive successful policy implementation, and the conditions under which these outcomes are achieved. The literature broadly points towards factors like ‘inclusive governance’, ‘enough resources’, ‘leadership’ and ‘enabling social-political environments’ as criteria for successful implementation, but how these factors vary or intersect to shape implementation outcomes in diverse contexts is less clearly understood. Issues like the politics of implementation are hardly considered at all in the literature.

As the pace of climate change accelerates and the need to achieve substantive progress on mitigation and adaptation becomes more urgent, it is critical to close implementation gaps between emission reduction targets, resilience targets, and climate change policies. This panel will examine variations in policy implementation outcomes across places, sectors, and scales; institutional, organizational, and political dynamics that may explain differences in policy implementation outcomes; accountability for implementation failure; and policy learning from implementation outcomes.

The panel will held onsite.

Papers submitted to this panel may address policy implementation related to either mitigation and/or adaptation goals. Comparative papers are encouraged, but well-selected in-depth single case studies will also be considered. Papers that test theoretical frameworks or propositions on policy implementation are preferred. The panel aims to examine diverse policy contexts, and particularly encourages submissions from non-Western contexts.

Key questions on policy implementation include (but are not limited to): Why do some policies fail while others succeed? What conditions enable success or failure? What is policy implementation success in the context of climate action? How can we know when policy implementation is succeeding or failing? How do climate politics shape policy implementation outcomes? How do different management arrangements and inter-governmental dynamics shape implementation outcomes? What is the relationship between public or stakeholder participation and policy implementation outcomes? Does participation increase the likelihood of successful implementation (however success is understood)? How do actors deal with uncertainty in policy implementation, particularly with respect to the long time horizons associated with changes in the climate system? How are state and non-state actors held accountable for implementation failure? Does past or current mitigation/adaptation implementation failure influence public support for more rapid and transformative policy change? Do lessons learned during policy implementation processes improve future decision-making? How can iterative policy-making be improved?