STOCKHOLM UNIVERSITY Department of Economic History and International Relations Master's Thesis in International Relations Spring Term 2020 Student: Jerker Bohman Supervisor: Elisabeth Corell Evaluating urban climate policies: A comparative case study of Stockholm and Dublin Abstract Climate change is a collective action problem that has been seen as something that needs a global solution. This has resulted in multilateral agreements, such as the Paris Agreement, which can largely be said to have been unsuccessful so far. This has led to an increased awareness of the potential of cities as being part of the solution. Cities are often seen as key sources of climate change, but also as key sites for climate action. The Paris Agreement needs to be implemented on all political levels to be effective. This makes cities an important site for climate policy implementation. Some scholars of urban climate governance have looked at ways to evaluate climate policies in cities as a way to improve these processes. This study means to contribute to that field. The aim of the study is to evaluate climate policies in the city plans of Stockholm and Dublin. This has been done by testing an analytical framework which made it possible to shed light on the strengths and weaknesses of the climate policies and the governance structures in the plans. By doing this it was also possible to identify challenges in using the framework and give suggestions on how the framework can be improved. The study takes the form of a comparative case study of the two cities. Document analysis was used as a method to select and analyse the data and the empirical material consisted of the city plans of Stockholm and Dublin. These are policy documents containing general development plans of the cities. It was concluded that both plans contain both strengths and weaknesses. Examples of strengths are that both plans are well-integrated with activities on the regional and national level, that responsibility for implementation is centralised on the local level, that the plans promote innovation and that the plans are connected to long-term goals and visions. Examples of weaknesses are that neither plan makes use of more hard methods such as regulation, that the Dublin City Plan is not integrated with policy on the global level and that the Stockholm City Plan lacks monitoring systems. Regarding the analytical framework it was concluded that it can be used to analyse city plans rather than metropolitan plans. By testing the framework it was also possible to identify challenges in using the framework and give suggestions on how to improve it, such as by making some of the key attributes of the plan more widely applicable. Key words: urban climate governance, cities, climate policy, climate mitigation, climate adaptation, analytical framework, document analysis, comparative case study, Stockholm, Dublin i Table of contents 1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Aim, scope and research questions .............................................................................................. 2 1.2 Theory, method and empirical material ......................................................................................... 3 1.3 Disposition ..................................................................................................................................... 3 2. Theory ................................................................................................................................................. 4 2.1 Theoretical background................................................................................................................. 4 2.2 Definition of key terms ................................................................................................................... 7 2.3 Analytical framework ..................................................................................................................... 8 2.3.1 Governance ............................................................................................................................ 9 2.3.2 Climate policies .................................................................................................................... 12 2.3.3 Distribution ........................................................................................................................... 14 2.3.4 Democracy ........................................................................................................................... 14 2.3.5 Finance................................................................................................................................. 16 2.4 Theoretical scope ........................................................................................................................ 16 3. Method .............................................................................................................................................. 17 3.1 Research design ......................................................................................................................... 17 3.2 Case selection and empirical material ........................................................................................ 18 3.3 Document analysis ...................................................................................................................... 20 3.4 Approach and limitations ............................................................................................................. 21 3.5 Epistemology and ontology ......................................................................................................... 22 3.6 Ethical considerations ................................................................................................................. 23 4. Results and discussion ..................................................................................................................... 23 4.1 Results from the Stockholm City Plan ......................................................................................... 23 4.1.1 Governance .......................................................................................................................... 24 4.1.2 Climate policies .................................................................................................................... 27 4.2 Results from the Dublin City Plan ............................................................................................... 31 4.2.1 Governance .......................................................................................................................... 31 4.2.2 Climate policies .................................................................................................................... 35 4.3 Comparative analysis and evaluation ......................................................................................... 40 4.3.1 Comparative analysis of key attributes under the governance theme ................................. 40 4.3.2 Comparative analysis of key attributes under the climate policies theme ........................... 43 4.4 Challenges in using the framework and ways to improve it ........................................................ 46 5. Concluding discussion ...................................................................................................................... 48 References ............................................................................................................................................ 52 ii 1. Introduction Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humanity and other species. Rising greenhouse gas emissions are therefore of great concern and climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts are often high on the political agenda in many countries. As a result of this, climate governance, being part of the wider research field of global governance, has grown as a research field over the last decade. Climate governance often takes place on multiple political levels, ranging from the global to the local level, and involves many actors. Climate change has been described as a collective action problem (Ostrom, 2010, p. 2). The world’s countries have tried to solve this problem through international negotiations and agreements, which largely can be said to have been unsuccessful. Global climate governance has been well-studied by scholars of international relations. The inaction of nation states has created an increased awareness of the potential of cities as a place of change and implementation of climate policy. Cities sometimes even provide more ambitious climate policy than their national governments. This is not only positive as a response to the inaction of nation states, but also in itself since it is important that multilateral agreements, such as the Paris Agreement, is implemented on all levels, including the local level. If the Paris Agreement is not implemented on all levels it risks being a hollow agreement that results in false promises of nation states that do too little, too late. Van der Heijden (2019, p. 2) has written about the importance of cities in climate governance. Cities are often seen as key sources of climate change (Bulkeley et al., 2013; Van der Heijden, 2014; Gupta et al., 2015; Washington, 2015; Solecki et al., 2018). They are the source of 70 percent of global resource consumption and