LIST OF PANELS

This onsite panel observes the multiple forms of political organisations, decisions, activities and arrangements that take place at the local level in order to deal with sustainability and ecological transition. Its aim is twofold: Examining the patterns of both collaborative and self-governance processes and fostering the dialogue between the studies of the policy process and environmental politics.

Most issues related to environmental protection and sustainability, mainly global warming and biodiversity loss, are dealt, at least partly at the local level. For example, the greenhouse gas emissions are actually emitted locally by individuals or organisations which are geographically located. Consequences of global warming similarly affect communities and populations in tangible ways such as flooding and heat waves. In order to tackle or react to these environmental issues, both local policymakers and citizen groups elaborate and implement local policies or set up local arrangements. These actions have important consequences in terms of environmental justice both the responsiveness from the different communities and the consequences in resource redistribution (power relationships and legitimacy).

Governance highlights policymaking as a complex process involving both State and non-State actors (Klijn and Koppenjan, 2016). It varies across the actors who intervene in the policymaking process and the nature of their interactions. Although the goals may converge, local governance has multiple facets: hierarchy, market, network and self-governance (Bouckaert, Peters, and Verhoest, 2010; Berge and van Laerhoven, 2011). Hierarchy involves the traditional policy process held by local authorities. Market governance relates to processes of competition between (public or) private service providers. In collaborative types of governance, whether to manage a natural resource or to practice urban planning, policymakers increasingly dialogue with stakeholders in the idea of mutual interest and common values (Leach et al., 2014; Sørensen and Torfing, 2020). Self-governance refers to non-state responses to policy problems by groups of citizens or landowners who elaborate governance processes and share resources, goods or services in common (e.g. community or inter-generational housing projects) (Ostrom, 1990). Often, policy responses involve a mix between these different processes.

Local issues offer a unique opportunity to observe how the different modes of governance operate in concreto. Climate adaptation projects such as cooling down cities during heatwaves or protecting villages from flooding often take shape at the local level. Many levers to tackle environmental issues also operate at the local level, for instance through attempts to decarbonize mobility. The local level allows for more innovative arrangements to be developed as niches of experimentation (Nieminen et al., 2020). Actors get more interrelated and more easily identifiable. The local level – whether urban or rural – constitutes a good laboratory for sustainability governance. A diversity of strategies, perspectives and instruments exist not only to tackle environmental issues, but also to provide answers where policy incoherencies manifest (Cejudo and Michel, 2017).

This panel seeks to gather contributions shedding light on the diversity of policies, tools and processes existing to formulate answers to the sustainability and transition challenges at the local level. What do we know about local governance? What are the specificities of the local level? Who are the actors engaging in local policymaking? What are the existing modes of interaction of the actors? How do these different types of interactions affect the decisions, and thus the situation of local territories?

The panel is onsite and welcomes both single and comparative case studies of local responses to sustainability issues both in the developed and developing countries. It expects contributions from local policies, collaborative networks and governance of commons which address various issues ranging from environmental management, sustainable housing, green infrastructure, land-use planning to social inclusion.

Papers will discuss the role of and consequences for a variety of actors of different types of governance models. That is, actors under investigation can range from citizens in co-creation processes to local authorities, as well as public servants, private companies or other understudied policy actors. Policy actors and stakeholders often being clearly identifiable in local cases, contributions using social actors analysis techniques are welcome to explore interrelations between these actors (Vihma and Toikka, 2021).

About the theoretical background, the aim is to foster the dialogue between the theories of the policy process, for example policy learning (Koebele, 2019), social networks (Ingold, 2011), polycentricity (Heikkila, 2019), collaboration (Kim et al; 2022), etc. with theories and debates belonging to the field of environmental politics, such as environmental justice (Martin et al., 2020), ecofeminism (Mies and Shiva, 2014), urban resilience (Kiss et al., 2020), water-energy-food nexus (Biggs et al., 2015), agency in earth system governance (Gerlak et al., 2021), grassroots environmentalism (Staggenborg, 2020), etc.

For instance, it is frequently observed that environmental and social inequalities intersect. For instance, neighbourhoods with poor air quality also tends to be home of more precarious populations (Deguen et al., 2016; Bell & Ebisu, 2012). Papers discussing how certain types of governance are able to deliver environmental justice are sought. As governance highlights the involvement of actors other than the State, the panel is interested to collect papers about the emergence of grassroots movements, and the role communities can play in environment governance.

References:

Bell, M., & Ebisu, K. (2012). Environmental Inequality in Exposures to Airborne Particulate Matter Components in the United States. Environmental Health Perspectives 120 (12): 1699-1704.

Berge, E., & van Laerhoven, F. (2011). Governing the Commons for two decades: A complex story. International Journal of the Commons, 5(2), 160–187.

Biggs, E. et al. (2015). Sustainable development and the water–energy–food nexus: A perspective on livelihoods. Environmental Science & policy 54: 389-397.

Bouckaert, G., B.G. Peters, and K. Verhoest (2010). The coordination of public sector organizations: shifting patterns of public management. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Cejudo, G., C. Michel (2017). Addressing fragmented government action: Coordination, coherence, and integration. Policy Sciences 50(4): 745–67.

Deguen, S., C. Petit, A. Delbarre, W. Kihal, C. Padilla, et al. (2016). Neighbourhood Characteristics and Long-Term Air Pollution Levels Modify the Association between the Short-Term Nitrogen Dioxide Concentrations and All-Cause Mortality in Paris. PLOS ONE 11(3).

Heikkila, T. (2019). Conflict and Conflict Resolution in Polycentric Governance Systems. In A. Thiel, W. Blomquist, & D. Garrick (Eds.), Governing Complexity: Analyzing and Applying Polycentricity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 133-151.

Gerlak, A., A. Elder, M. Pavao-Zuckerman, A. Zuniga-Teran and A. Sanderford (2021). Agency and governance in green infrastructure policy adoption and change, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 23(5): 599-615.

Kiss, B., K. McCormick and C. Wamsler (2020). Resilience through nature-based solutions governance and implementation. In M.A. Buyardi, A. Allen, J. Twigg, C. Wamsler (Eds.), The Rouledge Handbook of Urban Resilience, Oxon: Routledge, pp. 430-444.

Kim, S., et al. (2022). Updating the institutional collective action framework’. Policy Studies Journal 50(1): 9–34.

Klijn, E. H., and J. Koppenjan (2016). Governance networks in the public sector. Oxon: Routledge.

Martin, A., M. T. Armijos, B. Coolsaet, N. Dawson, G. Edwards and R. Few (2020). "Environmental Justice and Transformations to Sustainability. Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development 62(6): 19-30.

Mies, M., and V. Shiva (2014). Ecofeminism, 2nd ed. London: Zed books.

Nieminen, J., A. Salomaa, S. Juhola (2020). Governing urban sustainability transitions : urban planning regime and modes of governance. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 64(4) : 559-580.

Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the commons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sørensen, E. and J. Torfing (2020). Co-creating ambitious climate change mitigation goals: The Copenhagen experience. Regulation & Governance 16(2) : 572-587.

Staggenborg, S. (2020). Grassroots environmentalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Vihma, P., & Toikka, A. (2021). The limits of collaborative governance: The role of inter-group learning and trust in the case of the Estonian “Forest War”. Environmental Policy and Governance 31( 5): 403– 416.