climate change

Mission Possible? 

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Jason Lowther

With under 700 days to the next UK general election, political parties are busy developing their manifesto documents.  In February, Labour leader Keir Starmer made a major speech laying out his “five missions for a better Britain”.   How do these five missions relate to local government?  And is the turn to “mission driven” government likely to work?

The five missions vary in their level of specificity and challenge.  Securing “the highest sustained growth in the G7, with good jobs and productivity growth in every part of the country…” is a little vague but likely to be difficult, especially given we are currently ranked 6 out of 7 in terms of output per worker.  Mission #2, “make Britain a clean energy superpower”, accelerating the move to zero-carbon electricity from 2035 to 2030, is specific but very challenging.  Mission #3, reform of health and social care and reducing health inequalities, will require a re-focus from secondary (hospital) care to social care and addressing the social determinants of health.  Mission #4 is about community safety, and likely to involve more community policing.  Finally, mission #5 is to “break down the barriers to opportunity at every stage” through reform to the childcare and education systems.

Local government potentially has important roles in each of the five missions.  Local education, skills and economic development functions will be critical to improving productivity.  On energy, Net Zero requires at least a doubling of electricity generation by 2050, from decarbonised sources.  Decarbonisation strategies need to be place-based, taking account of the geography, building types, energy infrastructure, energy demand, resources and urban growth plans.   We’ve recently argued here for the key roles of councils in this area. 

Turning to health and care services, local government clearly has leading roles – including ensuring place-based planning to address the social and behavioural causes of health inequalities.  Analysis by the Liverpool and Lancaster Universities Collaboration for Public Health Research in 2021 concluded: “investment across the whole of local government is needed to level up health including investment in housing, children’s, leisure, cultural, environmental, and planning services”.  Similarly community safety, child care and education are areas where local government could be enabled to have much greater positive impact.

Perhaps as important as the specific “missions” is the approach to governing which the party is proposing.   Labour’s document characterises this as a move from top-down, target-led, short-term, siloed approaches, to government which is more “agile, empowering and catalytic”, working across the public and private sectors, and civil society.  This, it argues, requires organising government around a shared vision, focusing on real world outcomes, concentrating on ends with flexibility and innovation concerning means, devolving decision making from Westminster, increasing accountability including central and local data transparency, and adopting long-term preventative approaches including greater financial certainty for local areas. 

In some ways the idea of mission-driven government echoes the 1990s thinking of Ted Gaebler and David Osborne’s book “reinventing government”, which argued for a more entrepreneurial approach to the delivery of government.  Their work pointed to entrepreneurial companies setting overall missions and goals, and then leaving managers to figure out how best to deliver these – for example, by providing an overall budget for a service rather than detailed line-by-line budgets which disappear if not spent by year end.  The focus on managers rather than considering the perspective of politicians is one of the problems identified in subsequent evaluations of the reinventing government model, together with difficulties in sustaining the approach.

Mission-driven policies addressing ‘grand challenges’ of society are increasingly common, for example in the UN Sustainable Development Goals and various EU policies.  Mazzucato et al recently argued that addressing such challenges requires strategic thinking about: the desired direction of travel, the structure and capacity of public sector organisations, the way in which policy is assessed, and the incentive structure for the private, public (and I would add community) sectors. Labour’s paper makes a start (albeit at a very high level) on thinking through these areas. The litmus test, though, will be in developing the detail and how far this engages with local areas.   

Over the next few months, we will be contributing to the debate on the upcoming party manifestos with some research-informed thoughts on a variety of local government related policy areas.  If you would like to be involved in developing these, please get in touch. 

Jason Lowther is the Director of INLOGOV. His research focuses on public service reform and the use of “evidence” by public agencies.  Previously he worked with West Midlands Combined Authority, led Birmingham City Council’s corporate strategy function, worked for the Audit Commission as national value for money lead, for HSBC in credit and risk management, and for the Metropolitan Police as an internal management consultant. He tweets as @jasonlowther

Picture credit: BBC

In (Climate) Emergency Break The Mould 

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Paul Joyce, Philip Whiteman and Jason Lowther

Cities must be at the heart of a successful response to the climate crisis. Hundreds of local authorities in the UK are acting responsibly by taking the climate crisis seriously, whether it is by setting net zero targets or proclaiming a climate emergency. But they will be hampered in their endeavours for a number of reasons, including the significant capacity constraints that contradict their aspirations, even though national government in the UK has also set a net zero target.  

Support for local government action could increase if government ministers listen to the recommendations of a report by the Rt Hon Chris Skidmore  Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) Chairman, who issued a report on  how the UK could better meet its net zero commitments.  It’s an impressive piece of work, reflecting over 1800 written submissions as part of the official Call for Evidence.  Central to its recommendations is the need for central government to empower regions, local government and communities to play a greater role.    

We should acknowledge that on some measures the UK is already performing relatively well on environmental issues, particularly in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  The UK was placed joint second in Yale’s global Environmental Performance Index 2022, with Finland and behind Denmark.  It achieved the fastest improvement of the three countries (and third best globally) in the last decade. Between 1990 and 2020, the UK reduced emissions by almost 50%, driven in part by a reduction in the use of coal and toward natural gas and renewables.  Some of this success stems from historic decisions such as the 2008 Climate Change Act, which committed the UK to reaching 80% emissions reductions by 2050, and actions such as the introduction of a carbon price floor in 2013 and investments in solar and wind energy.   

It may become more difficult for the UK to keep performing well as new, more challenging actions are needed.  The EAC report is clear that local government is critical to developing and implementing the necessary actions, and that this requires a fundamental change in its relationship with central government.  We highlight four essential changes. 

First, simplify net zero funding arrangements.  The report is clear that “current central government funding arrangements are standing in the way of effective local action”.  The funding landscape is disjointed, unfair, and expensive for local authorities because of its complexity and reliance on short-deadline competitive bidding.  

Secondly, trust local government.  The report recognises that “to achieve a place-based, place-sensitive, locally-led transition to net zero, Government must place its trust in local leaders and communities to deliver”.   Analysis by UKRI found that a “place-specific” approach to decarbonisation costs 70% less and delivers 90% more benefits than one which is “place-agnostic”.  The report recommends a high-level framework and an agreement to close future partnership working between central and local government. 

Thirdly, allow local communities to determine their priorities and approach within the national framework.  The report recommends a new statutory duty on local authorities to take account of UK net zero targets.  Disappointingly, government is asked to back only “at least one” Trailblazer Net Zero city, local authority and community, with the aim for these places to reach net zero by 2030.   

Finally, align the planning system with net zero ambitions.  The current framework sometimes stands in the way of councils insisting on high standards.  And cumulative cuts to planning department budgets mean many councils lack the staff to deliver effective planning inputs quickly.  As the report says: “Reforming the relationship between central and local government on net zero will empower local authorities to deliver place-based, place sensitive action and unlock the high levels of local net zero ambition that we have across the UK. Unblocking the planning system and aligning it more closely with net zero will enable widespread pro-growth, net zero development” (p.189).  

In our discussions with local councils, we often find strong aspirations to address the environmental agenda.   To turn green aspirations into reality, we need city and town governments that are properly empowered and resourced to achieve this.  One of our concerns is that while the local authorities in the towns and cities are positive about cooperating with central government to promote sustainable development, their capacity is limited by comparison with European counterparts such as Sweden, Germany, The Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark.  In consequence, the centralised approach to public governance in the UK has produced little “depth” to sustainable development by public authorities.   Furthermore, we note that whilst may local authorities aspire to improve the environmental agenda, there is often a lack of specific or explicit connectivity to international targets, comparing less favourably to local authorities in other countries.

It is time to empower local government to become a powerful means of transformation of UK society, to give them much more fiscal autonomy, and to give them a strong mandate for sustainable development of cities and towns.  This needs to be effective not just for the biggest cities, but also for smaller cities and towns where the capacity is sometimes more limited.  Chris Skidmore’s report has recognised many of these issues, we now need to break the mould and give local government the mandate, capacity and collaborative approach it needs to succeed. 

Paul Joyce is an Inlogov associate.  Paul has a PhD from London School of Economics and Political Science. His latest book is Strategic Management and Governance: Strategy Execution Around the World (Routledge, 6 June 2022). He is a Visiting Professor in Public Management at Leeds Beckett University.

Philip Whiteman and Jason Lowther are Inlogov staff members.

How the climate crisis is changing Europe’s economic landscape. After four decades, the pandemic and especially the climate crisis have silenced the exponents of fiscal orthodoxy. Keynes is back.

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Jon Bloomfield

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jmenj/

Despite the disappointments of COP26, it’s important to acknowledge the momentum the climate movement has gained. Denialists are in retreat, while all governments are under pressure to strengthen their climate targets and actions. The climate crisis, the pandemic and the outcome of the German elections are all profoundly changing the prospects for European politics. The neoliberal right doesn’t like it but, after four decades in absentia, Keynesian economics is back.

Orthodoxy shattered

The first big sign came in the summer of last year, when after several months of sharp debate the European Union agreed a €1.8 trillion budgetary and stimulus package focused strongly on ecological and digital transformation.

What is the political significance of this shift? As the economist Jeffrey Sachs crisply expressed it in the Financial Times, ‘I would say the European Commission is carrying out a social democratic programme, not in name … but in spirit.’

Growing recognition of the climate crisis, reinforced at COP26, has combined with the outcome of the German elections in late September. Leaders of the putative ‘traffic-light’ coalition parties—the social-democratic SPD, the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats—have agreed to make major investments in Germany’s creaking infrastructure and to boost public spending for green and digital transition. They are coming under increasing pressure from German business too. In a major report published late last month, BDI, the German industry association, said the next government had to act quickly—triggering large-scale, low-carbon investments and setting the right framework to ensure the country would transform its economy to reach climate neutrality by 2045.

Joint borrowing

How can the coalition partners finance such ambitious plans, when they have already promised not to raise taxes or change Germany’s constitutionally-embedded ‘debt brake’ (Schuldenbremse), which severely limits new public debt? One proposal is to use the state bank, KfW, to finance investments. But more novel is a proposal for joint EU borrowing—via a European Commission bond programme, similar to that which the EU has launched for the recovery fund.

Keynesian road

The BDI director general, Joachim Lang, indicated the association was open to the idea of EU borrowing, to help fund the massive public and private investment necessary to meet German and European climate goals. ‘To meet its climate targets, Germany needs additional investment of €860 billion until 2030,’ Lang said.

The precise outcome of the negotiations on the German coalition programme remains uncertain. Recognition of the depth of the climate emergency is however driving industrialists and centrist politicians down a Keynesian road. The new government is likely to sidestep the debt brake by giving additional leeway to the KfW. But the more dramatic step would be to call for a new, EU-wide bond programme.

The size and shape of such a programme would of course be crucial issues for EU institutions to determine. But agreement on such a move would confirm that the European Green Deal was no one-off transaction—rather a first step towards Europe adopting Keynesian macroeconomic policies.

The return of social democracy

The tectonic plates are moving. The four decades hegemony of neoliberalism and the ‘Washington consensus’ are drawing to a close. As Sachs says, these moves herald a return to social democracy.

Three huge questions arise. First, will this shift be driven by social-democratic parties or, more likely, broader coalitions as in Germany?

Secondly, will the orthodox European right embrace the climate-change agenda

or will it lapse into the climate denialism of the nationalist right, as in the USA?

Thirdly, can the citizens’ and youth movements which have been so effective in foregrounding the environmental crisis find ways to intervene effectively in this battle? They will have to shed reflex, anti-politics populism and recognise the importance of maximising the potential of the European Green Deal.  COP26, for all its shortcomings, highlighted that politics is on the move. For progressives, there is all to play for.

Jon Bloomfield runs a regular blog series on the Green Deal with Professor Fred Steward

Making the Green New Deal Happen Blog Series, February 2021: Make Renovation in Housing a Green Deal Priority

The full text of this article is available at Social Europe.

 How the climate crisis is changing Europe’s economic landscape – Jon Bloomfield (socialeurope.eu)

Dr. Jon Bloomfield. Honorary Research Fellow, Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham.

Policy Advisor on EU Climate Knowledge Innovation Community (KIC) programme; writes on cities, governance and migration as well as climate

Decarbonising Transport: How Can we Work Together to Make an Impact?

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Dr Louise Reardon

With the COP26 climate change conference only days away, the media is awash with pieces on the challenge we face and the policy options available (or not) for us to meet our net-zero commitments. One of the areas needing significant attention is transport.

Transport contributed 28% of total domestic Green House Gas emissions in 2018, making it the UK’s largest emitting sector. To date the sector is proving a tough nut to crack, with transport emissions 4% higher now than they were in 2013 and only 3% lower than in 1990. To be on track we need an annual rate of emissions reduction of at least 6%. We therefore need bold and significant action.

While electric vehicles have been the primary focus of central government attention and are an important part of the policy mix, many experts have highlighted how they alone will not be enough to achieve the sustainable transition we need. We also require significant behaviour change (shifting from car use to walking and cycling for example) and less travel full stop.

Easier said than done. Our current CREDS research is identifying the multitude of different ways organisations are (and can) work together to decarbonise transport at the city level and their views on the barriers and opportunities for affecting change. Some of the issues arising are cultural (the car as a status symbol for example), some are institutional (lack of capacity to focus on decarbonisation, for instance), and others political (will the electorate support this?).

Whatever the issues, no two towns and cities will have the same mixture of challenges, solutions and therefore pathways to a more sustainable transport system. Moreover, the reasons why we travel in the first place (and the means of doing so) are a result of complex intersections of social, economic and political factors. To change this system therefore requires a multitude of coordinated interventions, including action from individuals and a diverse range of institutions all pushing in the same direction.

With that said, it can be hard to know where to start. While the climate change challenge is global, there is real opportunity and need to act locally on transport to make significant progress. While many rightly turn to their local authority for action, it is unrealistic to think they can act alone, especially when many of the changes we need to make may be potentially controversial (at least for some).

To help identify ways forward we will be hosting a webinar (on 11 November) as part of the ESRC’s Festival of Social Science. Two inspirational panellists – Karen Creavin (CEO, The Active Wellbeing Society) and Chris Todd (Director, Transport Action Network) – will join us. Both of whom, in their different ways, have sought to transform our transport system to a more sustainable and fair one and have plenty of insights to share.

The session will be interactive, aiming to get a real conversation going about the strategies we can employ to make sustainable transport a reality. It’s free to attend and we’d love to hear your views and insights. You can register here. Do join us!

Louise Reardon is Associate Professor of Governance and Public Policy at INLOGOV and currently leading the CREDS funded project Facilitating Policy Change towards Low-Carbon Mobility, in collaboration with INLOGOV Lecturer Timea Nochta and Li Wan, University of Cambridge. You can also follow Louise on Twitter @LouiseReardon1

Inter-municipal Cooperation is the key to better environments in our cities.

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Victor Osei Kwadwo

The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) aims at “Uniting the World to Tackle Climate Change”. While the technical aspects to addressing climate change is more evident in the goals of COP 26, it is time attention is equally paid to the governance of climate change at the metropolitan scale made up of our major cities.

Due to rapid urbanization, the world is increasingly becoming metropolitan. Cities have expanded outwards and have become more interdependent with their immediate peripheries. Cities occupy only approximately 2% of the world’s total land yet host 54.5% of the world’s population. Cities are responsible for 70% of the world’s GDP, over 60% of global energy consumption, 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and 70% of global waste.

As cities agglomerate, the footprint and interdependence within and between cities blur existing administrative boundaries to the extent that development issues in one local government jurisdiction have spillover effects on neighbouring jurisdictions. These spillover effects have led to a call for cooperation on functional grounds, making metropolitan areas a salient scale for public policy interventions. Metropolitan areas such as Cape Town, London, Mexico City, São Paulo and Tokyo are mainly characterised by densely inhabited functional urban areas and their surrounding interconnected lower-density areas.

In the management of metropolitan areas, for instance, many cities in the USA, Greater London, Brussels, Dar es Salaam and Greater Accra, the joint provision of metropolitan-wide services or jointly addressing a cross-boundary problem is an explicit choice of local governments that make up the metropolitan area. This voluntary nature of cooperation poses a collective action dilemma when local governments have to address problems jointly.

The dilemma arises from the externalities of environmental outcomes that drive low incentives for cooperation and a high risk of free-riding. To find joint solutions to cross-boundary problems in metropolitan areas, inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) is identified as critical for better economic and environmental outcomes in service delivery. There is empirical evidence that inter-municipal cooperation saves costs but does it also improve environmental outcomes?

Governments tend to be reluctant to cooperate when environmental outcomes are at stake, and this is partly due to the limited evidence on the impact of cooperation on environmental outcomes. It is therefore important to provide an evidential basis on which local governments can justify and initiate cooperation arrangements to address environmental concerns jointly.

In a study I co-authored with Tatiana Skripka, we provide this evidence using data covering 229 metropolitan areas in 16 OECD countries. The study tests the impact of cooperation in transportation on CO2 transport emissions. We did this by estimating a three-level mixed-effects model that takes into account both national and metropolitan-specific characteristics.

The results demonstrate that if local governments cooperate, better environmental outcomes can be achieved. Metropolitan areas that worked together on transportation issues were able to reduce CO2 transport emissions.

The findings give an indication of what needs to be done to effectively fight the environmental challenge. More significantly, beyond normative predictions, the findings provide a basis for local governments to justify and pursue local to local partnerships to address environmental issues.

What we measured

We used “working together on transportation” as a measure of cooperation and “CO2 transport emissions” for environmental outcomes to estimate the impact of cooperation on CO2 transport emissions reported in 2000, 2005 and 2008 for 229 metropolitan areas in 16 OECD countries.

We accounted for factors such as the year of observation, economic status, socio-cultural, geographical, technological and governance measures such as mitigation policies, enforcement, and metropolitan structure. The factors covered both the national and metropolitan area-specific characteristics: socio-cultural conditions, level of technology, geography, and metropolitan governance structure. We used data from the OECD metropolitan governance database, the OECD Metropolitan Governance Survey, the World Bank, among others.

Key findings

We found that metropolitan governance structures, whether fragmented or consolidated, are equally inefficient in delivering reduction in CO2 transport emissions. The finding contrasts with an increasing trend of scholars advocating for fragmented metropolitan structures that favour voluntary cooperation, compared to consolidated structures that address collective action problem through coercion.

We also found that countries with a higher GDP were more efficient in reducing CO2 transport emissions. In contrast, metropolitan areas with higher GDP recorded increases in CO2 transport emissions. While national funding can dictate climate-related interventions and standards, metropolitan wealth is more flexible in taking on such obligations. As metropolitan areas are mainly production centres, investments in environmentally-friendly interventions may be more easily sacrificed at the metropolitan level for economic gains.

We further found that CO2 transport emissions increase despite the mere presence of environmental mitigation policies. This is consistent with empirical observations. For example, while the Paris Agreement has 196 Parties adopting to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, emissions have continued to rise globally by 1.4 per cent per year on average since 2010. Environmental policy effectiveness lies in the ability of the cooperating parties to ensure widespread policy implementation and enforcement.

The crucial factor explaining the reduction of CO2 transport emissions in metropolitan areas is inter-municipal cooperation that facilitates coherence and widespread enforcement of mitigation policies. The impact of cooperation on CO2 transport emissions is magnified in metropolitan areas within countries that have stringent environmental mitigation policies.

Next steps

Inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) is critical in the governance of metropolitan areas if better environmental outcomes are to be achieved in our cities. Cooperation ensure policy uniformity, facilitates the possibility of widespread enforcement and reduces incentives for free-riding irrespective of governance structure. It is recommended that scholars and policymakers emphasise how to incentivise effective cooperation regardless of the metropolitan governance structure. Also, efforts must be geared toward uniform mitigation policies and their subsequent enforcement across local jurisdictions in metropolitan areas.

Read the full paper here

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03003930.2021.1958785

Victor Osei Kwadwo is a PhD fellow in Economics and Governance at UNU-MERIT and Maastricht University. He has broad expertise in political science, economics, and public policy with a special emphasis on urban governance and development. For his PhD, he explores how and why independent local governments cooperation arrangements emerge to address transboundary issues in metropolitan areas.

Local authorities and climate change: responding to the green challenge

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Jon Bloomfield

What lies ahead for local government in 2021? We know the pandemic will continue to loom large. But all the signs are that with the UK hosting the crucial, international climate change conference (COP26) in Glasgow next November, the issue of climate change will be high on the policy agenda.

Over the last 18 months many towns and cities have responded to the growing environmental emergency and declared their commitment to go carbon-neutral. In early December, 38 local authority leaders committed to cut their own carbon emissions to net zero by 2030. Among the leaders to sign the net zero pledge set out by the NGO UK 100 are the metro mayors of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, plus council leaders in Birmingham, Bristol and Edinburgh. Together the signatories represent almost a third of the U.K. population. A  Zoom virtual conference saw more than 500 council leaders and officers participating.

The international political climate is favourable. Reversing four decades of Washington neo-liberal consensus, the International Monetary Fund has given its seal of approval to public investment strategies irrespective of the rising debt consequence. The national mood music is positive too. Boris Johnson’s 10 point plan for a Green Industrial Revolution recognised that we need a low carbon transition transforming all sectors in the economy. In the lingering shadow of Trumpist climate denialism, it was reassuring. The really tough question is how to make good on these national and local targets. The words are easy: the action is harder.

What is the best pathway to follow? The green recovery should focus on the exploitation of what we already know can fulfil a low carbon, ‘levelling up’ agenda. Here there are three key policy arenas, energy, mobility and buildings and in all three,  local authorities, their staff, community groups and local neighbourhoods have key roles to play.

Take buildings. The country needs a large-scale programme of state investment in the regions to both reduce emissions and create jobs. The quickest and simplest way to do that is to focus on decarbonising our building and housing stock. Renovation works are labour-intensive, create jobs and the investments are rooted in local supply chains.  Central to green recovery should be programmes where budgets are devolved to enable localities to design initiatives appropriate to their needs, in partnership with local stakeholders. That means looking to develop neighbourhood schemes so that entire streets are renovated together, rather than the government’s current green grants to individual householders. A community approach would bring economies of scale; permit accredited programmes with approved contractors; enable retrofit to be undertaken along with boiler replacements and renewable energy installations; introduce smart, digital appliances; and   on-street vehicle charging infrastructure. In other words, a comprehensive approach that takes citizens with you. Neighbourhood renovation and refurbishment offers lots of new jobs across the whole of the UK, with warmer homes, lower fuel bills and plenty of opportunities across the building supply chain. Plus a chance to engage local people in the revitalisation of their own streets and communities. What’s not to like?

But this all requires council officers to have the understanding and grasp of climate change transitions thinking and with the social and participatory skills to engage with neighbourhood and local groups. Climate change policies cannot be simply imposed from above. A huge social challenge won’t be addressed without some friction and tension. As we have seen with the Low Traffic Neighbourhoods policy over the last few months, if people aren’t engaged, then suddenly vocal resistance to these measures can arise.

Addressing climate change means we shall have to alter the ways that we live, move and work. The issues of climate transition are effectively an emerging policy arena. They require an understanding and marshalling of a new combination of skills amongst a wide cadre of local government officers, councillors and engaged citizens. Planners, traffic engineers, housing officers, finance and procurement staff: these and more all need additional skill-sets. Councils can set ambitious targets. But unless they have the staff within their ranks with the competence and skills to tackle them, then they will fall short.

Jon Bloomfield has been involved with the EU’s Climate KIC programme for over a decade, helping to develop educational and training programmes and experimental projects which help companies, cities and communities to make effective transitions to a low carbon economy.