Abstract
This presentation will give a brief overview of the research project under which results on the relationship between climate change integration and participation are produced. The project is titled “Climate change integration in the multilevel governance of Italy and Austria”, is financed for 27 months through research funds of the Province of Bolzano and puts together a consortium made of Eurac Research (leader), the University of Innsbruck and the University of Trento.
Climate change is a multilevel governance challenge since globally agreed rules need to be translated into national and subnational measures. In this context, the project focusses on subnational governments as central and understudied players in climate change integration. In particular, the project’s case studies are the Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano in Italy and Länder Tyrol and Vorarlberg in Austria.
The projects aims to understand, in a comparative way, whether and how these subnational governments integrate climate policies in sectors where they exercise exclusive and shared legislative powers, namely transport, energy and water, and territorial planning. Furthermore, the project hypothesizes that there are five main factors influencing the correct integration of climate change: horizontal/vertical coordination among authorities; public participation; political and administrative leadership; information on climate change and its communication; and dedicated funding. Participation is defined in the project as the formal and informal interactions between civil society and policy-makers in the elaboration of climate policies.