Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-1 (section)

== 1.9 Governing Climate Change ==

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Previous sections have highlighted the multiple factors that drive and constrain climate action, the complex interconnection between climate mitigation and other societal objectives, and the diversity of analytical frames for interpreting these connections. Despite the complexities, there are signs of progress including increased societal awareness, change in social attitudes, policy commitments by a broad range of actors and sustained emission reductions in some jurisdictions. Nevertheless, emission trends at the global level remains incompatible with the goals agreed in the Paris Agreement. Fundamentally, the challenge of how best to urgently scale up and speed up the climate-mitigation effort at all scales – from local to global – to the pace needed to address the climate challenge is that of governance understood as ‘modes and mechanisms to steer society’ ( [[#Jordan--2015|Jordan et al. 2015]] ). The concept of governance encompasses the ability to plan and create the organisations needed to achieve a desired goal ( [[#Güney--2017|Güney 2017]] ) and the process of interaction among actors involved in a common problem for making and implementing decisions ( [[#Kooiman--2003|Kooiman 2003]] ; [[#Hufty--2012|Hufty 2012]] ).

Climate change governance has been projected as conscious transformation at unprecedented scale and speed involving a contest of ideas and experimentation across scales of authority and jurisdiction ( [[#Hildén--2017|Hildén et al. 2017]] ; [[#Kivimaa--2017|Kivimaa et al. 2017]] ; [[#Laakso--2017|Laakso et al. 2017]] ; [[#Gordon--2018|Gordon 2018]] ; [[#van%20der%20Heijden--2018|van der Heijden 2018]] ). Yet, there remains a sense that achieving the urgent transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient and sustainable world requires significant innovation in governance ( [[#Hoffmann--2011|Hoffmann 2011]] ; [[#Stevenson--2013|Stevenson and Dryzek 2013]] ; [[#Aykut--2016|Aykut 2016]] ).

Starting from an initial focus on multilateral agreements, climate change governance has long evolved into a complex polycentric structure that spans from the global to national and sub-national levels, with ‘multiple parallel initiatives involving a range of actors at different levels of governance’ ( [[#Okereke--2009|Okereke et al. 2009]] ) and relying on both formal and informal networks and policy channels ( [[#Bulkeley--2014|Bulkeley et al. 2014]] ; [[#Jordan--2015|Jordan et al. 2015]] ). At the international level, implementation of the Paris Agreement and the UNFCCC more broadly is proceeding in parallel with other activities in an increasingly diverse landscape of loosely coordinated institutions, constituting ‘regime complex’ ( [[#Keohane--2011|Keohane and]] [[#Victor--2011|Victor 2011]] ), and new cooperative efforts demonstrate an evolution in the shifting authority given to actors at different levels of governance ( [[#Chan--2018|Chan et al. 2018]] ).

Multi-level governance has been used to highlight the notion that the processes involved in making and implementing decisions on climate change are no longer the exclusive preserve of government actors but rather involve a range of non-nation state actors such as cities, businesses, and civil society organisations ( [[#IPCC--2014a|IPCC 2014a]] ; [[#Bäckstrand--2017|Bäckstrand et al. 2017]] ; [[#Jordan--2018|Jordan et al. 2018]] ) (Chapter 13, and Sections 13.3.1 and 13.5.2). Increased multi-level participation of sub-national actors, along with a diversity of other transnational and non-state actors has helped to facilitate increased awareness, experimentation, innovation, learning and achieving benefits at multiple scales. Multi-level participation in governance systems can help to build coalitions to support climate change mitigation policies ( [[#Roberts--2018|Roberts et al. 2018]] ) and fragmentation has the potential to take cooperative and even synergistic forms ( [[#Biermann--2009|Biermann et al. 2009]] ).

However, there is no guarantee that multi-level governance can successfully deal with complex human-ecological systems ( [[#York--2005|York et al. 2005]] ; [[#Biermann--2017|Biermann et al. 2017]] ; [[#Di%20Gregorio--2019|Di Gregorio et al. 2019]] ). Multi-level governance can contribute to an extremely polarised discussion and policy blockage rather than enabling policy innovation ( [[#Fisher--2019|Fisher and Leifeld 2019]] ). A fragmented governance landscape may lead to coordination and legitimacy gaps undermining the regime ( [[#Nasiritousi--2019|Nasiritousi and Bäckstrand 2019]] ). The realities of the ‘drivers and constraints’ detailed in Section 4, the ‘glocal’ nature of climate change, the divided authority in world politics, diverse preferences of public and private entities across the spectrum, and pervasive suspicions of free riding, imply the challenge as how to incrementally deepen cooperation in a polycentric global system, rather than seeking a single, integrated governance ( [[#Keohane--2016|Keohane and Victor 2016]] ).

Crucially, climate governance takes place in the context of embedded power relations, operating in global, national and local contexts. Effective rules and institutions to govern climate change are more likely to emerge where and when power structures and interests favour action. However widespread and enduring cooperation can only be expected when the benefits outweigh the cost of cooperation and when the interests of key actors are sufficiently aligned ( [[#Barrett--1994|Barrett 1994]] ; [[#Finus--2008|Finus and Rübbelke 2008]] ; [[#Victor--2011|Victor 2011]] ; [[#Mainali--2018|Mainali et al. 2018]] ; [[#Tulkens--2019|Tulkens 2019]] ). Investigating the distribution and role of hard and soft power resources, capacities and power relations within and across different jurisdictional levels is therefore important to uncover hindrances to effective climate governance ( [[#Marquardt--2017|Marquardt 2017]] ). Institutions at international and national levels are also critical as they have the ability to mediate the power and interest of actors, and sustain cooperation based on equity and fair rules and outcomes. Governance, in fact, helps to align and moderate the interests of actors as well as to shift perceptions, including the negative, burden-sharing narratives that often accompany discussion about climate action, especially in international negotiations. It is also useful for engaging the wider public and international networks in imagining low-carbon societies (e.g., [[#Levy--2013|Levy and Spicer 2013]] ; [[#Milkoreit--2017|Milkoreit 2017]] ; [[#Nikoleris--2017|Nikoleris et al. 2017]] ; [[#Wapner--2017|Wapner and Elver 2017]] ; [[#Bengtsson%20Sonesson--2019|Bengtsson Sonesson et al. 2019]] ; [[#Fatemi--2020|Fatemi et al. 2020]] ). Experimentation also represents an important source of governance innovation and capability formation, linked to global knowledge and technology flows, which could reshape emergent socio-technical regimes and so contribute to alternative development pathways ( [[#Berkhout--2010|Berkhout et al. 2010]] ; [[#Roberts--2018|Roberts et al. 2018]] ; [[#Turnheim--2018|Turnheim et al. 2018]] ; [[#Lo--2019|Lo and Castán Broto 2019]] ).

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