The influence of climate change advisory bodies on political debates: evidence from the UK Committee on Climate Change

ABSTRACT

Climate change advisory bodies are rapidly proliferating around the world, often with statutory underpinning. While they are argued to be an important component of effective climate governance, few studies have systematically assessed their political influence. Using the UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC) as a case, this paper investigates how such bodies influence political debates on climate change. To do so, we build an original dataset of all CCC mentions in UK Parliamentary proceedings from 2008–2018. We find that CCC analysis is used by all major political parties, that its influence has grown over time and that it has influenced policy debates both within its statutory remit (carbon budgets) and more broadly (energy policy and flood defence spending). Furthermore, most politicians have been supportive of the CCC. They have utilized the information it produces to hold government accountable and to argue for more ambitious policy. We find little evidence that CCC analysis is politicized or that it merely functions as a ‘legitimiser’, providing justification for the government’s pre-decided policy choices. Instead, we find that the CCC functions primarily as a knowledge broker, offering trusted information to policymakers, and at times as a policy entrepreneur. Overall, the CCC experience demonstrates that climate change advisory bodies can play a key role in climate governance.

Key policy insights

• The information and analysis produced by the CCC is widely cited by Parliamentarians across the political spectrum and is often used as the technical basis for political arguments calling for greater ambition.

• CCC evidence has substantial influence in areas that are directly covered by its core statutory mandate, but also wider climate change-related Parliamentary debates, indicating knowledge spillovers.

• The UK experience shows that an expert advisory body can strengthen climate governance by serving as an impartial knowledge broker, contributing to more evidence-based and ambitious policymaking.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change advisory bodies
• climate change governance
• UK climate policy
• Committee on Climate Change

Acknowledgements

This work was made possible with a grant from the European Climate Foundation. The authors further acknowledge financial support from the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, and from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through its support of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP). Expert research assistance was provided by Adam Barnett, Jaime Giacomozzi and Patricia Yagüe-Garcia. The authors are grateful for comments and feedback from Robert Falkner, Adrian Gault, Erica Hope, Daniel Johns, Karen Lavin, Simon Matti, Thomas Muinzer, Sarah Nash, Elsa Özmen, Richard Perkins, Andreas Rüdiger, Oliver Sartor, Prue Taylor and Sharon Turner. Sam Fankhauser was a member of the UK Committee on Climate Change from February 2008 until December 2016.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See the Climate Change Laws of the World database (https://climate-laws.org/). The statistics are based on a subset of countries – the 99 countries covered in Nachmany et al. (2015).

2 Scholars have alternatively referred to the knowledge broker function as that of the ‘rational analyst’ (Bulmer, 1983; Owens, 2011).

3 The initial coding was conducted by two research assistants. Reliability checks were then carried out on a sample of transcripts coded independently by a principal investigator.

4 Data for the period 2010 to 2017. There were 718 references to the CCC during this time and 151 references to the IPCC.

5 We refer to Parliamentary Bills as per the record on their Parliamentary debate in Hansard (UK Parliament, 2018). When the Bills receive royal assent, they become Acts. Thus, the ‘Energy Bill 2012–2013’ became the Energy Act 2013.

Additional information

Funding

This work was made possible with a grant from the European Climate Foundation. The authors further acknowledge financial support from the Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment, and from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through its support of the Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy (CCCEP).