Urban carbon politics : civil society, policymaking and the transition to carbon-neutral cities

Cities are at the heart of climate emergency, and they’re fundamental if we are to accelerate the transition to a ‘carbon-neutral’ world. Today, municipal governments are no longer just service providers; they need to be catalysts for sustainability transitions. Achieving sustainable cities is a vicious problem as requirements are always changing, complex and dynamic interdependencies play a crucial role, there is no absolute right or wrong solution, and little opportunities exist to learn by trial and error. The very meaning of what is a ‘sustainable city’ is a very contested societal debate. Although civil society and policy entrepreneurs are already central actors in the urban context and considerably influence the way by which people think about the climate crisis; it’s not clear yet how they can respond to challenges of such magnitude as the climate emergency, and how they can contribute to accelerating the transition to a carbon-neutral world. While often characterized by their desire to sustain a certain form of independence from governments, it’s not yet clear how civil society actors occupy different positions vis-à-vis the institutions they try to transform, and the effects that these diverse positions have on their contributions to urban sustainability transitions. For instance, while much has been researched about powerful ‘regime’ policy entrepreneurs, much less is known about policy entrepreneurs emanating from civil society. There’s a need to enhance our understanding of how such actors frame the climate emergency in the urban context and how they scale their actions in order to achieve deep urban decarbonisation. The thesis question is: How do civil society’s policy entrepreneurs frame the climate emergency problem and scale their actions to quickly decarbonise the urban context and accelerate the transition to carbon-neutral cities? The research is a five-year in-depth longitudinal single case study that reconstructs the emergence of the Montreal Climate Coalition; a non-profit organization that aims for Montreal to achieve carbon-neutrality by 2042, year of the city's 400th anniversary. The thesis mobilizes the research fields of sustainability transitions and public policy studies to better understand the Coalition’s efforts, actions and strategies since the 2015 COP21 Paris agreement. Based on a conceptualised theoretical framework that revisits the Multi-actor perspective (MaP), the focus is to shed light on the ‘acts’ of civil society actors that aim to ‘punch above their weight’ in the strategic urban carbon-neutrality action field in which they operate, the way that they develop and deploy their strategies, and how this contributes to (and shapes) policymaking processes for urban carbon-neutrality; as well as overall urban sustainability transition dynamics. Particular attention is paid to context, examining how (and to what extent) the ‘polycentric’ nature of climate governance and local municipal institutions facilitate and/or frustrate the efforts of actors. Adopting a processual, abductive and transformation-based strategy of analysis that aims to generate ‘practical wisdom’ knowledge for urban sustainability science, the research reveals civil society’s entrepreneuring strategies that seek to disrupt the status quo by advancing ambitious urban carbon-neutrality policies, as well as the potential for such micro-level acts to bring about changes at the macro level. In this way, and by taking on the role of an engaged climate ‘researcher-activist’, I explore the forms of entrepreneurship that stand up to powerful actors and sectors in our society, enriching our knowledge of the active role that some civil society actors (can) play in setting the urban carbon-neutrality agenda. In doing so, the thesis contributes to enriching an ever more nuanced understanding of the influence that civil society actors can have on the speed and direction of urban sustainability transitions. From a practice-based perspective, the research contributes to better informing civil society’ actions and strategies, as well as the kind of municipal climate policy processes that can catalyze deep decarbonisation and accelerate the urgently needed urban sustainability transitions to carbon-neutral cities. Fundamentally, the potential of cities is not just to simply associate themselves with current international climate frameworks; but more critically, to show how other alternative pathways from the fringes of society are possible. Involving considerable emancipatory potential, the city as a site of radical socio-ecological experimentation needs to be fostered, and not just handed over to the mirage of a ‘green economy’.

Keyphrases: transitions durables, Carbon-Neutrality, Cities, Sustainability Transitions, Civil Society, Policymaking