Co-production of Climate Policy: A Novel Opportunity for Engaging with Urban Stakeholders?

Program

Pioneering urban climate institutional arrangements can help to address the global challenges posed by climate change, particularly in a context of stuck international negotiations. Cities are an excellent arena to experiment and innovate in climate governance, so that unmet challenges such as the effective involvement of citizens and stakeholders differently knowledgeable, vulnerable, and able to adapt to climate change can be addressed. In this vein, “co-production” is an emerging concept promising to better involve citizens and stakeholders in public services delivery, knowledge production, and decision-making. While research on climate change has acknowledged the multiplicity of academic meanings and uses of the term “co-production”, little is known about how societal actors invited to materialize it are using this term. Thus, this research aims to understand how the notion of “co-production” is being conceptualised and operationalised in the context of urban climate policy-making. We specifically illustrate this aim with a case study about an ICT-facilitated co-production process: the Climate Plan of the city of Barcelona.