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

==== 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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