Conference Agenda

China’s water quality has been damaged by the increasing residential and industrial pollutants. In 2002, China’s State of the Environment Report showed that 70 percent of the 741 river sections monitored were unfit for human contact, indicating pollutions levels at or above Grade IV standard (SEPA, 2002). In 2014, the Chinese Central Government publicly declared “war on pollution” and has since announced significant policies in the area of pollution control and remediation to tackle the nation’s water pollution crisis, including the ten-point water pollution plan released in 2015. In 2019, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) promulgated a monthly ranking of the top and bottom 30 cities in terms of the local surface water quality since the first quarter of 2019. Under such background, how does the information disclosure of pollution rank shape local government behaviors? Does the naming and shaming mechanism enhance the local surface water quality? Are there any unintended adverse incentives for local governments under the zero-sum game scenario? Do the cities on the list increase their pollution after the last testing section to set up their neighboring cities?

This paper answers the above questions by applying a fuzzy regression discontinuity (RD) design. Using monthly panel data of 339 cities aggregated from 3641 monitoring sections of surface water and cross-boundary monitoring section pairs in 2021, we found that naming the laggards in pollution control effectively helps improve the surface water quality in the next period. Our study reveals that nodal-based policies in a hierarchical institution can effectively reduce pollution and contribute to sustainable development through the mechanism of rational local competition.

Many of the most pressing issues facing municipalities are connected to sustainability—from confronting a higher frequency of flooding to dealing with increasing energy costs. This is true both in the United States and around the world. To deal with these issues, cities, villages, towns, and other forms of local government are regularly engaging with sustainability in their policy processes. This engagement can be seen in the visions, goals, and objectives described in core planning documents, such as strategic plans, capital improvement plans, and comprehensive plans. But it also extends beyond the agenda-setting of planning processes, as local leaders find room in their budgets and codes for a variety of sustainable practices.

Unfortunately, little systematic data exist on such activity in the United States. The U.S.—especially in the Northeast and Midwest “Rustbelt” states—is a vital study area because it affords us insights into local sustainability in a highly polycentric, often fragmented, and very decentralized setting. National and state-level surveys of municipalities by professional associations, think tanks, and academics have become common over the last two decades, but a lack of panel data means that we are reliant on snapshots about sustainability that can quickly become outdated.

The goal of this article is to begin filling this gap, and we focus first on the state with the most local governments: Illinois. We surveyed over 600 municipal managers and administrators about sustainability (n = 302). We asked about the inclusion of sustainability in municipal plans and in standalone sustainability plans, the level of implementation of a variety of sustainability practices (from internal meetings through to inclusion in the budget), the barriers to implementing these practices, collaborative governance mechanisms, and overall top priorities. Importantly, our respondents represented communities that are heterogeneous in population, population density, median household income, and fiscal indicators.

Municipalities rarely have standalone sustainability plans, but frequently include sustainability in their comprehensive, capital improvement, and strategic plans. An important finding is that respondents regard state and federal governments as having a minimal role in sustainability policymaking. Another is that concerns about resident resistance are rarely mentioned as a barrier to sustainability, which is surprising given that many communities have strongly pro-Republican voting patterns. We also find that smaller and more rural municipalities in our sample are remarkably similar to their larger, more urban counterparts.

This paper investigates the openness of climate city networks to move beyond traditional ways of networking informed by hierarchical city comparisons. Climate networking is the process of exchanging knowledge between cities with the purpose of learning from the experience of other cities and accelerating the uptake of climate actions between cities. Despite the existence of established city networks such as C40 and ICLEI that facilitate networking practices, they have been found to be uneven, with well-resourced cities in the Global North being perceived as leaders and lower-income cities in the Global South as followers.

The increasing use of urban science methods for city comparison has the potential to influence comparative perspectives within these networks, but also runs the risk of perpetuating imbalanced networking practices. Relying solely on quantitative measures and performance-based indicators, or cities’ size and economic status can result in a limited and hierarchical understanding of cities and reinforce the notion that cities in the Global North are the leading actors in climate actions.

To further explore this challenge, this paper examines the perspectives of experts in city networks (ICLEI, C40, UCLG, and UN-Habitat) through focus group discussions to better understand the application of comparative tools and their purpose. It further explores the applicability of a novel and more inclusive comparative approach. based on reported actions for networking between cities in these networks.

The results show although the experts in city networks are open to trying new city comparisons that can expand the existing uneven networking practice, they are still entrenched in the status quo and traditional city comparisons based on size and economic status. This paper highlights the need to expand cities' comparative imagination beyond a few, and to adopt a more inclusive and equitable approach to city comparisons that takes into account the challenges, and capacities of different cities. Overall, this paper calls for a transformation in the existing comparative practices of city networks by illuminating their challenges and underlying assumptions. By doing so, the paper aims to ensure that climate networking among cities is inclusive, equitable, and effective for a diverse range of cities.

This paper addresses the ongoing process of ‘globalizing’ urban climate governance after the Paris Agreement, and its implications. It argues that since 2015, transnational city cooperation has largely consisted in forging a new, shared norm of ‘climate neutrality’ for urban governance. Using scholarly literature on norms in international relations and urban mobility studies, the paper highlights how the ‘climate neutrality’ , or 'net-zero' norm has been progressively bundled together through an assemblage of narratives, scientific expertise, public performances and policy tools circulated transnationally. By doing so, it highlights the multiple agencies of city networks, the UNFCCC and local decision-makers in constituting the norm, defining its meaning and related practices, but also the uncertainties and contestations linked to it. The paper builds on ethnographic observations of COPs, policy document analyses and interviews with urban professionals as data collection methods. Conceptually, it offers to go beyond city networks analyses by shading a new light on Agency in transnational urban climate governance as the capacity to engage in and influence norm making activities at transnational scale.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), constituting the policy framework that all 193 UN member states have pledged to achieve by 2030, are getting ‘localized’ by subnational (regional and local) actors. The set of 248 indicators promises to deliver an overarching overview of the progress on the SDGs, and to provide insights into how to move forward. However, a large variety of indicators are often only reported on national level. Consequently, many subnational governments struggle to identify data sources to meaningfully measure progress towards the goals.

At the same time, a ‘data revolution’ is taking place in which technologies are leading to an exponential increase in the volume and types of data available, creating unprecedented possibilities for informing and transforming society and protecting the environment. For example, the practice of participatory sensing for environment monitoring has rapidly evolved over the last years.

In this research, we want to assess the potential of non-traditional data sources to improve monitoring of the SDG goals on a subnational level. As sound data is the cornerstone of evidence-based policymaking in formulating priorities, allocating budgets, and tracking progress it is crucial to support the proper operationalization of the SDGs at the local level.

The study will employ a qualitative approach. Concretely, 15 in-depth semi-structured expert interviews with data experts will be conducted. Following the framework of [authors’ names removed for anonymous review process] we identify interviewees within 5 main categories of non-traditional data flows (Earth observations, spatial data infrastructure, citizen-generated data, official sensor networks and private & commercial data). Starting from existing traditional data sources, we first map existing data gaps to do local SDG monitoring within the Brussels Capital Region and use them as a guide to query data experts about the opportunities and challenges to use non-traditional data sources for monitoring of SDG goals in a subnational context and to define future potential data flows for SDG monitoring.

The purpose of this study is to provide guidance to city managers, civil servants and policymakers in the adaptation of SDG-indicators to the sub-national level to suggest specific points of action to improve the availability of local data for SDG-measurement within a subnational context.