Voluntary urban climate programmes: should city governments be involved and, if so, how?

Abstract

It has been proposed that voluntary urban climate programmes overcome shortfalls in mandatory, top-down, state-led government interventions to address climate change risks. Such programmes seek commitments from households and firms to improve their environmental sustainability, but do not have the force of law. City governments are actively developing and implementing such programmes, seeking improved and accelerated urban climate action. There is little evidence, however, of whether their involvement positively affects voluntary programme performance. This article presents qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) of 26 voluntary programmes from Australia, the Netherlands and the US, seeking to understand whether, and if so how, city governments affect the performance of voluntary urban climate programmes. The results will help to inform city governments about the roles they may play in urban climate governance.

Keywords:

• urban climate governance
• voluntary programmes
• qualitative comparative analysis
• climate action
• built environment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The number and length of the Appendixes (online supplemental data) may be unexpected for scholars unfamiliar with QCA. Standard QCA practice requires the underlying data, as well as the research steps taken and the choices made, to be made transparent (Ragin 2008; Rihoux and Ragin 2009).

Additional information

Funding

The research reported on in this article was funded through grants from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research [grant number 451-11-015], [grant number 016-165-322]; and the Australian Research Council [grant number DE15100511].