Editing IPCC:AR6/SR15/Chapter-4 (section)

== 4.4 Implementing Far-Reaching and Rapid Change ==

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The feasibility of 1.5°C-compatible pathways is contingent upon enabling conditions for systemic change (see Cross Chapter Box 3 in Chapter 1). Section 4.3 identifies the major systems, and options within those systems, that offer the potential for change to align with 1.5°C pathways.

AR5 identifies enabling conditions as influencing the feasibility of climate responses (Kolstad et al., 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r811|811]]</sup> . This section draws on 1.5°C-specific and related literature on rapid and scaled up change to identify the enabling conditions that influence the feasibility of adaptation and mitigation options assessed in Section 4.5. Examples from diverse regions and sectors are provided in Boxes 4.1 to 4.10 to illustrate how these conditions could enable or constrain the implementation of incremental, rapid, disruptive and transformative mitigation and adaptation consistent with 1.5°C pathways.

Coherence between the enabling conditions holds potential to enhance the feasibility of 1.5°C-consistent pathways and adapting to the consequences. This includes better alignment across governance scales (OECD, 2015a; Geels et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r812|812]]</sup> , enabling multilevel governance (Cheshmehzangi, 2016; Revi, 2017; Tait and Euston-Brown, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r813|813]]</sup> and nested institutions (Abbott, 2012) <sup>[[#fn:r814|814]]</sup> . It also includes interdisciplinary actions, combined adaptation and mitigation action (Göpfert et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r815|815]]</sup> , and science–policy partnerships (Vogel et al., 2007; Hering et al., 2014; Roberts, 2016; Figueres et al., 2017; Leal Filho et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r816|816]]</sup> . These partnerships are difficult to establish and sustain, but can generate trust (Cole, 2015; Jordan et al., 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r817|817]]</sup> and inclusivity that ultimately can provide durability and the realization of co-benefits for sustained rapid change (Blanchet, 2015; Ziervogel et al., 2016a) <sup>[[#fn:r818|818]]</sup> .

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=== 4.4.1 Enhancing Multilevel Governance ===

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Addressing climate change and implementing responses to 1.5°C-consistent pathways would require engagement between various levels and types of governance (Betsill and Bulkeley, 2006; Kern and Alber, 2009; Christoforidis et al., 2013; Romero-Lankao et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r819|819]]</sup> . AR5 highlighted the significance of governance as a means of strengthening adaptation and mitigation and advancing sustainable development (Fleurbaey et al., 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r820|820]]</sup> . Governance is defined in the broadest sense as the ‘processes of interaction and decision-making among actors involved in a common problem’ (Kooiman, 2003; Hufty, 2011; Fleurbaey et al., 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r821|821]]</sup> . This definition goes beyond notions of formal government or political authority and integrates other actors, networks, informal institutions and communities.

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==== 4.4.1.1 Institutions and their capacity to invoke far-reaching and rapid change ====

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Institutions – the rules and norms that guide human interactions (Section 4.4.2) – enable or impede the structures, mechanisms and measures that guide mitigation and adaptation. Institutions, understood as the ‘rules of the game’ (North, 1990) <sup>[[#fn:r822|822]]</sup> , exert direct and indirect influence over the viability of 1.5°C-consistent pathways (Munck et al., 2014; Willis, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r823|823]]</sup> . Governance would be needed to support wide-scale and effective adoption of mitigation and adaptation options. Institutions and governance structures are strengthened when the principle of the ‘commons’ is explored as a way of sharing management and responsibilities (Ostrom et al., 1999; Chaffin et al., 2014; Young, 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r824|824]]</sup> . Institutions would need to be strengthened to interact amongst themselves, and to share responsibilities for the development and implementation of rules, regulations and policies (Ostrom et al., 1999; Wejs et al., 2014; Craig et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r825|825]]</sup> , with the goal of ensuring that these embrace equity, justice, poverty alleviation and sustainable development, enabling a 1.5°C world (Reckien et al., 2017; Wood et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r826|826]]</sup> .

Several authors have identified different modes of cross-stakeholder interaction in climate policy, including the role played by large multinational corporations, small enterprises, civil society and non-state actors. Ciplet et al. (2015) <sup>[[#fn:r827|827]]</sup> argue that civil society is to a great extent the only reliable motor for driving institutions to change at the pace required. Kern and Alber (2009) <sup>[[#fn:r828|828]]</sup> recognize different forms of collaboration relevant to successful climate policies beyond the local level. Horizontal collaboration (e.g., transnational city networks) and vertical collaboration within nation-states can play an enabling role (Ringel, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r829|829]]</sup> . Vertical and horizontal collaboration requires synergistic relationships between stakeholders (Ingold and Fischer, 2014; Hsu et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r830|830]]</sup> . The importance of community participation is emphasized in literature, and in particular the need to take into account equity and gender considerations (Chapter 5) (Graham et al., 2015; Bryan et al., 2017; Wangui and Smucker, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r831|831]]</sup> . Participation often faces implementation challenges and may not always result in better policy outcomes. Stakeholders, for example, may not view climate change as a priority and may not share the same preferences, potentially creating a policy deadlock (Preston et al., 2013, 2015; Ford et al., 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r832|832]]</sup> .

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==== 4.4.1.2 International governance ====

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International treaties help strengthen policy implementation, providing a medium- and long-term vision (Obergassel et al., 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r833|833]]</sup> . International climate governance is organized via many mechanisms, including international organizations, treaties and conventions, for example, UNFCCC, the Paris Agreement and the Montreal Protocol. Other multilateral and bilateral agreements, such as trade agreements, also have a bearing on climate change.

There are significant differences between global mitigation and adaptation governance frames. Mitigation tends to be global by its nature and based on the principle of the climate system as a global commons (Ostrom et al., 1999) <sup>[[#fn:r834|834]]</sup> . Adaptation has traditionally been viewed as a local process, involving local authorities, communities, and stakeholders (Khan, 2013; Preston et al., 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r835|835]]</sup> , although it is now recognized to be a multi-scaled, multi-actor process that transcends scales from local and sub-national to national and international (Mimura et al., 2014; UNEP, 2017a) <sup>[[#fn:r836|836]]</sup> . National governments provide a central pivot for coordination, planning, determining policy priorities and distributing resources. National governments are accountable to the international community through international agreements. Yet, many of the impacts of climate change are transboundary, so that bilateral and multilateral cooperation are needed (Nalau et al., 2015; Donner et al., 2016; Magnan and Ribera, 2016; Tilleard and Ford, 2016; Lesnikowski et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r837|837]]</sup> . The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol demonstrates that a global environmental agreement facilitating common but differentiated responsibilities is possible (Sharadin, 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r838|838]]</sup> . This was operationalized by developed countries acting first, with developing countries following and benefiting from leap-frogging the trial-and-error stages of innovative technology development.

Work on international climate governance has focused on the nature of ‘climate regimes’ and coordinating the action of nation-states (Aykut, 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r839|839]]</sup> organized around a diverse set of instruments: (i) binding limits allocated by principles of historical responsibility and equity, (ii) carbon prices, emissions quotas, (iii) pledges and review of policies and measures or (iv) a combination of these options (Stavins, 1988; Grubb, 1990; Pizer, 2002; Newell and Pizer, 2003) <sup>[[#fn:r840|840]]</sup> .

Literature on the Kyoto Protocol provides two important insights for the 1.5°C transition: the challenge of agreeing on rules to allocate emissions quotas (Shukla, 2005; Caney, 2012; Winkler et al., 2013; Gupta, 2014; Méjean et al., 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r841|841]]</sup> and a climate-centric vision (Shukla, 2005; BASIC experts, 2011) <sup>[[#fn:r842|842]]</sup> , separated from development issues which drove resistance from many developing nations (Roberts and Parks, 2006) <sup>[[#fn:r843|843]]</sup> . For the former, a burden-sharing approach led to an adversarial process among nations to decide who should be allocated ‘how much’ of the remainder of the emissions budget (Caney, 2014; Ohndorf et al., 2015; Roser et al., 2015; Giménez-Gómez et al., 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r844|844]]</sup> . Industry group lobbying further contributed to reducing space for manoeuvre of some major emitting nations (Newell and Paterson, 1998; Levy and Egan, 2003; Dunlap and McCright, 2011; Michaelowa, 2013; Geels, 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r845|845]]</sup> .

Given the political unwillingness to continue with the Kyoto Protocol approach a new approach was introduced in the Copenhagen Accord, the Cancun Agreements, and finally in the Paris Agreement. The transition to 1.5°C requires carbon neutrality and thus going beyond the traditional framing of climate as a ‘tragedy of the commons’ to be addressed via cost-optimal allocation rules, which demonstrated a low probability of enabling a transition to 1.5°C-consistent pathways (Patt, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r846|846]]</sup> . The Paris Agreement, built on a ‘pledge and review’ system, is thought be more effective in securing trust (Dagnet et al., 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r847|847]]</sup> and enables effective monitoring and timely reporting on national actions (including adaptation), allowing for international scrutiny and persistent efforts of civil society and non-state actors to encourage action in both national and international contexts (Allan and Hadden, 2017; Bäckstrand and Kuyper, 2017; Höhne et al., 2017; Lesnikowski et al., 2017; Maor et al., 2017; UNEP, 2017a) <sup>[[#fn:r848|848]]</sup> , with some limitations (Nieto et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r849|849]]</sup> .

The paradigm shift enabled at Cancun succeeded by focusing on the objective of ‘equitable access to sustainable development’ (Hourcade et al., 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r850|850]]</sup> . The use of ‘pledge and review’ now underpins the Paris Agreement. This consolidates multiple attempts to define a governance approach that relies on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and on means for a ‘facilitative model’ (Bodansky and Diringer, 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r851|851]]</sup> to reinforce them. This enables a regular, iterative, review of NDCs allowing countries to set their own ambitions  after a global stocktake and more flexible, experimental forms of climate governance, which may provide room for higher ambition and be consistent with the needs of governing for a rapid transition to close the emission gap (Clémençon, 2016; Falkner, 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r852|852]]</sup> (Cross-Chapter Box 11 in this chapter). Beyond a general consensus on the necessity of measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) mechanisms as a key element of a climate regime (Ford et al., 2015b; van Asselt et al., 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r853|853]]</sup> , some authors emphasize different governance approaches to implement the Paris Agreement. Through the new proposed sustainable development mechanism in Article 6, the Paris Agreement allows the space to harness the lowest cost mitigation options worldwide. This may incentivize policymakers to enhance mitigation ambition by speeding up climate action as part of a ‘climate regime complex’ (Keohane and Victor, 2011) <sup>[[#fn:r854|854]]</sup> of loosely interrelated global governance institutions. In the Paris Agreement, the ‘common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’ (CBDR-RC) principle could be expanded and revisited under a ‘sharing the pie’ paradigm (Ji and Sha, 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r855|855]]</sup> as a tool to open innovation processes towards alternative development pathways (Chapter 5).

COP 16 in Cancun was also the first time in the UNFCCC that adaptation was recognized to have similar priority as mitigation. The Paris Agreement recognizes the importance of adaptation action and cooperation to enhance such action. Chung Tiam Fook (2017) <sup>[[#fn:r856|856]]</sup> and Lesnikowski et al. (2017) <sup>[[#fn:r857|857]]</sup> suggest that the Paris Agreement is explicit about multilevel adaptation governance, outlines stronger transparency mechanisms, links adaptation to development and climate justice, and is therefore suggestive of greater inclusiveness of non-state voices and the broader contexts of social change.

1.5°C-consistent pathways require further exploration of conditions of trust and reciprocity amongst nation states (Schelling, 1991; Ostrom and Walker, 2005) <sup>[[#fn:r858|858]]</sup> . Some authors (Colman et al., 2011; Courtois et al., 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r859|859]]</sup>

suggest a departure from the vision of actors acting individually in the pursuit of self-interest to that of iterated games with actors interacting over time showing that reciprocity, with occasional forgiveness and initial good faith, can lead to win-win outcomes and to cooperation as a stable strategy (Axelrod and Hamilton, 1981) <sup>[[#fn:r860|860]]</sup> .

Regional cooperation plays an important role in the context of global governance. Literature on climate regimes has only started exploring innovative governance arrangements, including coalitions of transnational actors including state, market and non-state actors (Bulkeley et al., 2012; Hovi et al., 2016; Hagen et al., 2017; Hermwille et al., 2017; Roelfsema et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r861|861]]</sup> and groupings of countries, as a complement to the UNFCCC (Abbott and Snidal, 2009; Biermann, 2010; Zelli, 2011; Nordhaus, 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r862|862]]</sup> . Climate action requires multilevel governance from the local and community level to national, regional and international levels. Box 4.1 shows the role of sub-national authorities (e.g., regions and provinces) in facilitating urban climate action, while Box 4.2 shows that climate governance can be organized across hydrological as well as political units.

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==== 4.4.1.3 Sub-national governance ====

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Local governments can play a key role (Melica et al., 2018; Romero-Lankao et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r863|863]]</sup> in influencing mitigation and adaptation strategies. It is important to understand how rural and urban areas, small islands, informal settlements and communities might intervene to reduce climate impacts (Bulkeley et al., 2011) <sup>[[#fn:r864|864]]</sup> , either by implementing climate objectives defined at higher government levels or by taking initiative autonomously or collectively (Aall et al., 2007; Reckien et al., 2014; Araos et al., 2016a; Heidrich et al., 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r865|865]]</sup> . Local governance faces the challenge of reconciling local concerns with global objectives. Local governments could coordinate and develop effective local responses, and could pursue procedural justice in ensuring community engagement and more effective policies around energy and vulnerability reduction (Moss et al., 2013; Fudge et al., 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r866|866]]</sup> . They can enable more participative decision-making (Barrett, 2015; Hesse, 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r867|867]]</sup> . Fudge et al. (2016) <sup>[[#fn:r868|868]]</sup> argue that local authorities are well-positioned to involve the wider community in: designing and implementing climate policies, engaging with sustainable energy generation (e.g., by supporting energy communities) (Slee, 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r869|869]]</sup> , and the delivery of demand-side measures and adaptation implementation.

By 2050, it is estimated three billion people will be living in slums and informal settlements: neighbourhoods without formal governance, on un-zoned land developments and in places that are exposed to climate-related hazards (Bai et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r870|870]]</sup> . Emerging research is examining how citizens can contribute informally to governance with rapid urbanization and weaker government regulation (Sarmiento and Tilly, 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r871|871]]</sup> . It remains to be seen how the possibilities and consequences of alternative urban governance models will be managed for large, complex problems and for addressing inequality and urban adaptation (Amin and Cirolia, 2018; Bai et al., 2018; Sarmiento and Tilly, 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r872|872]]</sup> .

Expanding networks of cities are sharing experiences on coping with climate change and drawing economic and development benefits from climate change responses – a recent institutional innovation. This could be complemented by efforts of national governments to enhance local climate action through national urban policies (Broekhoff et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r873|873]]</sup> . Over the years, non-state actors have set up several transnational climate governance initiatives to accelerate the climate response, for example, ICLEI (1990), C–40 (2005), the Global Island Partnership (2006) and the Covenant of Mayors (2008) (Gordon and Johnson, 2017; Hsu et al., 2017; Ringel, 2017; Kona et al., 2018; Melica et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r874|874]]</sup> and to exert influence on national governments and the UNFCCC (Bulkeley, 2005) <sup>[[#fn:r875|875]]</sup> . However, Michaelowa and Michaelowa (2017) <sup>[[#fn:r876|876]]</sup> find low effectiveness for over 100 of such mitigation initiatives.

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==== 4.4.1.4 Interactions and processes for multilevel governance ====

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Literature has proposed multilevel governance in climate change as an enabler for systemic transformation and effective governance, as the concept is thought to allow for combining decisions across levels and sectors and across institutional types at the same level (Romero-Lankao et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r877|877]]</sup> , with multilevel reinforcement and the mobilization of economic interests at different levels of governance (Jänicke and Quitzow, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r878|878]]</sup> . These governance mechanisms are based on accountability and transparency rules and participation and coordination across and within these levels.

A study of 29 European countries showed that the rapid adoption and diffusion of adaptation policymaking is largely driven by internal factors, at the national and sub-national levels (Massey et al., 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r879|879]]</sup> . An assessment of national-level adaptation in 117 countries (Berrang-Ford et al., 2014) <sup>[[#fn:r880|880]]</sup> found good governance to be the one of the strongest predictors of national adaptation policy. An analysis of the climate responses of 200 large and medium-sized cities across eleven European countries found that factors such as membership of climate networks, population size, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and adaptive capacity act as drivers of mitigation and adaptation plans (Reckien et al., 2015) <sup>[[#fn:r881|881]]</sup> .

Adaptation policy has seen growth in some areas (Massey et al., 2014; Lesnikowski et al., 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r882|882]]</sup> , although efforts to track adaptation progress are constrained by an absence of data sources on adaptation (Berrang-Ford et al., 2011; Ford and Berrang-Ford, 2016; Magnan, 2016; Magnan and Ribera, 2016) <sup>[[#fn:r883|883]]</sup> . Many developing countries have made progress in formulating national policies, plans and strategies on responding to climate change. The NDCs have been identified as one such institutional mechanism (Cross-Chapter Box 11 in this Chapter) (Magnan et al., 2015; Kato and Ellis, 2016; Peters et al., 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r884|884]]</sup> .

To overcome barriers to policy implementation, local conflicts of interest or vested interests, strong leadership and agency is needed by political leaders. As shown by the Covenant of Mayors initiative (Box 4.1), political leaders with a vision for the future of the local community can succeed in reducing GHG emissions, when they are supported by civil society (Rivas et al., 2015; Croci et al., 2017; Kona et al., 2018) <sup>[[#fn:r885|885]]</sup> . Any political vision would need to be translated into an action plan, which could include elements describing policies and measures needed to achieve transition, the human and financial resources needed, milestones, and appropriate measurement and verification processes (Azevedo and Leal, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r886|886]]</sup> . Discussing the plan with stakeholders and civil society, including citizens and allowing for participation for minorities, and having them provide input and endorse it, has been found to increase the likelihood of success (Rivas et al., 2015; Wamsler, 2017) <sup>[[#fn:r887|887]]</sup> . However, as described by Nightingale (2017) <sup>[[#fn:r888|888]]</sup> and Green (2016) <sup>[[#fn:r889|889]]</sup> , struggles over natural resources and adaptation governance both at the national and community levels would also need to be addressed ‘in politically unstable contexts, where power and politics shape adaptation outcomes’.

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