Co-creation of climate change mitigation policies:
the superiority of a community-based approach
Jens Hoff, Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
E-mail: .
Abstract:
The focus of this paper is on the places where citizens and public authorities meet – possible involving other stakeholders as well – to discuss, formulate and implement climate change mitigation policies at the local level. Through looking at a number of concrete cases stemming from the CIDEA research project[i] and spread over the continuum from local government initiated to citizen initiated, and from projects aimed at changing individual behaviour to projects involving bigger communities (housing association, villages, etc.), it will be argued that both from a governance perspective (CO2-reductions), as well as from a democratic perspective, citizen initiated projects involving communities of different kinds are clearly superior to for example government initiated campaigns aimed at the behaviour of individuals. This finding has clear policy-implications meaning that local climate change mitigation policies should be aimed at finding ways to support citizen initiated initiatives to a greater extent than is currently the case.
Keywords: climate change mitigation, co-creation, behaviour, communities, citizen driven innovation.
Paper presented at Nordic Environmental Social Science (NESS) Conference, Trondheim, Norway, June 2015
Introduction:
This paper deals with the smallest units in the global field of climate politics; citizens, and their possibility of making a difference in relation to climate change mitigation; i.e. reducing their carbon footprint. What we are interested in is how different types of organizational set-up’s can either motivate citizens to take action or discourage them from such action, and if some set-up’s can be said to work better in this respect than others.
This way of formulating the problem begs two questions: what do we mean by ‘organizational set-up’, and what do we mean by ‘work better’? Concerning the first question there are clearly numerous ways in which citizens can engage in action on climate change mitigation. They (we) can chose to engage as individuals, trying to change our consumption habits in terms of food, transportation, energy, etc. Or we can engage as members of social movements that take action on climate change. We can also engage in activities or projects together with public agencies or eventually private companies. It is this last type of (public) engagement, which is in focus here. This because it is increasingly realized by public authorities at all levels, that the challenge of climate change is of such magnitude, that it is absolutely necessary to involve citizens in climate change mitigation (see e.g. Hoff 2015). An example of this is the Danish government’s energy strategy, which although heavily relying on systemic and infrastructure changes in energy supply to reach its goal of a 40 per cent reduction of CO2-emissions by 2020 compared to 2006, also relies on citizens’ reductions contributing with 6 per cent (out of the 40, or around 1/7)(Regeringen 2011).
For this reason there is or might be a common interest between (local) public agencies and (groups of) citizens in working together in climate change mitigation projects of various types. In the literature on planning, governance and innovation (see e.g. Bason 2010, Healey 1997, Sørensen and Torfing 2011) such type of collaboration has been called co-production, co-creation, collaborative innovation or collaborative arrangements, while it is called citizen participation in the literature on participatory democracy (Reed 2008). While these concepts are used to describe basically the same type of activities or projects, they link up to different theoretical traditions, and using one or the other might therefore have different implications for how we analyze or evaluate activities and projects. Words and concepts are never innocent, and while we shall deal with these distinctions in the paragraph on theory below, we can with this caveat, illustrate the field of possible collaborative arrangements through the figure below:
Fig. 1. Field of possible collaborative arrangements concerning climate change mitigation. Vertical axis represents the initiation of intervention and horizontal axis represents the focus of intervention.
Government agents, local authority
1 2
Individual Community
3 4
Civil society, citizen-driven
Figure 1 present the field of possible collaborative arrangements between local public agencies and citizens. The Figure combines a vertical axis representing the initiation of climate change mitigation interventions with a horizontal axis representing the focus of these interventions. The vertical axis is presented as a continuum and shows that interventions can be initiated either by government agents or by citizens, but most often in a collaboration in which one of the two poles weighs more than the other. The horizontal axis of the Figure, also presented as a continuum, shows that interventions can target either individual change (consumption patterns, transport habits) or collective changes (creation of a low-energy housing cooperative, a sustainable village, building of new collective infrastructures). Since collective change requires the participation of a (large) number of individuals, and since individuals are influenced by collective behaviour, most interventions mix both aspects, to various degrees.
Square 1 of the Figure denotes arrangements/projects that are clearly initiated by a public agency, and are focused primarily on influencing individual behaviour. These arrangements rely most often on policies influenced by rational choice theory, which posits that individuals will always choose the most rational options that maximise their advantages. The type of policies that this approach entails focuses on providing the right information to actors and influencing behaviour mainly through economic (dis)incentives. Information campaigns, taxes or subsidies are therefore the most common social technologies found among these arrangements.
Square 2 of the Figure denotes arrangements initiated by a public agency that focus on different types of communities where the changes promoted require the support of a collectivity, or at least of a certain number of participants. Well-known examples of collective arrangements include environmental impact assessments relating to projects such as construction of wind turbines, national parks and power plants that impact landscapes or a neighbourhood.
Square 3 of the Figure denotes action initiated specifically by citizens themselves as individual actors. Citizens may reflect on and take action to mitigate climate change in their homes, at work, while shopping and transporting themselves and in numerous other ways. Many such daily choices are not made in response to temporary external interventions, but are based on the total knowledge, norms and values internalised by each individual throughout his/her life. Because individuals may try to save money at the same time as they try to conform to norms, respect legislation or be emphatic towards other living creatures, the motivations for such actions can be economic, social, legal and moral. Such individual actions can also depend on a number of socio-economic factors such as gender, age, income, education, values and political orientation.
Square 4 of the Figure denotes arrangements/projects where the initiative comes from citizens or groups of citizens, and are typically aimed at improving their local community or association. Arrangements in this square include, inter alia, food cooperatives, sustainable food clubs, carbon- neutral building blocks, communities or villages and sustainable islands.
Now having presented, and given concrete examples of what we mean by ‘organizational set-up’; namely collaborative arrangements involving both citizens and public authorities in joint efforts to reduce CO2 emissions, we can return to the question of which of these types of set-up’s that work best. The way we will approach this question is through looking at five case studies representing square 1, 2 and 4 in the figure above. Square 3 is not represented in this analysis, as there are no specific organizational set-up involved here; or rather the set-up’s might be all of the organizations that frame consumption patterns in our everyday lives. The analysis of such diversity is beyond the scope of this paper. The five cases all stem from the CIDEA research project (see footnote 1), and have been analyzed using a variety of social science research methods, such as (anthropological) field work, participatory observation (even to the point of being part of building the website presented in case 1, and teaching at the courses for climate ambassadors presented in case 4), interviews, document studies and surveys[2]
What do we mean by ‘work best’? This question is at the same time easy and very complicated to answer. As a main goal in all of the cases analyzed has been to reduce CO2 emissions, it is self-evident that measuring the projects’ effectiveness toward this aim must be an important parameter. However, already here the problems start. Thus, measuring CO2 emissions down to the level of the individual or groups of individuals is a complicated affair (see e.g. Strobel, Erichsen and Gausset 2015), and in order to compare reductions it is a least necessary to use a common methodology. This has not been the case in the organizational set-up’s we are trying to compare, and this already at the outset makes our comparison and thus our conclusion rather tentative.
Secondly, as will be clear in the case descriptions, reductions in CO2 emissions has not been the only, and for some actors maybe not even the most important goal. Other goals such as strengthening social cohesion in the community, creating jobs and local revenue, and improving local democracy have also been on the agenda with different intensity in the different cases. Should we also use all of these goals as parameters in our comparison?
If we were working as consultants we would surely need to be attentive to and reflect on the degree to which the goals of important stakeholders are fulfilled. However, as researchers we need to be more cogent, and apply a uniform methodology across the cases. Such methodology can be arrived at through different avenues, but here we will arrive at the methodology deductively through looking at the criteria used for such evaluations in the broad literature on co-production of policies involving citizens and public agencies. However, doing this we again run into challenges, which has to do with the position from which one looks at these organizational set-up’s. In our situation a fundamental schism is between the positions from which one chooses to look at collaborative arrangements. Thus, should these arrangements be seen ‘top/down’ as instances of public steering? Or should they rather be seen ‘bottom/up’, as instances of citizen participation? Choosing either perspective surely has wide-ranging consequences for the evaluation criteria one needs to apply.
We shall deal with this dilemma in the paragraph below, but will already here anticipate the discussion by stating that we see these types of collaborative arrangements as instances of both. They represent instances of (attempts at) public steering and (weaker or stronger) citizen participation at the same time. This demands considerations on a diverse body of literature.
Theoretical considerations and tools for evaluation
In a certain sense there is nothing new in connecting environmental policies with citizens participation, and analyzing this nexus. Thus, it has been argued quite convincingly that since its inception as a separate policy field in the 1960s, environmental policies have developed in a constant dialogue and interplay with green movements, green parties and other types of green civil society organizations (Connelly et al 2012, 354ff). Developing on this fact Hoff (2015) has demonstrated how citizen participation in this area has moved through four phases from the 1960s till now, marked by an uneven both steady development of increasingly sophisticated policy instruments (from laws and permits over environmental taxes and tradeable permits to local Agenda21 and co-creation) , an increasing number of different types of experts involved, and a changing citizen role or identity to match this development (from objects of steering over stakeholders to cosmopolitans and ‘future makers’).
This development has been analyzed from different theoretical perspectives, but a broad distinction can be made between theories looking at the development in a steering or governance perspective, and theories looking at the development from a democratic perspective.
The governance perspective
Seeing citizen participation in a governance perspective has lead to the development of such terms as co-creation and co-production of public policies and services (Bason 2010) and collaborative (public sector) innovation (Sørensen and Torfing 2011). The point of departure for these theories is that hardly any of society’s wicked problems (e.g. climate change) can be solved through the isolated efforts of a single authority, or even the collaboration between different authorities (Bason 2010:88). In order to begin solving these problems it is necessary to involve stakeholders outside of government; citizens, NGO’s, businesses, etc. depending on the type and scale of the problem. Bason (op.cit.: 6) calls this process co-creation; creating new solutions with people outside government, not for them. As these new solutions are created intentionally, even though they are not always initiated by government, Bason (op.cit.) as well as Sørensen and Torfing (op.cit) call them innovations. Thus, Sørensen and Torfing (2011:29) define such (collaborative public sector) innovations as ‘referring to a more or less intended and proactive process, which develops, implements and spreads new and creative ideas creating a qualitative change in a given context’. As being able to create such new ideas becomes more and more of an imperative for public agencies, they develop increasingly sophisticated techniques for co-creating policies with citizens. Indeed, Bason’s book from 2010 is an attempt at developing an encompassing methodology for co-creation. This methodology implies, among other things, a shift from a focus on management and professionals as the main drivers of public policy innovation to a focus on citizen- or user driven innovation. This also means changing the conception of the citizen in relation to public policies from seeing the citizen as a client or a customer to seeing him/her as co-producer or a ‘public innovator’ (Agger and Lund 2011:189).
While these frameworks all pay considerable attention to the needs and wishes of citizens and other civil society actors, the perspective is none the less a steering perspective, with the main aim of providing new and hopefully better public sector services or policies with the same or fewer resources. Bason (2010, 153-154) is very clear about this: ‘Involving citizens in the innovation process is, thus, not about increasing democratic participation or legitimacy through the act of involvement itself. It is about finding better solutions to achieve politically defined visions of the future, Even though citizens may often be very motivated to contribute their time and expertise, and indeed experience that their participation is meaningful and empowering, that is not the main point.’ None the less, and a bit contradictory, Bason (2010 46) mentions democracy as an important ‘bottom line’ against which to measure the ‘products’ of co-creation. A similar ambiguity is found in Healey (2006, 332 and 337) who on the one hand stresses that a main aim of collaborative processes is for public agencies to achieve a better problem-solving capacity, and on the other hand stresses that: ‘.. such collaborative practices are not innocent and carry their own potential to mask critical power relations and obscure critical issues’.
Summing up in terms of the evaluation criteria we are searching for, Bason (2010:45-46) himself is actually pointing at the areas in which he sees value being generated through public sector innovation. The four types of value are: productivity (relationship between the inputs and outputs of public service production), service experience, results (outcomes) and democracy (specified as citizen participation and empowerment, transparency, accountability and equality). For our purposes here we will disregard the two first criteria as they relate quite specifically to public services. However results (outcomes) as well as democracy is certainly relevant for our climate change mitigation cases. We shall elaborate on the democracy dimension below.
The democraticperspective
Looking at collaborative arrangements from a democratic perspective, we are faced with the same ambiguityas in the case of thegovernance perspective. On the one hand, it is necessary to realise that there is nothing inherently democratic about citizen participation, as is aptly demonstrated in the above quotation from Bason. Citizen participation hasin many instances become a tool or policy instrument used in more or less sophisticated ways by public authorities confronted with new or complex problems. The attraction of using citizen participation as a policy instrument is aptly formulated by the pragmatic tradition within citizen participation theory (Reed 2008), which is why one can actually question whether this tradition sits well under the heading of ‘the democratic perspective’.
In the pragmatic tradition, one can distinguish between substantive and instrumental arguments for citizen participation.The substantive argument focuses on the substance of the policy output. Whendiscussing why citizens should participate, theorists refer to the improved quality, substance and robustness of the policy output. In improving the substance of the output, knowledge is seen to play a pivotal role, especially the knowledge of lay actors (Wright and Fritsch 2011, 2269). Such local knowledge is thought to contribute insights that are outside or under the radar of experts.
Through these insights, which are based on local conditions, solutions are then developed in collaboration between public and local actors that are better adapted to the particular setting and have a better chance of success. The assumption is that: ‘those who are closest to the problem develop the best understanding of it…(which iswhy) it seems plausible that environmental decisions can profit from the factual knowledge that local actors have about the environmental issues concerning them’ (Kastens and Newig 2008, 28).
Furthermore, citizen participation is also seen to reduce the uncertainty connected with scientific knowledge. Even though the knowledge of lay actors does not in and of itself contribute significantly to the scientific knowledge base, the participation of lay actors often means that more ideas and perspectives are represented in the decisionmaking process. This increases the likelihood of addressing local problems and priorities, because the information of decisionmakers will be more complete (Reed 2008, 2420). The substantive argument of authors writing in this tradition is that citizens should participate in policy discussions and implementation because this will add more perspectives to the process, improve the knowledge base and reduce uncertainty, which will – all things being equal – lead to better decisions and a better policy output.