Suchergebnisse

Is urbanization a danger or a solution to global sustainability? What institutions need to change to make urban areas more sustainable? In examining urbanization rates in countries over time, we see that they are often more correlated to carbon dioxide emissions than per capital income [1]. This tells us that urbanization patterns of the last 100 years have contributed to the increase in carbon emissions. We therefore need to develop a new kind of urbanization in order to tackle global challenges. However, reports about global changes often portray urbanization as "a problem". Cities are polluted and increasingly crowded; urban inhabitants consume proportionately more resources and are responsible for a large portion of carbon emissions ([2], p. 927). As a urban planner, when I read those reports it seems I am looking at the books of urban planning in the last century, particularly those on urbanization in the colonies, where urbanization was presented as an unwanted process that caused a lot of harms to the "civilization" [3,4]. We must therefore change the discourse on how we describe urbanization if we want to transform it, as it will not be stopped. We must stress the many benefits that urbanization has brought to society, which are the main reasons people want to come to the cities in the first place. A question to be considered is therefore how to make urban life compatible with global challenges? i.e., how can we continue implementing/developing urbanization and the benefits that come with it without disproportionally increasing carbon emissions, the destruction of ecosystems and unsustainable consumption. There are many opportunities for win-win strategies between global sustainability challenges and development in urban areas, or synergies, such as climate co-benefits, i.e., tackling climate change and promoting development, particularly in some developing countries where cities are still being built and the path of urbanization can be changed [5,6]. Nevertheless, despite all we have learned about urbanization and the possible co-benefits opportunities since the last century, we lack understanding of the contextual and institutional conditions that make those solutions emerge.

This paper examines the political economy aspects, particularly the influence of the Clean Development Mechanism, in clean energy and climate change policies in the states of Bahia and Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil. The different mechanisms for responding to climate change are financing opportunities in some of the 'green' industries, but the results show a gap between the initial objectives of global policies and their results. The research identified pitfalls and opportunities for new strategies and mechanisms for boosting clean energy in Brazil and the role that the Clean Development Mechanism and future mechanisms can play in the political economy of clean energy transitions. The paper concludes with a discussion on the lessons learned from experience of the Clean Development Mechanism and its implications for the future of the Paris Agreement.

AbstractAnalyzing the effect of individual participants on collaborative governance processes in environmental management has been elusive due to lack of theoretical frameworks and data limitations. This study uses pattern matching to contrast identity theory with original data from 7 individuals participating in waste management and urban agriculture collaboration in Florianópolis, Brazil. What started as a self-organized initiative to manage an environmental problem, due to precarious waste management services, was scaled up to a citywide policy. Findings demonstrate that as the collaboration evolved over time, individual participants in municipal government transitioned between roles, organizations, and departments which affected their influence on the collaboration according to two transition styles: integrators (overlapping different roles) and segmenters (aligning roles with contexts without ambiguity). While the integrator-style participants were key to increasing sectoral diversity during the activation stage of the collaboration to produce innovative actions, segmenters contributed to formalizing the collaboration with appropriate institutional designs. However, the success of the collaboration after the institutionalization stage depended on the individual transition style and the power of municipal agents to have agency for influencing the collaboration. These findings have implications for adapting collaborative settings to respond to contextual changes that involve urban environmental issues.