Periodic Reporting for period 3 - LO-ACT (Low Carbon Action in Ordinary Cities)
Reporting period: 2022-02-01 to 2023-07-31
LO-ACT focuses on the need for innovations for climate change that suit the needs of rapidly growing urban areas. It analyses this challenge at three scales:
• GLOBAL SCALE: the project reviews how the actors that influence international climate politics (international organizations, professional networks, social movements, NGOs, and multi-national corporations) represent cities and urban areas. Different forms of representation enable varied forms of action from technological-led approaches to people-centric adaptation and mitigation responses.
• INTERNATIONAL FLOWS AND SUPPLY CHAINS: the project focuses on how particular responses to climate change in urban areas constitute models that 'travel' across contexts and are reproduced in different ways that respond (or not) to local needs.
• PLACE-BASED PERSPECTIVES: the project explores existing innovations to respond to climate change in urban environments. The project focuses on overlooked contexts of action and initiatives that often go unnoticed under the radar. In particular, our data archive pays attention to rapidly growing small and medium cities in West Africa, East Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
The final component of the project is a theoretical synthesis: the attempt to build a new understanding of the governance of climate change in urban environments. Rather than asking what solutions are needed, LO-ACT focuses on how different forms of action become understood as solutions.
LO-ACT results matter for society because they reveal current responses to climate change, following recent social demands for urgent action. LO-ACT shows a fraught relationship between normative commands to take particular courses of action and the practical realities of what is being done depending on the possibilities afforded in different cities worldwide. LO-ACT reviews visions, processes, economies, and social practices behind a global urban transition to sustainability.
LO-ACT also actively contributes to current thinking on the climate emergency in urban areas mainly through participation in the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (different members of the team participate as Lead Authors, Contributing Authors, and Chapter Scientists) or as lead consultants for global assessments such as UN-Habitat's 2020 World Cities Report on the value of sustainable urbanization. In 2021, the Principal Investigator received the AXA Award for Climate Science (from the AXA Research Fund) for work on LO-ACT and related projects.
• GLOBAL SCALE: the project reviews how the actors that influence international climate politics (international organizations, professional networks, social movements, NGOs, and multi-national corporations) represent cities and urban areas. Different forms of representation enable varied forms of action from technological-led approaches to people-centric adaptation and mitigation responses.
• INTERNATIONAL FLOWS AND SUPPLY CHAINS: the project focuses on how particular responses to climate change in urban areas constitute models that 'travel' across contexts and are reproduced in different ways that respond (or not) to local needs.
• PLACE-BASED PERSPECTIVES: the project explores existing innovations to respond to climate change in urban environments. The project focuses on overlooked contexts of action and initiatives that often go unnoticed under the radar. In particular, our data archive pays attention to rapidly growing small and medium cities in West Africa, East Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.
The final component of the project is a theoretical synthesis: the attempt to build a new understanding of the governance of climate change in urban environments. Rather than asking what solutions are needed, LO-ACT focuses on how different forms of action become understood as solutions.
LO-ACT results matter for society because they reveal current responses to climate change, following recent social demands for urgent action. LO-ACT shows a fraught relationship between normative commands to take particular courses of action and the practical realities of what is being done depending on the possibilities afforded in different cities worldwide. LO-ACT reviews visions, processes, economies, and social practices behind a global urban transition to sustainability.
LO-ACT also actively contributes to current thinking on the climate emergency in urban areas mainly through participation in the 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (different members of the team participate as Lead Authors, Contributing Authors, and Chapter Scientists) or as lead consultants for global assessments such as UN-Habitat's 2020 World Cities Report on the value of sustainable urbanization. In 2021, the Principal Investigator received the AXA Award for Climate Science (from the AXA Research Fund) for work on LO-ACT and related projects.
OBJECTIVE 1 (Discourses of subnational action)
• Mapping the change of paradigm from justification to action in cities
• A systematic review of how cities are imagined in international climate change politics (500 grey documents of grey literature)
• A critical analysis of the notion of emergency in local planning (300 emergency declarations)
• 100 interviews with key individuals in the field, including UN organizations, development banks, international NGOs, companies, and local authorities, which will inform the construction of discourses of climate action in practice
• A full-fledged critique of the theory of transformaiton and development of the concept of urban climate imaginaries
OBJECTIVE 3 (Patterns of local action)
• A database that systematically compiles 800 actions, including materials in eight different languages and accompanying city profiles for selected countries and regions (China, Lusophone Africa, Nigeria) (coding is ongoing)
• A review of existing conceptualizations of urban innovation
• A new conceptualization of social innovation that explores the gap between processes and outcomes in climate innovation, focusing on the importance of the 'mundane' dimensions of innovation
OBJECTIVE 4 (Theorizations of climate action)
• Synthesis of the current environmental justice and environmental knowledge literature
• A framework to reimagine ideas of governance, focusing on how to govern a 'messy word'
• An argument for diversity in climate action that highlights how existing inequalities and knowledge hegemonies produce additional forms of injustice
• A hypothesis about the possibility to develop reparative alternatives for climate action, that is, alternatives that recognize historical damage but move towards collective, resilient futures
IMPACT ACTIVITIES
• Lead consultant for the 2020 UN-Habitat's World Cities Report
• Lead author contributions to the Working Group II of the 6th Assessment Report of the IPCC
• Policy briefings for the British Academy COP26 Briefing Series, the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), and UCLG
• Leading contributions to the urban working groups of the Earth System Governance Network and the Sustainable Transitions Research Network.
• Active engagement in the Climate Change Conferences (COP25 in Madrid and COP26 in Glasgow) and other policy events (the Lambeth Climate Assembly (London Borough), the European Urban Knowledge Network's event The Urban Agenda for the EU)
Regular communication through weekly tweets, website, conference presentations, and visual materials.
• Mapping the change of paradigm from justification to action in cities
• A systematic review of how cities are imagined in international climate change politics (500 grey documents of grey literature)
• A critical analysis of the notion of emergency in local planning (300 emergency declarations)
• 100 interviews with key individuals in the field, including UN organizations, development banks, international NGOs, companies, and local authorities, which will inform the construction of discourses of climate action in practice
• A full-fledged critique of the theory of transformaiton and development of the concept of urban climate imaginaries
OBJECTIVE 3 (Patterns of local action)
• A database that systematically compiles 800 actions, including materials in eight different languages and accompanying city profiles for selected countries and regions (China, Lusophone Africa, Nigeria) (coding is ongoing)
• A review of existing conceptualizations of urban innovation
• A new conceptualization of social innovation that explores the gap between processes and outcomes in climate innovation, focusing on the importance of the 'mundane' dimensions of innovation
OBJECTIVE 4 (Theorizations of climate action)
• Synthesis of the current environmental justice and environmental knowledge literature
• A framework to reimagine ideas of governance, focusing on how to govern a 'messy word'
• An argument for diversity in climate action that highlights how existing inequalities and knowledge hegemonies produce additional forms of injustice
• A hypothesis about the possibility to develop reparative alternatives for climate action, that is, alternatives that recognize historical damage but move towards collective, resilient futures
IMPACT ACTIVITIES
• Lead consultant for the 2020 UN-Habitat's World Cities Report
• Lead author contributions to the Working Group II of the 6th Assessment Report of the IPCC
• Policy briefings for the British Academy COP26 Briefing Series, the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), and UCLG
• Leading contributions to the urban working groups of the Earth System Governance Network and the Sustainable Transitions Research Network.
• Active engagement in the Climate Change Conferences (COP25 in Madrid and COP26 in Glasgow) and other policy events (the Lambeth Climate Assembly (London Borough), the European Urban Knowledge Network's event The Urban Agenda for the EU)
Regular communication through weekly tweets, website, conference presentations, and visual materials.
The project has so far gone beyond state of the art, with the following insights demonstrable through the project's outputs:
1. LO-ACT has identified a paradigm change in global environmental politics regarding how cities are understood and approached. Previous work focused on motivating action for climate change in urban areas. Current academic and policy work, however, emphasizes the need for practical outcomes above all other concerns.
2. LO-ACT has mapped the different factors that affect action at the local level. LO-ACT contributions include, for example, a sophisticated understanding of the conditions that enable sustainability transitions in urban China; a critique of the notion of participation dominant in environmental governance; and further reflections of the role of the nation-state VS the local government in the context of the climate emergency. Additional theoretical work on the conceptualization of compound urban crises and the practical operation of transformations discourses have further developed from debates within the LO-ACT team.
3. LO-ACT has engaged with the evolution of climate politics, as place-based engagements lead to new political forums, new tools for motivating action, and new alliances. In particular, the team developed an analysis of how discourses of climate emergency develop in local governments and whether the adoption of emergency declarations has any tangible impact. In addition, the team engaged- via a partnership- in a synthesis of current action patterns.
4. LO-ACT has engaged with social theory emerging in China called 'the correlative epistemology.' This social theory has helped to demonstrate alternatives to the dominant theorization of sustainability transitions. Further work has looked critically into the policy discourse of ecological civilization and its operation.
5. LO-ACT has demonstrated that promoting messy actions and diverse innovation is an effective strategy to mobilise new urban futures in a messy world.
Further work in the project will focus on fieldwork and data collection in situ, articulating the project's network of contacts, as travel for international fieldwork is not allowed in the current situation. Such work will enable linking existing data on current patterns of innovation with the everyday practices in current urban areas.
1. LO-ACT has identified a paradigm change in global environmental politics regarding how cities are understood and approached. Previous work focused on motivating action for climate change in urban areas. Current academic and policy work, however, emphasizes the need for practical outcomes above all other concerns.
2. LO-ACT has mapped the different factors that affect action at the local level. LO-ACT contributions include, for example, a sophisticated understanding of the conditions that enable sustainability transitions in urban China; a critique of the notion of participation dominant in environmental governance; and further reflections of the role of the nation-state VS the local government in the context of the climate emergency. Additional theoretical work on the conceptualization of compound urban crises and the practical operation of transformations discourses have further developed from debates within the LO-ACT team.
3. LO-ACT has engaged with the evolution of climate politics, as place-based engagements lead to new political forums, new tools for motivating action, and new alliances. In particular, the team developed an analysis of how discourses of climate emergency develop in local governments and whether the adoption of emergency declarations has any tangible impact. In addition, the team engaged- via a partnership- in a synthesis of current action patterns.
4. LO-ACT has engaged with social theory emerging in China called 'the correlative epistemology.' This social theory has helped to demonstrate alternatives to the dominant theorization of sustainability transitions. Further work has looked critically into the policy discourse of ecological civilization and its operation.
5. LO-ACT has demonstrated that promoting messy actions and diverse innovation is an effective strategy to mobilise new urban futures in a messy world.
Further work in the project will focus on fieldwork and data collection in situ, articulating the project's network of contacts, as travel for international fieldwork is not allowed in the current situation. Such work will enable linking existing data on current patterns of innovation with the everyday practices in current urban areas.