ABSTRACT

Low carbon transitions are therefore gaining political salience and public currency. This book seeks to examine the emergence of low carbon transitions and explore their politics and possibilities in the urban arena. The role of cities in addressing climate change has increasingly been recognized over the past two decades (Betsill and Bulkeley 2007; Bulkeley 2010). From being acknowledged by a handful of pioneering municipal authorities in the early 1990s, climate change has risen on the agenda of urban governments and attracted the interest of private and third-sector organizations. Citing the growing proportion of the world’s population living in cities in the twenty-first century and their contribution of over 70 per cent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions (IEA 2008), the mayors of eighty world cities gathered in Copenhagen prior to the 2009 international climate negotiations and called for recognition of the critical role that cities will play in responding to climate change. During the past decade, membership of transnational networks such as the ICLEI Cities for Climate Protection and Climate Alliance has grown, and new networks, including the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and the Rockefeller Asian Cities Resilience Network, have been formed. In the United States, in 2005 the mayor of Seattle, Greg Nickels, challenged mayors across the nation to take action on the issue, and by 2009 over 900 mayors had signed up to the US Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement (Gore and Robinson 2009: 143). This approach has been replicated globally, most recently with the launch in 2009 of the European Covenant of Mayors, which now has more than a thousand members. At the same time, private actors, including financial institutions, property development companies, utilities, foundations and non-governmental organizations, are increasingly involved in initiatives to address climate change. Further, new grassroots networks, including ‘transition towns’, are emerging which take the urban as an explicit arena within which to address climate change.