Author
Listed:
- Guilherme Baggio
- Laura Tozer
Abstract
Climate budgets are increasingly being used in local climate governance, but it is not clear whether they have the potential to drive systemic change toward decarbonization. This study uses a political dynamics of decarbonization framework to assess the transformative potential of municipal climate budgets to catalyze changes across cultural, economic, political, and technological systems to overcome carbon lock-in. Document analysis and interviews with climate budget experts from Oslo, Fredrikstad, Hamar, Bergen, Arendal, Bærum, Asker and the county of Agder in Norway were employed in this study to identify and discuss transformative conditions for decarbonization. Climate budgets are used to integrate climate change mitigation as a core element of municipal governance. This approach aims to integrate climate change mitigation into existing decision-making mechanisms and expand the mandates of municipal departments and agencies in executing and overseeing climate actions. Local climate budgets are also being used to catalyze changes across cultural, economic, political, and technological systems through the alignment of new laws, regulations, financial and institutional capacities, inter-municipal coalitions, and cooperation with the private sector. However, climate budgeting in cities and local governments faces multiple barriers. These include a lack of jurisdiction over emissions accounted for in climate budgets; inadequate legal frameworks to support municipal climate actions; and competition for financial and institutional resources with other public services expected by city residents. These findings deepen our understanding of the transformative change potential in local climate action experiments by emphasizing the role of political dynamics in overcoming carbon lock-in.Cities and local governments should reorient decision-making through climate budgeting to prioritize climate change and broaden the roles of municipal departments and agencies. This approach can ensure that climate is integrated into municipal governance, from urban planning to public service delivery.Establishing monitoring and reporting mechanisms within the climate budgeting process enhances accountability and transparency by requiring municipal departments and agencies to regularly report their progress and the impact of their climate initiatives.Municipal programmes, urban planning, legislation, financial streams, and institutional capacity should be leveraged to drive systemic changes across cultural, economic, political, and technological systems towards city-wide decarbonization.
Suggested Citation
Guilherme Baggio & Laura Tozer, 2025.
"Mainstreaming decarbonization through local climate budgets in Norwegian municipalities,"
Climate Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(4), pages 578-592, April.
Handle:
RePEc:taf:tcpoxx:v:25:y:2025:i:4:p:578-592
DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2024.2403563
Download full text from publisher
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:tcpoxx:v:25:y:2025:i:4:p:578-592. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/tcpo20 .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.