Climate Change at Sub-national Level: A Comparative Analysis of Climate Change Policies in the Basque Country, Catalonia, Flanders and Scotland.

Transcription

1 Climate Change at Sub-national Level: A Comparative Analysis of Climate Change Policies in the Basque Country, Catalonia, Flanders and Scotland. Panel: Climate Change Policy in Comparative Perspective (III): Subnational Comparisons Author: Alberto de la Peña Varona Department of Political and Administration Science. University of the Basque Country alberto.delapena@ehu.es Postal address: Barrio Sarriena s/n Bilbao (Spain) Tel.: ABSTRACT: Climate change policies have been one of the most prominent topics on the public environmental agenda during the last decade, a period when the European Union has played a leading role in global negotiations since the Kyoto Protocol was adopted. However, such a global role has been transformed as sub-national authorities have become key players as climate change questions have had to be met with specific policies. In this paper we will try to analyze how climate change has been tackled by four regional governments across Europe: the Basque Country, Catalonia, Flanders and Scotland. All of them share a high level of self-government, an affluent economy and a strong national identity, which could represent a solid basis from which to develop a comparative approach in order to show how important politics is as an explanatory factor. Our analysis will be devoted to making clear the following dimensions: first of all, we will describe which policy instruments have been developed, focussing on their goals and their planning/legislative nature. Second, we will evaluate to what extent such policies have affected, or are expected to affect, other sectoral policies. Finally, we will explore participative means in the way climate change policies were designed. From this comparative examination, we hope to draw some theoretical conclusions about why certain strategies are eventually adopted and how policy networks affect climate change policies. 1

2 1. Introduction Climate change has represented one of the commonest examples of a new supranational political agenda progressively extended throughout the world. Its relative importance is beyond question if we consider that the fight against global warming is connected with one of the most crucial challenges to 21 st century civilization: energy transition. However, climate change represents even more than a new policy because it contributes to the transformation of political systems: the need to tackle global warming tends to be cited among the drivers to establish a new multilevel scenario partially out of the control of traditional nation-state agents. In this sense, the Kyoto Protocol would usher in a new global arena where crucial regulations and policies are adopted. The European Union has played a leading role in such global processes during the last couple of decades as it has something of a high profile in ecological terms. At every climate summit, European leaders have been the ones to adopt the ecologically responsible role, trying to attract some other countries to the cause of reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs). Such behaviour has not always been successful, but it illustrates to what extent European institutions have taken an interest in all these climate problems. However, such a global role has been transformed as sub-national authorities have become key players as climate change questions have had to be met with specific policies. In this paper we will try to analyze how climate change has been tackled by four regional governments across Europe -the Basque Country, Catalonia, Flanders and Scotland- in order to describe the details of those climate change policies as well as to find theoretical factors able to explain differences among distinct political responses. There are a number of reasons for having chosen these European regions and not others. Firstly, the very fact that all of them are representative of the abovementioned European ecological profile, since they all take an active role in regional supranational forums for sustainable development and environmental policies, such as ENCORE or NRG4SD. Secondly, two of them seem to take a more advanced approach to climate change policies at a European and even world scale: the political institutions of both Scotland and the Basque Country have recently developed legislative instruments to tackle global warming. Comparatively, Catalonia and Flanders may be examples of a more modest nature, but are interesting counterparts if we try to compare climate change policies, as their citizens share a similar economic, sociological and political background with Basques and Scots. We will look at that in greater depth in the next section. Thirdly, from a methodological point of view, it is relatively easy to find input for our study as the four regions authorities have put many of their climate change policy documents on the Internet. Moreover, such an institutional source can be satisfyingly supplemented with a number of articles devoted to analyzing those cases. Our focus will be aimed at the examination of substantive policies, the reasons for their design and implementation and the governance structures set up to put them into practice. As we have just mentioned, documentary analysis will be the main tool for drawing a number of conclusions that will centre on why some 2

3 regional authorities take more advanced measures than others. In other words, what kind of factors make the difference: political structure, politics or policy networks? Our final conclusion will take some elements from all of them. 2. Climate Change Policies in Comparative Perspective: the Question of Comparability As stated in the very title of this paper, a comparative approach is developed in order to analyze regional climate policies in Europe. In a logical process a comparative focus leads us to stress regional particularities in a broad context of uniformity. This is, of course, the sequence of this study as we try to learn from the four selected cases in order to draw some theoretical conclusions about the foundations of those policies. However, before establishing a comparison, one question must be answered first: to what extent is our selection of cases able to sustain our conclusions? Put in a different way, we should answer the question of comparability prior to any consideration about the differences and similarities of the four chosen cases. This is but an obligatory step in any comparative work, as specialists are always reminding us. To test the comparability of our cases we have tried to answer the alternative explanations that could be argued to account for differences in the way they tackle climate change. The first of these arguments could be, in our view, the territorial model where they are included; obviously enough, if regional authorities are to take any political measures, the possibility to do so is determined by their margin for political action, the very fact of being capable of taking autonomous decisions. In this sense, we think that the study made by Hooghe, Schackel and Marks on regional self-government may be very useful as it gives us some data on the different self-rule dimensions of the four cases that we have analyzed (Table 1). Table 1: Level of regional self-rule (2006) Region Institutional Depth Policy Scope Fiscal Autonomy Representa tion Self-rule Index Flanders Catalonia Basque Country Scotland Source: Hooghe et al As Hooghe et al. state, the degree of decentralization is determined by two different layers: self-rule and shared rule. The first of them points at the regional power to determine their own decisions, while the second one indicates the extent to which those regional authorities may co-determine the will of the nation-state. For our interests we have exclusively considered the first one, trying to elucidate whether the regional authorities of Flanders, Catalonia, 3

4 Scotland and Basque Country are able to design their policies freely. Not surprisingly, the answer is affirmative as they all are located in decentralized states: in the Flemish case in a federal one, while the others in a special model that is somewhat different to Belgium but by no means centralized, as territorial powers are fixed by constitutional and statutory law. Thus, both in Catalonia and the Basque Country regional powers are determined by the Spanish 1978 Constitution, while in Scotland the 1997 Devolution Process regained for Scots their executive and legislative faculties. Comparatively, the Basque Country achieves a slightly higher self-rule index because it enjoys a more autonomous fiscal situation than the other three. However, this seems not to make a significant difference, especially if we consider that the most advanced regional climate policy, the Scottish one, has not needed major territorial tax-raising powers. Another argument that we should consider if we want to ensure comparability relates to political culture. Even accepting that all of those regions pertain to a common Western cultural matrix, one could suppose that more advanced policies or at least policies other than the ones designed in the central statecould develop more easily in the cases with a stronger national identity. In such a situation regional authorities could decide to tackle global warming in a distinct way because it might be a chance to demonstrate a particular status in the international arena and may act as another form of nation building. Obviously, these cases may be of interest in and of themselves but we want to leave them apart to keep the focus on strictly institutional and politics-related factors. As well as considering political culture, we could state that the regions with a more ecological or environmentalist population will tend to fight climate change more decidedly. In other words, comparability could be conditioned by the extension of ecological values across the population, as it would exert pressure on politicians for electoral or other reasons. Again, this argument can be disregarded in our sample as all of the four cases seem to show predominantly post-materialist values among their citizens. In this sense, Inglehart s works (1991, 1998) tell us about the extension of post-modernism or post-materialism across western European countries and its correlation with economic development. In this regard, and looking at the economic data on Table 2, we will have strong reasons to think that in these four regions post-materialism has a major influence. For instance, this was underlined in the case of the Basque Country by the World Values Survey data. Moreover, some data coming from the Eurobarometer seem to confirm this appreciation about the extension of a concern for environmental protection, though at the national-state scale: taking national samples as a reference, worries about climate change vary in Spain, Belgium and United Kingdom from 6.4 to 8 on a 1 to 10 scale where 1 means that climate change is not a serious problem and 10 just the opposite. This implies that in every one of the three countries most people consider global warming a relevant public problem and one worth thinking about. Again, if Catalonia, Flanders, Scotland or the Basque Country are relatively economically developed regions inside their respective states, we have reason to think, following Inglehart, that the need to fight against GHGs is something widely accepted by their populations. 4

5 Table 2: Per capita income (2008) Region Code GDP/person % EU 27 (Eur) =100 Catalonia ES51 26, Basque Country ES21 29, Vlaams Gewest (Flanders) BE2 31, Prov. Antwerpen BE21 36, Prov. Limburg (B) BE22 25, Prov. Oost-Vlaanderen BE23 28, Prov. Vlaams-Brabant BE24 33, Prov. West-Vlaanderen BE25 29, Scotland UKM 24, Eastern Scotland UKM2 25, South Western Scotland UKM3 22, North Eastern Scotland UKM5 36, Highlands and Islands UKM6 19, Source: Eurostat, consulted on 11 March, These data on Table 2 are also valuable to counter a third hypothesis related to economic arguments. As Inglehart himself states, post-material values are often linked to a higher degree of socio-economic development, so environmental policies should tend to be more salient in those regions where GDP per capita is above the average. If we take into account Eurostat data, Catalonia, the Basque Country, Flanders and Scotland are relatively rich regions in the European context: from this point of view, economic factors would explain why such regions would adopt more ambitious climate policies, but do not tell us about differences among them. Just the opposite, the only region with an approved act on climate change is the Scottish one, which has the lowest figures on Table 2. Thus, there must be an alternative explanation for their proactive accomplishment, which we will try to illustrate in subsequent sections of this paper. 3. The Basque Climate Change Bill Project Since 2011, a new legislative project on climate change has been designed by the Basque Government. After some problems regarding territorial powers inside the Basque Country itself, such a project is currently going ahead in the Parliament, probably taking climate policies to a new stage. Broadly speaking, this legislative project was favoured by a rather strange phenomenon in Basque politics that happened after the 2009 elections. Thus, in June 2009 a fragmented parliament gave support to a single-party government, led by Patxi Lopez, with the votes of his Socialist Party (PSE) and those of the 5

6 Popular Party (PP, centre-right, Spanish nationalist). To a certain extent, this was a contra natura alliance in ideological terms, but proved to be enough to create the first single-party government since The latter implied among other consequences- that environmental policies ceased to be in the power of minority political forces, as had been the case in previous governments. As a matter of fact, immediately after taking power, Patxi Lopez announced what would be the first integrated strategy on sustainable development, Eco-Euskadi 2020, an attempt to present sustainable development as a factor encompassing all sectoral policies and as a core component of a pragmatic and responsible government (De la Peña and Barcena 2012; De la Peña et al. 2012, 52). In this sense, it is essential to bear in mind that the Socialist Party in the Basque Country has traditionally tried to rescue politics from identitarian conflict: since both Spanish and Basque nationalist parties take advantage of the electoral salience of the centre-periphery divide, Socialists are to a great extent disadvantaged by such a quarrel in Basque politics. That is why one of their main concerns has traditionally been to lead political conflict to parameters more typical of other political systems. Consequently, sustainability would play such a role in their government agenda. Thus, from the very first moment, sustainability was put forward in the PSE s government programme giving the president a high profile when it was promoted. Within this framework, the environmental agenda was made up of several commitments: the making of a sustainable transport act, the reform of land planning, the improvement of environmental administrative proceedings and a bill on climate change 1. As can easily be deduced, underlying these different initiatives is the will to make sustainable development goals a crosssectoral matter. Much of the general approach to such policies might be explained by Eco-Euskadi s main objectives: a vision of the Basque Country as a metropolitan reality, socially and economically integrated and competitive in the new international green economy that is to come in the near future. A climate change bill would be a further step in the right direction. A step that was first taken in September 2009, when the Basque Government drew up a first draft that was sent to some institutional and non-institutional actors. As of today, the bill has not been passed by the Basque Parliament but it deserves our analysis as it points out the main features of the government s climate policy. 3.1 The making process Participation in terms of drafting the climate change law was first gained through the Irekia website organized by the Basque Government ( to promote citizen involvement in public decisions. However, the individual character of this participative mechanism made it more a way to broadcast the new initiative than truly a way to obtain citizens involvement. Once the first draft was accepted in September 2010, the text (anteproyecto de ley) was delivered for a second participative stage that 1 Comisión Parlamentaria de Medio Ambiente, Planificación Territorial, Agricultura y Pesca. Diario de Sesiones Online 16 February

7 was open for associations, social movements, professional groups and other public agents at different territorial levels. From the submissions accepted, one could deduce that business, researchers and institutional agents had a strong influence both on the general approach and the targets of the bill, which corresponds with the statements that we have made in another text (De la Peña 2012). Those public interest groups called on to participate hardly see any of their submissions reflected in the draft: trade unions, environmentalists and consumer organizations do not have a major influence, surely because of their lesser ability to formulate technical proposals. Only Greenpeace an organization with many activists in the Basque Country but which lacks a major social presence- was able to make an in-depth analysis of the anteproyecto then translated into precise measures that were to be partially integrated into the final text. For instance, Greenpeace s arguments about abolishing the mention of incineration as a valid waste management technique and carbon capture as an alternative for climate change policies was accepted. The rest of the submissions were of a highly technical character, with the footprint of professional groups easily visible: organizations such as ACLIMA (environmental industries cluster), CONFEBASK (Basque employers organization), EHNE (an agricultural trade union), wood producers and some firms such as Gas Natural are among the most active agents. Apart from those, some research centres (Tecnalia, BC3, Neiker ), public companies and administrative organizations are also proactive. With their suggestions a final text was approved by the Basque Government in May 2011, before sending it to the Parliament to pass as an act. 3.2 A substantive analysis Already in the introductory chapter (Exposición de motivos) it becomes clear that the law is linked with the main features of European climate change policies. Thus, the text mentions the need to decouple economic growth and natural resource waste, as well as the triple 20% European target regarding energy 2. From this point of view, the purpose of the bill will be shown to be twofold: on the one hand, to reduce gas emissions and, on the other, to take measures in order to improve adaptation to climate change, with this being assumed to be an unavoidable phenomenon. As regards its legal framework, the new law will start from the Declaración de Urdaibai of 2009 and the already mentioned Estrategia Eco-Euskadi, which also state the decoupling of the economy and natural resource consumption and a green model of growth. All of this participates in the so-called ecological modernization paradigm, approaching sustainability as a further opportunity for the country s economic structure. In terms of content, the project is made up of eight different chapters that deal with several questions within this twofold approach of reduction and adaptation. 2 In specific terms, the 20% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, an equivalent growth in energy efficiency and 20% more renewable power in energy consumption. 7

8 In the first chapter, the text presents the administrative framework to deal with climate change, where the environmental authority the Environment Department- has crucial importance. For instance, it is able to distribute emissions permits, impose sanctions and participate in state coordination institutions as well as to make the necessary strategic planning. To sum up, the Environment Department will be the one to enforce climate policies, although their presumed transversal character. In this regard, it is understood that the Basque Climate Change Office (Oficina Vasca de Cambio Climático) will have organizational dependence, as part of the Environment Department, as stated in article 7. In the second chapter, the law deals with the approval process, the content and evaluation of the main climate policy instrument: the Basque plan on climate change. In this point we should mention that the Basque administration already has a similar planning document (Plan Vasco de Lucha contra el Cambio Climático), but it seems as if there was a certain will in the new project to keep a distance from it, using an slightly different denomination. At any rate, the most interesting thing about this tool lies in the fact that it deploys detailed targets in terms of emission reductions and precise measures to improve climate change adaptation. The plan will be long term, as the year 2020 is fixed as the date for review, but a partial evaluation will be made every two years for the emissions and every four years to follow the progress of the adaptation objectives. The third chapter states the criteria for establishing emissions reduction targets. As we have just mentioned, this is a matter for the plan on climate change, but it must respect the margins set up in article 11 of the new law. The character of such criteria is rather general, taking into account historical emissions in the Basque Country, international regulations and the possible impacts on the economy and unemployment. Perhaps the most interesting point of this chapter, as it represents quite an innovation, is the mandate for other public authorities and public companies to make specific programmes for climate change that state their own goals and which are open to citizen participation (art. 13.4). No doubt, it represents a further step in terms of integrating the climate factor into other sectoral policies. The fourth chapter is the longest and the one which deals with integration most deeply. It is aimed at the energy, land planning, transport, agricultural and waste industries, for which some broad obligations are stated. Such a mandate is supposed to be converted into specific and quantifiable commitments to be made public by those different departments. In the case of energy, the bill states the imperative to take steps as regards efficiency and the use of renewables, reinforcing the line already showed in Basque energy strategies. Probably, a more significant fact is that the competent department is asked to issue a public report every two years about the degree of fulfilment, and is going to be linked to the Basque plan on climate change. At the same time, administrations and public companies are asked to develop their own plans on efficiency and renewable energies. In the fifth chapter we can find the tools to be used in GHG emissions reduction policy. Coherent with the ecological modernization approach, the keynote is the adoption of voluntary and market instruments in order to promote proper 8

9 behaviour by stakeholders. In this regard, the bill proposes that public bodies acquire GHG-reducing technologies, establish a record system for public and private actors who voluntarily reduce their emissions, the need to note climate consequences in environmental assessment and the use of tax incentives and green public procurement. Among these different measures, the one with the most coercive character, tax incentives, is dealt in a rather ambiguous way, leaving most of the specific details for an undetermined future moment (art. 27). Lastly, article 29 proposes carbon sinks as an alternative for GHG emitters to compensate for the climatic consequences of their activities. The same article sets some commitments for public administrations regarding sustainable forestry management, the recovery of degraded land and so on. Finally, the last three chapters are focused respectively on adaptation, research and innovation and public participation. As far as the first of them is concerned, the sixth chapter merely repeats the need to include it in the Basque plan on climate change, quoting some principal objectives. In terms of research and innovation, the text sets up the commitment for education and research authorities to report biennially about measures taken on climate change; at the same time, it points out the importance of expertise as it asks that the Basque Office on Climate Change establish stable cooperation channels with the research centres of the Basque Network of Science, Technology and Innovation. With respect to participation, the bill hardly tells us anything new if we compare it with the 3/1998 Law on the Environment: it merely states that authorities are to provide information for the citizenship, and organize publicity campaigns on climate change. 3.3 The bill project in the Basque Parliament Since the project has been approved by the Basque Government, its progress has been anything but easy. In June 2011 it was admitted by the Parliamentary Presidency and sent to the Environment, Land Planning, Agriculture and Fishery Parliamentary Commission (BOPV, ). Just at this moment the three provincial councils, the Diputaciones Forales, convoked the Arbitrary Commission the body in charge of possible territorial power conflicts inside the Basque Country- as they saw a clear encroachment of competences in the new legislative project 3. The object of controversy was the term carbon sinks which the Diputaciones interpreted as a blatant attempt to take over forestry management currently the responsibility of the foral administrations- by the central Basque Government. Such an appeal did not succeed but it caused a five-month delay in the approval process. When it was again admitted to go forward, Parliament continued its examination, which has lasted from last November to date. 3 3 The Autonomous Community of the Basque Country is made up of three historical territories or provinces: Alava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, which have their own respective legislative and executive bodies. The Diputaciones Forales have the power to establish regulations concerning the majority of direct taxation and some indirect taxation, with the function of collecting these taxes falling to the deputations. These provincial authorities are responsible for funding the Basque administration and for the corresponding contribution, via the so-called cupo, to the Spanish central administration ( 9

10 In the parliamentarian process, a total of 178 amendments have been proposed by the different political groups 4. The group of moderate Basque nationalists (PNV) has been the one with a highest number (47), followed by the Socialists (37), the Spanish right-wing group (PP, 35), Basque left-wing nationalists (Aralar party and Eusko Alkartasuna, with 23 and 13 respectively), left-socialists (Esker Batua, 18) and the Union, Progress and Democracy Party (UpyD, 15). Thus, more than a quarter of the amendments were presented by MPs from the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), among which the majority are related to the general approach of the bill: significantly enough, nationalists wish to change the expression the fight against climate change to a more neutral formulation, such as climate change policy. In their justification they state that the latter suggests a more realistic goal as climate change will take place anyway. In a similar sense, they prefer the expression sustainable energy policy to the GHG emissions reduction used. As a whole, the nationalists contributions are aimed at clearer definitions, the improvement of technical arguments and the inclusion of Spanish state legislation as a legal framework. A very different approach comes from left-wing nationalists from the Aralar Party: certainly some of the most active MPs in the environmental commission throughout the legislature, they aim at specific targets in their amendments to the bill. Thus, they demand that such goals be clearer and more detailed and to improve participatory mechanisms. As far as the scope is concerned, Aralar has only one objection: instead of considering emissions produced in the Basque Country, the project should consider dealing with emissions produced by the Basque Country. The slight difference made by a humble preposition in this case points at a very different meaning, in that the latter expression takes consumption as a reference while the former refers strictly to emissions. Apart from these differences -among which the latter sounds rather rhetorical-, Aralar MPs seem to share to a large extent with the government a general vision in terms of climate policies, in spite of a general demand for higher levels of detail in the Basque Plan on Climate Change and wider obligations for other agents, such as the demand to make local institutions define their own plans and the big companies elaborate their own sustainable mobility systems. In our opinion, PNV s and Aralar s statements reproduce a certain conflict between left and right that has been present in other places as well: while the left perceives climate change as another symptom of the relative failure of the market, the right insists on doubts about its true existence and the level of human responsibility (Giddens 2009, 66). On the same line, it seems to recreate a certain divide, where, on the one hand, we would take all the actors situated from the centre to the left along the ideological continuum and, on the other, the centre and right-wing political forces. The leftist group will try to formulate a more or less detailed set of measures to tackle climate change and the rightwingers will move from denial to adapting these policies as an opportunity to compete in the international economic arena. Perhaps it is on the last point where some moderate actors both from the left and right- tend to converge with each other. 4 Online Consulted on

11 However, whatever the ideological differences are with regard to climate change, the Basque bill is still in its parliamentary stage under the amendment process of the environmental commission. Its future is not certain as the political climate seems to be pushing for early elections and a change of government in the Basque Country, but the highly technical character of environmental policies in general and climate policies in particular could give the project some continuity that is by no means the rule in other sectoral areas. 3.4 The importance of politics To what extent does this new legislative project represent a true innovation in Basque climate change policy? The importance of this new act should be beyond discussion as it would be the first time that such a project were to be passed in Spain and one of the first in Europe. As we have seen, the new bill tries to project its goals across different sectoral policies, which could be seen per se as a truly innovative focus in comparison with previous planning on climate change. In this sense, energy, transport, land and urban planning, education and agriculture among others are explicitly quoted as targets of the project. Moreover, among other policy instruments in this legislative project, in the first draft we can find a strongly integrative one: a carbon budget, which is foreseen as a crucial way to bring other departments under the strategy of tackling climate change. To sum up, it is a novel initiative compared with previous policies both in the Basque Country and Spain. Another symptom of breaking with the past could be the very fact that the President of the Basque Government has given such a high profile to environmental policies in general and climate change in particular. Last year, actively supported by the President, the first integrated strategy on sustainable development was approved by the Council of Ministers; such a strategy gave fighting against climate change as the core of a sustainable socioeconomic model. From this point of view, the new climate change bill will be another component of what should be a new, sustainable stage based on a more prominent degree of leadership than its advocates could ever have dreamed of. In this respect, we should wonder how, when and why this new focus was agreed. Given the fact that, prior to drawing up the bill, a participative process was carried out, one should wonder if innovation could be a by-product of participation. However, at this point our argument stands on rather different ground: we believe that the assumption of such a newly integrative focus is a consequence of several factors related to governmental situation and strategy. First of all, the fact that the current government is the first one for decades that is not a coalition. Secondly, the perspective of eco-innovation and eco-design as a strategic goal for the Basque economy. Thirdly, policy diffusion as one of the main driving forces of Basque environmental policies (as a matter of fact, it is admitted by government agents that one of their main inspirations was the Scottish Act on climate change). In any case, we think that such a disruptive framework in Basque climate change policies is above all a consequence of politics, taking for granted a certain institutional framework that gives regions the power to design and implement environmental and climate policies. To sum 11

12 up, politics triggers policies while institutions set up the broader conditions required. 4. Scottish Climate Change Act As we have mentioned, Scottish Devolution set up a new territorial model similar to the one that has been working in Spain since Inside that asymmetric distribution of powers, the Scottish Parliament and Government were to be restored and a number of sectoral policies were designed and implemented from Edinburgh. Among others, environment, education, health and local government with a limited tax-raising power with a 3% margin to vary income taxes (Gallagher et al. 2006). In such an institutional framework, the Scottish Government under nationalist leadership- presented and issued a climate change bill to be approved by Parliament in June However, though the Scottish bill may be interpreted as an obviously autonomous decision, it has its roots in a wider environment, characterised by a high profile of climate problems in the United Kingdom as a whole. Probably, atmospheric pollution has been one of the most contested questions as regards environmental problems since the 1950s and 60s, when industrial pollution became unbearable for the population of London and other British cities. As a matter of fact, we go as far as to say that the much commented-on restrictions on private vehicle use in London were, to a large extent, facilitated by such a trajectory of the atmospheric question as a public problem. In any case, if we try to explain the prominent position that climate policies have achieved on the public agenda, we must cite the Stern report, which succeeds in bringing the citizenship s attention to climate again through economic arguments, talking about the costs of not taking action to prevent the greenhouse effect. Thus, lately, climate change has been once again among the most urgent public debates in the United Kingdom; perhaps the main parties with the possible exception of the Liberal Democrats- have offered a rather limited commitment to it, but some observers have detected such a trend over the last six years with some initiatives worth mentioning such as ecotaxes, measures to promote energy efficiency or limitations of GHGs in the construction industry (Carter 2008, 196). As a consequence, a relative re-greening of electoral debate has appeared, albeit electorally oriented and with uncertain success (Carter 2009). The most relevant consequence of such a revival of discussion of the greenhouse effect in the United Kingdom has been, no doubt, the passing of the Climate Change Act in the House of Commons in November This ambitious text sets a general target of reducing emissions by 80% and includes new tools such as carbon budgeting in order to make the fight against the greenhouse effect an integrated part of other sectoral policies. We think that this was the first step for Scots to take their own measures on climate in order to define an alternative political profile at the European level. The Scottish bill on climate change is linked to a whole set of supranational legislation and some data provided by the IPCC. Against this background, the bill justifies the need to regulate climate change because of the historical 12

13 responsibilities of an early industrialising country such as Scotland. In this sense, the Scottish authorities suggest a certain moral responsibility for leading the fight against climate change, in the same way as they contributed to leading industrialization in past centuries. However, it would be a mistake to dwell too much on moral responsibility as the driving force, since a prominent position in a new carbon-free economy could represent a competitive advantage in years to come. Leaving aside all these justifications, the Scottish climate change bill is divided into five different parts: the first of them sets up the bill s targets, fixing an 80% reduction of GHGs by 2050, as stated by the United Kingdom act. This general target takes 1990 as a reference year for the main GHGs (CO2, CH4, and NO2) and 1995 for other gases, as international trends are doing at present. In order to make the path to this general goal clearer, some partial targets are also determined: from 2020, 3% of GHG emissions must be reduced annually until 2030 when the total reduction will have reached 50% of the 1990 reference. In the first part of the Scottish bill it is also worth remarking on a clear definition of emissions: all the gases generated in Scotland and a proportional amount of international aviation and shipping. In the second part, the Scottish bill deals with the future governance structure on climate change: it allows the formation of a committee with advisory functions in order to channel expert knowledge. In this regard, the text gives priority to the UK advisory committee, already created by the national act, as the most cost-effective option, but establishes the possibility of setting up a Scottish institution if the government considers its creation to be more appropriate for the particular situation of Scotland. Pragmatic and political arguments since these decisions are shown as a consequence of the previous participative process- are therefore used to justify such a governance system (Scottish Parliament 2008, 11). The third chapter obliges Scottish authorities to render an account of their activities on climate change. In specific terms, a periodical evaluation of climate policies is demanded by the Scottish bill, which will be carried out by annual reports on GHG emission progress with particular attention to the energy topic, both in consumption and in generation aspects. Furthermore, public responsibility will be specified every five years in the presentation before the Parliament of a general report on GHG reduction policies, the Executive s obligation to give details to Parliament whenever it asks for them, and a final report on climate policy fulfilment by 2030 and To put the Scottish bill s measures into practical effect, its fourth part states both the resources and obligations of public agents in charge of tackling climate change. This is not so much a question of previously-established contents as the scope of environmental authorities, which are empowered by the new act in order to ask that other relevant public bodies provide information and take measures on some specific areas of climate change. In this respect, we should point out that such a command is limited to the public sector with which environmental authorities will work in partnership (Scottish Parliament 2008, 9). Finally, in the fifth part, different provisions on climate change are stated, distinguishing adaptation, forestry management and sustainable use of natural 13

14 resources. As far as adaptation is concerned, the Scottish bill sets a commitment for the Executive to create action programmes, once trustworthy information about climate change risks is available. This is exactly the same commitment as stated in the UK climate act, so the Scottish Government will take such a mandate upon itself when the British report is available to them. Regarding forestry, the general approach is to take advantage of Scottish forests to sustain climate policies both in terms of emissions reductions and adaptation. Here, it is possible to see the importance of the role assigned to the Forestry Commission, an executive body set up in 2003 which will be able to organize joint investments with local producers to speed up renewable energy projects. With regard to renewable energies, this fifth chapter echoes some other initiatives carried out in several sectoral departments, such as housing policies, where from 2006 some energy saving strategies were put into practice. The climate change bill supports these kinds of policies and reinforces the Executive obligation to report on them. Moreover, this part of the bill includes some items about natural resource consumption that are mainly limited to waste, its recycling process and some more detailed aspects on it, such as packaging. To sum up, the Scottish bill was an innovative project that set a new threshold for climate change policies. As we have seen, the specific nature and ambition of its targets are complemented with a relative transformation of institutions. If we are to summarize Scottish climate policies, we dare say that in general they seem to be rather more advanced than the Basque ones, in as much as the reduction targets and transversality are highly specified. However, Scottish policies are linked with British ones, if we take into account that much of the Scottish bill s content is determined by the act previously approved in the House of Commons. That is why, in our opinion, politics once again as in the Basque case- triggers another policy change: Scottish authorities, dominated by nationalist forces trying to define their own political profile through the making of a new bill on a political matter as highly prominent as climate change. To sum up, they chose a political option that had become feasible because of the existence of an institutional framework allowing the regions to become decisive actors to implement climate change policies. 5. The Flemish Climate Policy Plan As we already know, Belgium has a different territorial model compared with the United Kingdom or Spain, where the two previously analyzed cases are located. If Scotland or the Basque Country are within autonomous state models, Flanders corresponds to a federal scheme, which at least theoretically- gives a predominant role to Flemish authorities in order to exercise power constitutionally attributed to regions 5. 5 The Belgian federal structure shows some particularities characteristic of its complex multinational composition (Swenden and Jans 2006). Thus, Belgium is made up of territorial entities regions: Flanders, Wallonia, Brussels- and cultural-linguistic communities Flemish, French and German speaking. Such linguistic communities do not match the territories; that is why the Belgian Constitution distinguishes between them, giving powers both to communities 14

15 At any rate, the fight to tackle climate change in Belgium has been characterised by multilevel management, strongly conditioned by European legislation. Maybe because of its geographical proximity to European institutions, European directives have had the capability to legitimate the coordinated management between regional authorities and the federal government. This is by no means a minor detail in a country where the formation of a government has been blocked recently as a consequence of party system fragmentation and communitarian rivalry. However, at climate change level, inter-territorial coordination has worked much better, to the extent of developing what some authors call de facto cooperative federalism versus the dual federalism that formally presides over Belgian institutions (Happaerts et al. 2011, 7). The fundamental tool of climate policies has been the strategic plan, which was divided into two major programmes developed in 2001 and Relating to climate change, however, we can also find a normative instrument in the socalled REU Decree issued in April 2004 for reducing GHGs, which transposes EU legislation on flexibility mechanisms and constitutes the legal basis for some initiatives contained in the planning documents (Lavrysen 2010, 18. Van Hecke and Zgajewski 2008, 17). In any case, we are talking about a low-end regulation if we compare it with parliamentary legislation. From the perspective of internal politics, climate change policies in Flanders are carried out by a coalition government. Both in the creation of the 2001 Plan and the 2005 one, the governments in charge of designing them were made up of different political forces. In 2001, environmental powers were in the hands of a minor coalition partner, the green Agalev Party; in 2004, environmental protection was a competence of the Christian Democrats of the CDV in a paritarian coalition made up of the CDV itself, the social democrats of the SPA and the VLD liberal democrats. Perhaps that is why one of the actions previous to the plan was to be the formation of a climate change commission in April 2001, which aimed to integrate its vision into other sectoral and administrative bodies, taking many delegates from other departments and territorial scales. In order to analyze the content of Flemish climate policies, we will take the Flemish Climate Policy Plan, in which the fulfilment of the Kyoto Protocol mandate is set as the main target. Already in the previous 2001 Plan, the main aspiration was to keep 2005 GHG emissions within the 1990 parameters; unfortunately, Flemish authorities did not succeed (Van Hecke and Zgajewski 2008, 17), but did set an approach that would be followed five years later. Thus, the 2006 Plan aimed to reduce GHG emission levels by an average of 5.2% of 1990 levels for the period. This target was defined after a difficult federal-scale negotiation process, where every Belgian region received its own commitment to keep Belgium inside European parameters. As a result of these negotiations, Brussels could increase its emissions up to 3.475% and Flanders and Wallonia had to make reductions of 5.2 and 7.5% respectively. Of course, these different quotas correspond to the distinct quality of the three economic structures: while the predominance of the service sector in Brussels and territories: education, culture and competences with a similar profile go to communities, while some others with a spatial nature transport, environment, agriculture and so on- are assigned to regions. 15

16 is well illustrated by the mere fact that an increase of emissions was allowed, Flanders and Wallonia had a heavier dependence on industry. However, Wallonian industry was to a great extent outmoded and dependent on carbon and that is why its reduction targets were eventually higher than those faced by Flanders. Paradoxically enough, Wallonia has had to face some de-localization processes that, in spite of making the need for economic restructuration harder, have facilitated GHG reductions (Van Hecke and Zgajewski 2008, 8). The Flemish Climate Policy Plan contains more than a hundred measures to make the Kyoto Protocol effective, classified into ten different groups: five in sectoral areas sustainable mobility, energy efficiency, energy supply, industry and sustainable agriculture and forestry- and five horizontal topics research and innovation, awareness raising, flexibility mechanisms, the role of government and adaptation (Vlaamse Overheid 2006, 38). We will briefly review the first five. Regarding sustainable mobility, the focus is on restricting the demand for private motorized transport. In order to do that, some measures will be anticipated, such as some improvements in railway infrastructure and the promotion of bicycle use. At the same time, the document states the need to renew the vehicle fleet to which an ecoscore will be given in order to take advantage of tax incentives. In addition, the Plan seeks to increase the use of biofuels and citizen awareness about ecological driving. In any case, as far as mobility is concerned, specific previous plans are frequently mentioned, thus, as a document, seeming to act as an update rather than as a new set of provisions. With regard to energy efficiency, the Flemish Plan tries to determine rational standards in the building sector, as well as establish incentives for users to reduce energy consumption and some measures in the research field. Frequently the proposals are formulated in a rather vague fashion, though specific funding for some initiatives is also foreseen: for example, regulation improvement, energy certificate introduction or education sector infrastructure modernization (Vlaamse Overheid 2006, 53). As well from the energy point of view, the Flemish Plan outlines a sectoral initiative to design a supply system according to Kyoto. Therefore, some measures to promote renewable energies are taken, intending that every energy corporation be obliged to offer at least 6% of renewables in the total energy mix, without which sanctions would be applied. At the same time, the document seeks to abolish legal barriers for wind energy growth, to encourage solar energy, to explore biomass possibilities and to improve waste processing plants as energy suppliers. Throughout all these provisions a certain approach could be stressed that points at public funding in order to stimulate stakeholder behaviour. For industrial policy, the main measure proposed by the Flemish Plan is the use of voluntary instruments to point businesses in the right direction. Again, the topic of energy efficiency appears in this respect, apart from other aspects more related to GHG emission reduction: specifically, the need to reduce NO2 and fluorinated greenhouse gases in the chemical sector is mentioned. Among all these measures, the most demanding one in terms of funding will be the socalled ecological subsidy, oriented at promoting non-polluting production 16