TY - JOUR
T1 - Assessing the comprehensiveness and vertical coherence of climate change action plans
T2 - The case of Australia
AU - Pimenta, Allan
AU - Kamruzzaman, Liton (Md)
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Authors
PY - 2024/10
Y1 - 2024/10
N2 - Climate change is an undeniable reality, prompting governments worldwide to devise strategies to avoid or reduce its adverse impacts. Ensuring the effectiveness of these strategies is crucial; they must be both comprehensive and coherent to minimize trade-offs. While substantial research has focused on assessing climate policy coherence within a single level of government (horizontal coherence), there is a relative scarcity of studies examining coherence between different levels of government (vertical coherence). This study adapts an evaluation framework from the literature and transforms it into two distinct assessment frameworks: one for evaluating the comprehensiveness and the other for assessing the vertical coherence of Climate Change Action Plans (CCAPs) from three levels of government (local, state, and national) in Australia. Adaptation and mitigation plans were assessed separately for five local government areas in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth, and their respective states: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia. National government plans received higher average comprehensive scores (83%) than state (75%) and local (71%) CCAPs. High coherence was observed between national and state levels, with significant variations between state and local levels. Sydney–New South Wales exhibited the highest coherence (90%), while Perth–Western Australia scored the lowest (35%). Key issues identified include a lack of exclusive climate change funding body and an inadequate assessment of vulnerability profiles in various plans. These findings provide insights for designing more comprehensive and integrated policy actions across multiple government levels. The refined frameworks can be applied to test the comprehensiveness and coherence of CCAPs in other contexts at various scales.
AB - Climate change is an undeniable reality, prompting governments worldwide to devise strategies to avoid or reduce its adverse impacts. Ensuring the effectiveness of these strategies is crucial; they must be both comprehensive and coherent to minimize trade-offs. While substantial research has focused on assessing climate policy coherence within a single level of government (horizontal coherence), there is a relative scarcity of studies examining coherence between different levels of government (vertical coherence). This study adapts an evaluation framework from the literature and transforms it into two distinct assessment frameworks: one for evaluating the comprehensiveness and the other for assessing the vertical coherence of Climate Change Action Plans (CCAPs) from three levels of government (local, state, and national) in Australia. Adaptation and mitigation plans were assessed separately for five local government areas in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth, and their respective states: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia. National government plans received higher average comprehensive scores (83%) than state (75%) and local (71%) CCAPs. High coherence was observed between national and state levels, with significant variations between state and local levels. Sydney–New South Wales exhibited the highest coherence (90%), while Perth–Western Australia scored the lowest (35%). Key issues identified include a lack of exclusive climate change funding body and an inadequate assessment of vulnerability profiles in various plans. These findings provide insights for designing more comprehensive and integrated policy actions across multiple government levels. The refined frameworks can be applied to test the comprehensiveness and coherence of CCAPs in other contexts at various scales.
KW - Climate change governance
KW - Climate change policy
KW - Policy coherence
KW - Policy comprehensiveness
KW - Sustainability
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85203018172&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.122419
DO - 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.122419
M3 - Article
C2 - 39241587
AN - SCOPUS:85203018172
SN - 1095-8630
VL - 369
JO - Journal of Environmental Management
JF - Journal of Environmental Management
M1 - 122419
ER -