Lecture #5 | Linda WESTMAN | "Climate policy in the urban age"
Nation states have long reigned supreme as agents in charge of addressing climate change as a global challenge. Yet, in recent years, a pivot in the conversation has presented climate action in urban areas as integral to achieving global climate action targets. How did this shift occur? This lecture traces the process through which an urban interest took hold in international climate policy. First, the lecture focuses on three mechanisms that explain the adoption of an urban focus in climate conversations: the formation of new actor alliances, the strategic development of actionable policy frames, and the embedding of urban climate objectives into institutional frameworks of international organizations. Next, the lecture reflects on how the articulation of an urban agenda extends beyond such strategic interventions. The establishment of the urban as a discursive object in climate policy renders specific forms of knowledge and action conceivable - even self-evident - which has implications for the prospects of delivering just and transformative climate action.
Part of the 2022/23 StadsSalonsUrbains lecture series 'moving cities forward, leaving no one behind. toward fair & sustainable transitions'. Full programme available here.
Lectures will be streamed on this channel!
Linda Westman is a Research Associate at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield. Her research engages with multiple dimensions of environmental politics, including urban climate action, justice, and transformations. Linda currently manages a work package of the ERC-funded project LO-ACT, which examines urban climate imaginaries in international policy. Together with Vanesa Castán Broto, Linda recently published Urban sustainability and justice (ZEB Books), which engages with urban sustainability through a postcolonial and feminist lens. Linda is contributing author of Chapter 6 of the IPCC Assessment Report 6 and co-founder of the Urban Working Group of the Earth System Governance network.