Carlo Aall

The Scope of Action for Local Climate Policy: The Case of Norway

One of the key features of the post-Rio era has been how global environmental governance is mediated between local, national and global levels of government. In this article, we draw on experiences from local climate policy planning in Norway in order to discuss the ways in which climate change enters into a municipal policy setting. Based on the Norwegian case, supplemented with knowledge gained from an international literature review, we present a typology of six different categories of local climate policy. We highlight that local actors can both play the role as a structure for the implementation of national or international climate objectives, as well as that of being policy actors taking independent policy initiatives. We emphasize how the relationship between national and local authorities is a crucial factor if climate policy as a specific local responsibility should be further strengthened.

Transition management : a tool for implementing sustainable tourism scenarios?

There is academic, political and industry consensus that tourism should achieve greater sustainability, a process requiring stakeholder involvement on various levels. It is less clear how significant actor numbers can be mobilized to pro-actively work towards sustainability goals, achieving significant systemic change. This paper explores the transition management literature to provide a theoretical framework for stakeholder involvement and policy implementation processes in sustainable tourism. A selection of sustainable tourism initiatives by global tourism and transport organizations are reviewed and discussed with regard to the mechanisms and approaches used to involve stakeholders, and their success or otherwise in achieving change. This is compared to the results of a national tourism sustainability initiative by the Norwegian government initiated in 2010. The initiative brought together 62 leading stakeholders from all tourism interests, except airlines, for a series of six intensive discussion and goal setting sessions. Evaluation shows that stakeholder awareness and knowledge appear to have improved substantially, and potential government policy initiatives legitimized – though few tangible results can yet be seen. Overall results suggest that transition management provides a valuable theoretical framework to understand change processes, while the dialetics of stakeholder involvement and policy implementation are an essential precondition for successful governance.

The use of the ecological footprint in local politics and administration: results and implications from Norway

Our experiences calculating a local ecological footprint of Oslo form the basis for a discussion of key methodological aspects supporting the use of local sustainability indicators. The footprints strength is its ability to communicate simply the complexity of global environmental challenges. Initially developed for measuring per capita consumption at the national level, the footprint has been adopted at local and regional levels. We argue for adjustments in the footprint methodology when shifting from a national to a local policy context, to ensure the indicators applicability in local politics and administration. First, the analysis should be limited to consumption aspects relevant to the local environmental policy agenda. Second, the analysis should integrate as much genuine local data as possible. We argue also that a standardised methodology based on the national footprint approach, with the main purpose of international benchmarking of cities, cannot but reduce the indicators usefulness for administrative/political guidance, due to the methodologys lack of transparency and inability to identify local variations.

Leisure and sustainable development in Norway: part of the solution and the problem

The article presents the results of two succeeding Norwegian studies on the environmental impacts of leisure consumption. The first study presents data on the total consumption of leisure products and services by Norwegians, showing that leisure consumption increases more than everyday consumption, the most energy-intensive leisure activities increase the most, leisure activities have become more dependent on transportation and that leisure activities are to an increasing extent based on more material consumption. The second study consists of case studies from four leisure activities in Norway that have experienced the greatest increases in consumption over the last two decades: outdoor recreation clothing, cabins, leisure boating and leisure transportation. The case studies show that the problems connected with reducing the environmental impacts of leisure consumption are numerous and complex, and cannot be solved alone by technological improvements in leisure products and services. We conclude that new policies have to be developed which can on a short-term basis promote changes of leisure consumer habits in a more environmentally friendly direction, and on a long-term basis alter the existing strong links between economic growth and leisure consumption.

The early experiences of local climate change adaptation in Norwegian compared with that of local environmental policy, Local Agenda 21 and local climate change mitigation

Norwegian experiences on local environmental policy, Local Agenda 21 (LA21), local climate change mitigation (CCM) and local climate change adaptation (CCA) are compared in this article. One conclusion is that local CCA lacks the normative impetus for local action that LA21 and local CCM have had, thus making it harder to include CCA in serious policy-making at the local level of governance. Another conclusion is that local CCA like mainstream local environmental policy, but unlike that of LA21 and local CCM, is exclusively framed in a local context. By focusing only on the local effects of climate change taking place locally, and not looking into possible local effects of climate change taking place elsewhere, climate change vulnerability assessments in rich countries like Norway tend to conclude on far less dramatic consequences than what is up in the general climate change debate. This way of framing climate change vulnerabilities may prove to be counterproductive for the purpose of gaining support for climate change adaptation, as well as mitigation policies.

Integrating climate change adaptation into civil protection: comparative lessons from Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands

Integrating policy on climate change adaptation into civil protection is explored through studies of extreme weather management at the national level in Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands, and through local case studies of the three coastal cities of Bergen, Malmö and Rotterdam. The research issues addressed have been the extent to which, and in what form, climate change adaptation policy has been integrated into civil protection, how the observed policy integration can be explained and how such integration can be improved. Different degrees of policy integration may stem from perceived vulnerabilities and varying needs for renewed legitimacy within the civil protection system following the end of the Cold War. A set of socio-historic characteristics of the “environment” and “civil protection” policy domains illuminate conditions for an improved outcome of the policy integration process.

Energy use and leisure consumption in Norway: an analysis and reduction strategy

This article discusses the environmental impacts of leisure activities. Calculations are presented for the time-use, money expenditure and energy use involved in leisure services and goods consumed by Norwegians in 2001. The paper draws upon a two-year project financed by the Research Council of Norway. Leisure consumption represented around 23% of the total energy use within private and public consumption in Norway. The energy intensity of leisure consumption, measured in energy use per amount of expenditure, was 20% lower than that of everyday household consumption but 380% times higher than that of public consumption. Surveys show that around half of Norwegian leisure time is spent at home, with considerable use of electronic goods, but that the major energy users are holidays, outdoor recreation and second homes. Growing mobility in leisure patterns is a dominating problem. Leisure consumption is growing rapidly and energy-intensive forms of leisure consumption are growing fastest. A 10-point strategy for reducing the environmental impacts of leisure consumption is presented, including strategies for changing leisure production, changing patterns of leisure consumption, changing the volume of leisure consumption and utilising leisure as an educational arena.

A critical review of climate change risk for ski tourism

Ski tourism is a multi-billion dollar international market attracting between 300 and 350 million annual skier visits. With its strong reliance on specific climatic conditions, the ski industry is regarded as the tourism market most directly and immediately affected by climate change. A critical review of the 119 publications that have examined the climate change risk of ski tourism in 27 countries is provided. This growing and increasingly diverse literature has projected decreased reliability of slopes dependent on natural snow, increased snowmaking requirements, shortened and more variable ski seasons, a contraction in the number of operating ski areas, altered competitiveness among and within regional ski markets, and attendant implications for ski tourism employment and values of vacation property real estate values. The extent and timing of these consequences depend on the rate of climate change and the types of adaptive responses by skiers as well as ski tourism destinations and their competitors. The need to understanding differential climate risk grows as investors and financial regulators increasingly require climate risk disclosure at the destination and company scale. Key knowledge gaps to better assist ski tourism destinations to adapt to future climate risk are identified.

The manifold history of eco‐auditing and the case of municipal eco‐auditing in Norway

The purpose of this article is to discuss the historic and conceptual background for the concept of eco-auditing. Drawing the line back to the Roman Empire, we can identify three scientific approaches to eco-auditing: an ecological approach describing the state of and human impact on the environment; a technological approach describing resource streams and analysing opportunities of reducing the consumption of resources, emissions and wastes within defined systems and a management approach evaluating to what extent the organization complies with internal and/or external standards and goals. Copyright

Introducing the concept of environmental policy integration into the discourse on sustainable tourism: a way to improve policy-making and implementation?

Many studies have explored how the tourism sector and tourism policies understand and relate to the concept of sustainable development. A common conclusion is that tourism concentrates on economic and social viability at the expense of environmental sustainable development. This paper considers if and how the concept of environmental policy integration (EPI) could improve sustainable tourism policy implementation. It defines EPI, and explores both the three-level (co-ordination, harmonization and prioritization) and four-level (inclusion, consistency, priorities and reporting) EPI approaches. It notes that there is both strong and weak EPI, and both political systems and policy analysis approaches. The paper then describes Norways post-2007 adoption of sustainable tourism as a central part of its national tourism development strategy, with 10 defined principles, and suggested defined development standards, and assesses the implementation of the national strategy through the lens of the EPI concept. While there are now 18 pilot sustainable tourism destinations, with 44 criteria and 108 indicators, there remain many difficult issues to address. A series of suggestions are made, the chief of which is the need for a politically strong central authority that has been entrusted with having environmental concerns within the tourism sector as its key mandate.