LIST OF PANELS

Climate change is recognized as a large-scale issue resolved mainly through global or national policy initiatives. However, little research has been done to evaluate local climate change policies and local policy initiatives.

In rural areas, changing temperature profiles are responsible for increasing rainfall variability and water scarcity, shifting cropping patterns or impacting natural resource-based livelihoods. In urban areas, climatic risks and increasing extreme events affect health and well-being of local citizens. Across the globe, local governments are acting in their local areas with different partners and local communities to combat the negative impacts of climate change and to deliver carbon goals. Cities play increasingly recognised roles in global climate change responses: as change laboratories, spaces of opportunity, and as administrative and economic hubs that concentrate human and financial resources and needs (Sareen & Waagsaether 2022). On the other hand, with respect to rural environment, the climate change opens debates on land ownership, decolonialization, soil degradation and migration (Dhillon 2018).
In our panel, we react on the “calling for a turn towards municipal pragmatism” (Barnett et al 2020) which is critically open towards different forms of knowledge, adopts a retroductive approach to interventions in local contexts, and draws attention to the bottom-up politics of local actors. This includes for example studies on local governance of austerity (Davies et al. 2020) or critical explorations of community empowerment (Richardson, Durose, and Dean 2019; Willett and Cruxon 2019). New understandings of local political practice and agency, scales and spatial dynamics, and communities, have come to be relevant also in discussions of how we account for the transformation of the ‘local’ in the context of climate change. 

The panel will explore what is the role of local governments in combating climate change, what are possibilities and limits for bottom-up policy-making in context of climate change, what is the role of different expertise at the local level, how we can foster a dialogue between different expertise, and how emotions such as belonging, sense of community or fear might affect local climate policies. The panel is intended to critically examine local climate policies, explore local and global boundaries in policy-making and map interplays between macro and micro policies. 
References:
Barnett, N., Griggs, S., & Sullivan, H. (2020). The Power of Now. Reimagining the Future of Local Government Through Studies of Actually Existing Practice. Local Government Studies, 46(4), 505-523.

Davies, J. S., Bua, A., Cortina-Oriol, M., & Thompson, E. (2020). Why is austerity governable? A Gramscian urban regime analysis of Leicester, UK. Journal of Urban Affairs, 42(1), 56-74.
Dhillon, J. (2018). Introduction: Indigenous resurgence, decolonization, and movements for environmental justice. Environment and Society, 9(1), 1-5.

Richardson, L., Durose, C., & Dean, R. J. (2019). Why decentralize decision making? English local actors' viewpoints. Governance, 32(1), 159-176.
Sareen, S., & Waagsaether, K. L. (2022). New municipalism and the governance of urban transitions to sustainability. Urban Studies, Online first.

Willett, J., & Cruxon, J. (2019). Towards a participatory representative democracy? UK Parish councils and community engagement. British Politics, 14(3), 311-327.

With respect to local climate change policies, the panel is open for critical perspectives which theorize ‘local’ politics and policymaking (Lowndes, Sullivan 2004; Clarke & Cochrane 2013; Blanco et al 2014, Thompson 2021). These perspectives might range from ethnography, through sociology, social or political geography and urban studies to critical policy analysis.

Papers focused on the local policies and practices are particularly wellcome. We are interested how climate change policies and initiatives transform existing institutions or policy practices and how to develop richer or thicker understandings of the agency of local government in the context of climate change.Our panel intends to employ the principles of municipal pragmatism in research of local climate policies.

We are interested in urban, metropolitan or landscape planning, institutional responses on climate change threats, natural disasters, setting carbon reduction targets, flood protection and water management, local energy systems, green infrastructure, infrastructure resilience building, local climate commissions, smart cities development, DIY urbanism and community empowerment or local governments' climate emergency declarations.

References:

Blanco, I., Griggs, S., & Sullivan, H. (2014). Situating the local in the neoliberalisation and transformation of urban governance. Urban Studies, 51(15), 3129-3146.
Clarke, N., & Cochrane, A. (2013). Geographies and politics of localism: The localism of the United Kingdom's coalition government. Political Geography, 34, 10-23.Lowndes, V., & Sullivan, H. (2004). Like a horse and carriage or a fish on a bicycle: how well do local partnerships and public participation go together?. Local Government Studies, 30(1), 51-73.

Richardson, L., Durose, C., & Dean, R. J. (2019). Why decentralize decision making? English local actors' viewpoints. Governance, 32(1), 159-176.Thompson, M. (2021). What’s so new about New Municipalism? Progress in Human Geography, 45(2), 317-342.