Local action for climate change: transnational networks and the Irish experience

Abstract

Climate change policies are informed by contributions from public, private and civil society organisations at a range of scales from the local to the global. Such policy formation has come to be termed multilevel governance. Transnational networks of local authorities are an emerging feature of multilevel governance and they have been heralded as a means to improve the implementation of climate change policy on the ground. However empirical evaluation of these transnational climate change networks is geographically limited and no research examining their impact in Ireland has been conducted. In response this paper considers the significance of European climate change networks within Ireland's climate change strategy. It concludes that these formal transnational networks have had limited impact to date due to ongoing negotiations about the politics of scale and responsibility with respect to climate change policies in Ireland.

Acknowledgements

Research reported on in this paper was funded by a small project grant awarded by the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (2003–2004). The work would not have been possible without that funding and without the cooperation of local authorities and Local Energy Agencies in Ireland. Many thanks also to Harriet Bulkeley who read an earlier draft of the paper and to comments from referees.