The ambiguity of federalism in climate policy-making: how the political system in Austria hinders mitigation and facilitates adaptation

ABSTRACT

Although the impacts of federalism on environmental policy-making are still contested, many policy analysts emphasise its advantages in climate policy-making. This applies to the mitigation of climate change, in particular when federal governments (as in the U.S.) are inactive. More recently, federalism is also expected to empower sub-national actors in adapting to local impacts of climate change. The present paper analyses the role federalism in Austria played in greening the decentralised building sector (relevant for mitigation) on the one hand, and in improving regional flood risk management (relevant for adaptation) on the other. In line with the so-called matching school of the environmental federalism research strand we conclude that Austrian federalism proved to be more appropriate for regional flood protection than for mitigating climate change. We highlight that it is not federalism per se but federalism embedded in various contextual factors that shape environmental policy-making. Among these factors are the spatial scale of an environmental problem, the nitty-gritty of polity systems, and national politics (such as federal positions on climate change mitigation).

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change mitigation
• climate change adaptation
• climate policy integration/CPI
• building policies
• flood risk management
• federalism
• environmental federalism
• Austria

Acknowledgements

The CLIP-IN project (No. K10AC0K00054) led to the mitigation case study; the projects FAMOUS (No. K10AC0K00004) and Flood-Adapt (No. KR14AC7K11809) led to the adaptation case study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Reinhard Steurer is Associate Professor at InFER, the Institute of Forest, Environmental and Natural Resource Policies at BOKU Vienna. His research and teaching is concerned with governance and policy analyses on climate change (both mitigation and adaptation) and sustainable development in Europe, usually in a comparative perspective. Reinhard has published more than 60 journal articles, book chapters and books on these topics.

Christoph Clar is a post-doc researcher at InFER, the Institute of Forest, Environmental and Natural Resource Policy at the BOKU University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna. His research and teaching focuses on the politics of climate change and natural resources.

Notes

1 For an overview, see the virtual special issue of “Publius: The Journal of Federalism” on “U.S. Federalism and Environmental Policy”; http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/pubjof/vi_environmental_policy.html; accessed on May 26, 2015.

2 Large parts of the two original case study publications have been used here without quoting or referencing them because this would make the text unreadable. For further details on methods and findings on the mitigation case see Steurer and Clar (2015), for the adaptation case see Clar and Steurer (2014).

3 The mitigation case study focuses on two provinces (Styria and Upper Austria) that are among the leaders in this field so that the situation in most other provinces is likely to be worse. The adaptation case study focuses on the province of Lower Austria because it was prone to heavy flooding in recent years. For further methodological details, see Steurer and Clar (2015), Clar and Steurer (2014), and the online supplementary Annex.

4 Note that its full name is Austrian Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management.

5 This section is a summary of Steurer and Clar (2015). where further details on methods and findings can be found.

6 http://derstandard.at/1333528357258/Umwelt-Strategie-Oesterreich-kauft-sich-mit-Emissionszertifikaten-frei-und-kuerzt-Solarfoerderung; accessed at July 19, 2013.

7 http://www.klimaaktiv.at/bauen-sanieren/gebaeudedeklaration.htm; accessed on August 17, 2013.

8 See http://wirtschaftsblatt.at/home/life/immobilien/1227532/index; http://www.ots.at/presseaussendung/OTS_20130314_OTS0093/endlich-konsens-bei-der-zweckbindung-der-wohnbaufoerderung; accessed on July 28, 2013;

9 http://www.umweltfoerderung.at/kpc/de/home/umweltfrderung/fr_private/energiesparen/; accessed on July 28, 2013. http://www.umweltfoerderung.at/kpc/de/home/umweltfrderung/fr_private/energiesparen/; accessed on July 28, 2013.

10 http://derstandard.at/1378249110083/Eigenheim-ohne-Foerderung-im-Trend; accessed on September 16, 2013. http://derstandard.at/1378249110083/Eigenheim-ohne-Foerderung-im-Trend; accessed on September 16, 2013.

11 BGBl. II Nr. 251/2009: 15a-Vereinbarung zur Emissionsreduktion im Gebäudesektor.

12 This section is a shortened version of Clar and Steurer (2014), and it is also based on Nordbeck et al. (in press).

13 http://noe.orf.at/news/stories/2593765/, accessed on April 10, 2015.

14 Representatives of the protective water management unit in the Federal Environment Ministry even declined to be interviewed on climate change adaptation.

15 http://www.lebensministerium.at/wasser/schutz_vor_naturgefahren/finanz_hws.html; accessed on October 10, 2013.

16 In Lower Austria, total damages of the 2013 flood were only a fraction of those in 2002 (€150 million versus 3 billion) although the water levels of the Danube were nearly the same. See http://noe.orf.at/news/stories/2593765/, accessed on May 16, 2014; http://noe.orf.at/news/stories/2587009/, accessed on July 1, 2014; http://kurier.at/chronik/niederoesterreich/hochwasser-noe-aufatmen-und-verzweiflung-an-der-donau/14.697.472, accessed on July 1, 2014.

Additional information

Funding

We thank the Austrian Climate Research Programme (ACRP) of the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund for financing the following three projects that led to this article: (i) CLIP-IN (Project No. K10AC0K00054); (ii) Flood-Adapt (Project No. KR14AC7K11809); and (iii) FAMOUS (K10AC0K00004).