IIIEE Theses 2021:05 The Power in Working Together Exploring how Small and Medium-sized Municipalities are Collaborating for Ambitious Climate Action Cynthia Coulombe Supervisor: Kes McCormick Thesis for the fulfilment of the Master of Science in Environmental Management and Policy Lund, Sweden, May 2021 You may use the contents of the IIIEE publications for informational purposes only. You may not copy, lend, hire, transmit or redistribute these materials for commercial purposes or for compensation of any kind without written permission from IIIEE. When using IIIEE material you must include the following copyright notice: ‘Copyright © Cynthia Coulombe, IIIEE, Lund University. All rights reserved’ in any copy that you make in a clearly visible position. You may not modify the materials without the permission of the author. Published in 2021 by IIIEE, Lund University, P.O. Box 196, S-221 00 LUND, Sweden, Tel: +46 – 46 222 02 00, Fax: +46 – 46 222 02 10, e-mail: [email protected]. ISSN 1401-9191 The Power in Being Small Acknowledgements Firstly, I would like to thank Energibyerne for giving me the opportunity to collaborate with you for my thesis. A special thank you goes to Kristina Bozhkova, as my supervisor from Energibyerne and SmartEnCity, to whom I am thankful for the time kindly taken to answer my questions in our recurring meetings and for providing me with so much knowledge that I’ve tried to integrate in my thesis. With your inputs, I hope to have made findings that are valuable also in practice for the networks. I would also like to thank all the other people from Energibyerne and DK2020 who took the time to have interesting interviews and provide me with valuable inputs for my thesis. I would also like to thank the researchers with whom I was fortunate to have engaging and stimulating conversations with, and who provided me with good insights and potential research avenues to look into. Furthermore, I want to thank the whole IIIEE family. Thank you to all the teachers we’ve had for the abundant knowledge we were taught and to all those working at the ‘insti’ who made the past two years the unforgettable journey it was. I am looking forward to applying everything I’ve learned into practice. A special thank you to my supervisor Kes McCormick who had the ability to change my mood during periods of distress and panic to happiness and positiveness within a short call. Your confidence in my work and knowledge was very appreciated. Je suis reconnaissante envers maman, papa et Hulietta pour m’avoir aidée à me rendre où je suis aujourd’hui et à mes amis de Québec pour vos encouragements et votre présence. Un gros merci, spécialement pour Camille, pour avoir toujours été là pour moi et m’avoir laissé partir étudier en Suède pendant deux ans. Un gros merci à tous, je ne sais pas ce que je ferais sans vous. I want to also give a loving ‘tak’ to Peter. Thank you for your help and always checking in on me during my thesis. I also want to thank you coming to visit me, for listening and supporting me over the past two years. Finally, I am grateful for the beautiful batch mates I was lucky to share the past two years with and from whom I’ve learned so from. It has truly been a pleasure and an adventure I’ll never forget. It is so inspiring to have found such a wonderful group of people and while I am sad that this chapter of our lives is coming to end, I am looking forward to seeing all the exceptional work you will be doing. I am so excited to visit you all in your countries and to meeting up again very soon. I would also like to give a big shout out to Anna, Michaela, and Veerle for the super lovely food evenings we’ve shared and for all the adventures and trips we’ve had together. Thank you for dragging me from behind my computer and going all sorts of activities. You’ve forced me to have a balanced thesis writing period with our ‘thesis-free weekends’ principle and I truly appreciate it. I did not think I would be lucky and fortunate enough to find such ‘amies d’or’ here, so thank you so much for making Sweden a home for me <3. A special thank you to Veerle, a true MVP friend that helped during the whole thesis process and especially in the end when I needed it the most. Even though you hate them, I am sending you a lot of KNUFFELs. This little yellow house will not be the same without you. I Cynthia Coulombe, IIIEE, Lund University Abstract Reaching the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement not only requires ambitious goals from national governments, but also the active participation of local municipalities. It is in cities where climate actions need to be implemented to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reach the international and national climate goals. While the importance of cities and their participation in networks has been well researched, studies have systematically neglected the committed individual agents in small and medium-sized cities and overlooked the importance of national networks. To address these research gaps, this thesis firstly investigates the key factors influencing climate policy implementation in small and medium-sized Danish municipalities. Secondly, it looks at how local climate managers use their municipality’s membership in national networks to increase this action implementation. To gather empirical data, twelve semi- structured interviews with seven municipal representatives and five representatives of two national city networks, and four informal discussions were held. Documents were also collected and analyzed. Through comparative content analysis, it was found that the main functions derived from network participation are direct exchanges between the climate managers, mobilization of others in the municipality, accounting of greenhouse gas emissions, and project support. These functions helped overcome key limitations the actors faced within the municipality related to a lack of legal competences, administrative resources and internal support for climate work and financial resources. This has implications for city networks which have been focusing on larger cities and not including smaller cities who have less capacity and would benefit most from the functions provided by them. Key recommendations are that small and medium-sized municipalities should join municipal networks since they have a high potential to gain from them to overcome inherent barriers associated with lower capacity. Moreover, municipal networks should tune their offerings to fit the diverse needs of their members and to not only focus on large and already ambitious cities but also smaller ones and newcomers. Lastly, future research should be done on national adaptation networks to compare with the findings from this thesis. To conclude, this thesis shows how small and medium-sized municipalities can take on ambitious climate plans and actions through collaborations and truly using the power in working together. Keywords: climate action implementation; city networks; small and medium-sized municipalities. II The Power in Being Small Executive summary Cities offer an important area where climate actions can have major contributions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions since it is where people live, work, and consume goods and services. Despite this important role, many local governments face substantial challenges in making climate action plans and even more so when it comes to putting these actions into practice. They commonly face barriers such as a lack of financial resources, a narrow legal scope for actions and low political clout. While most cities have to grapple with these barriers, they are more often felt by those with less capacity. Indeed, many studies have shown the significant influence municipal size has on the climate actions undertaken since larger cities often have more capacity in terms of resources, influence on national governments, and a wider range of sectors to act in. A potential solution to mitigate these challenges has been the voluntary coordination and collaboration between cities through city networks. However, these networks, especially those operating internationally, are dominated by large high-capacity cities. Current research on urban climate governance has been skewed to emphasize the role of frontrunner cities and larger cities’ potential for climate action and on transnational municipal networks (TMNs) and treating cities as internally homogenous actors. This has led to studies systematically neglecting three important areas: i) small and medium- sized towns (SMSTs); ii) national networks; and iii) the focus of agency at the municipal level. It remains unclear if the trends found in larger cities are also found in smaller ones. Although this thesis acknowledges the importance of the former, it also wants to stress the importance of increased focus and research on the latter. First, almost 60% of the EU’s population lives in towns and suburbs and rural areas. Second, small and medium-sized towns are more constrained in financial resources, staff, and organizational capacities. Third, these municipalities are faced with fewer problems related to agglomeration such as traffic, social segregation, property prices and environmental problems compared to large cities. Thus, this thesis aims to answer the three research gaps identified. By doing so, the overarching purpose of the thesis is to increase understanding of how local actors use national municipal network membership to increase the implementation of their municipality’s climate policies. Therefore, this thesis explores a main research question and two sub-research questions. • RQ1: How are small and medium-sized municipalities using national city networks to increase the implementation of local climate change policies? o SQ1: What are the key factors affecting the implementation of climate change policies in small and medium-sized municipalities? o SQ2: What are the main functions of national city networks used by agents in small and medium-sized municipalities? To answer these research questions, a case study research design was conducted.