Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - eLection (Evaluating the performance of local climate policies in Mexico (2009-2018))

Teaser

Climate policy has been under negotiation at international level for more than two decades. During this period, efforts and studies on implementation and governance of climate policy have focused on industrialised countries, paying little focus to emerging economies. In the...

Summary

Climate policy has been under negotiation at international level for more than two decades. During this period, efforts and studies on implementation and governance of climate policy have focused on industrialised countries, paying little focus to emerging economies. In the last decade, domestic laws have started to be enacted worldwide stemming from this international debate. Climate action has also emerged in cities as means to access co-benefits associated to climate action among local populations. In this context, efforts require ambitious long-term policies and commitments; however domestic public agendas are prone to modifications by changes in public administration after every election, thus creating the risk of ineffective implementation. This project studies the socioeconomical and political dynamics affecting the design and paths followed by local climate policy. It takes an in-depth look into climate governance and policy implementation in Mexico as an example of an emerging and democratic major economy actively involved in climate policy. The ultimate goal is to look at the changes in local public administrations following democratic elections to discuss the implications for achieving long-term mitigation targets.

General Conclusions. Diffusion of climate policy from the national to the local level in Mexico has been slow. The topic has gained importance in the environmental agenda at the federal and state levels, but not by local administrations yet. Thus, adoption of local climate policy is constrained by varying factors ranging from scarce skilled personnel and budget, to the lack of information and definition of comprehensive plans, and low public awareness. However, local advancements in climate action are heterogenous, highlighting cases of municipalities where local political leaders are clearly interested in the issue and where other factors have entered into play. Given the fast turnover of local governments (3 years) and slow process associated to climate action, this limits importantly prospects for implementation. Implementation processes seem slower when they are only a reaction to policy agendas “external” to those of the local decisions makers (e.g. new legislation); when the local executive agenda includes proactively climate action (e.g. in development plans), institutionalisation and implementation is more likely to occur. In this path-depending process, increasing the number of climate initiatives in practice, along with public awareness, also increases the chances for continued climate action after governmental changes.

Work performed

The activities developed included the development of the academic research, project management, and knowledge dissemination and transfer. The main deliverables of the project comprehend academic articles, material gathered and processed and a website where the main findings and recommendations have been adopted for practical action by local stakeholders. The project started on April 2017 and ended by March 2019 in order to cover entirely the 2018 electoral process that took place in Mexico.

Drivers of adoption of climate policy were explored at the national, state and local levels in a period spanning from 1994 to 2018. This enabled the identification of the main drivers of climate policy adoption and continuation including the evaluation of the effect of advancements in international negotiations, enactment of domestic legislation and preparation of governmental development plans. A protocol to assess the inclusion of climate action into these planning processes at national, regional and municipal level was prepared and tested early in 2018. Fieldwork activities focused in the municipalities of the State of Jalisco as it provides an innovative multi-level governance laboratory for the implementation of environmental and climate initiatives. In eight regions of the State encompassing 70% of the municipalities, these receive technical support from environmental intermunicipal associations. This allowed the comparison of implementation processes between municipalities with and without the support of these bodies. Two workshops on local climate action were organised in March 2018 and February 2019 in Guadalajara Jalisco, where municipal officers in charge of the local climate agendas were invited. Information was gathered from the workshops and is used to explore the adoption of local climate action and prospects for its continuity after the 2018 elections. Finally, considering the experiences of local municipal climate action, ten case studies were selected and visits were made on the field to evaluate their technical, environmental, economic and social effectiveness and performance.

The project and its results have been presented in two international and two national conferences. Regarding academic production, one article is being evaluated for publication in an academic journal, two more have been presented at international conferences and three more are being written. A proposal for a Thematic Collection (special issue) has been made and accepted to present these results and current research on the topic in the Open Access journal Global Sustainability.

Final results

This project has helped to understand better the processes underlying the adoption and implementation of climate action at the local level in a Non-Annex I with an emerging economy such as Mexico. This has important practical implications since if these insights are taken forward, they can inform public administrations, donors and other stakeholders on the best ways to foster local climate action in the longer term. As a consequence, the associated environmental, economic and social benefits can endure and increase local welfare. This can have meaningful implications and impacts in the years to come since climate action and financing is expected to increase as part of the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

Towards the end of the project agreements were made in Mexico to adopt the main recommendations of the research for the design and evaluation of local climate policies, in an initiative named “Cambio Climático Cómo Vamos” (CCCV, Climate Change, how are we going?) (website: http://cambioclimaticocomovamos.org/), which consists of an online platform to present the information of the monitoring of local climate policy throughout different local administrations. Based on the methodology set up by the project, the platform will maintain the registry of progress on local climate action made by the 2015-2018 local administrations in Jalisco and will use it as a baseline for the monitoring of the activities implemented by the 2018-2021 ones. This initiative was designed by the fellow in collaboration with the local civil observatory of public policy “Jalisco Como Vamos” (JCV). After the end of the project in March 2019 the fellow will go back to Mexico to found a research centre (CIPAD Centro de Investigación y Proyectos en Ambiente y Desarrollo/ Centre for Research and Projects in Environment and Development), to ensure the continuation of CCCV and in collaboration with JCV will maintain the platform operative. This platform will include also a series of materials, videos and documents to build the capacities of local officers in charge of the climate agenda.

Website & more info

More info: https://www.cccep.ac.uk/.