Private opportunities, public benefits? The scope for private finance to deliver low-carbon transport systems in Kigali, Rwanda

A significant portion of finance for a low-carbon transition is expected to come from private sources. This may be particularly the case in the transport sector, where there is a large private sector presence and substantial investment needs, and in low-income countries, where climate action is unlikely to be the first priority for public finances. However, it is unclear whether private finance can deliver the full range of actions that are needed for a low carbon transition, or what role the public sector can and should play to mobilise these resources. Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, is one of many cities in lower and middle income countries seeking to break away from business-as-usual trajectories and pursue more sustainable forms of urban development. In this paper, the economic case for a large set of low carbon transport investments in Kigali, Rwanda, is analysed from the perspective of a private investor and from the perspective of the city as an economic unit drawing on a data and methods used in a city-wide review of low carbon study of Kigali conducted in 2015 by the Climate Smart Cities team at the University of Leeds. Comparing the public and private perspectives provides the opportunity to explore the financing mechanisms and policy frameworks appropriate for different kinds of low-carbon investment, and to consider how governments in developing countries can lay the foundations for compact, connected low-carbon cities

Networking Cities after Paris: Weighing the Ambition of Urban Climate Change Experimentation

Over the past few decades, cities have repeatedly demonstrated high levels of ambition with regard to climate action. Global environmental governance has been marked by a proliferation of policy actions taken by local governments around the world to demonstrate their potential to advance climate change mitigation and adaptation. Leading ‘by example’ and demonstrating the extent of action that it is possible to deliver, cities have aspired to raise the ambition of national and international climate governance and put action into practice via a growing number of ‘climate change experiments’ delivered on the ground. Yet accounts of the potential of cities in global environmental governance have often stopped short of a systematic valuation of the nature and impact of the networked dimension of this action. This article addresses this by assessing the nature, and challenges faced by, urban climate governance in the post-Paris era, focusing on the ‘experimentation’ undertaken in cities and the city networks shaping this type of governance. First, we unpack the concept of ‘urban climate change experimentation’, the ways in which it is networked, and the forces driving it. In the second and third parts of the article, we discuss two main pitfalls of networked urban experimentation in its current form, focusing on issues of scaling experiments and the nature of experimentation. We call for increased attention to ‘scaling up’ experiments beyond urban levels of governance, and to transformative experimentation with governance and politics by and in cities. Finally, we consider how these pitfalls allow us to weigh the potential of urban climate ambition, and consider the pathways available for supporting urban climate change experimentation

Infrastructures, Lock-in, and Sustainable Urban Development – The Case of Waste Incineration in the Göteborg Metropolitan Areas

This article explains how infrastructures with a sustainability record may evolve over time into a lock-in that slows the emergence of more sustainable urban infrastructures. A study of waste incineration in the Göteborg Metropolitan Area, Sweden, serves as an illustrative case. Taking leads from Unruh (2000; 2002), four rationales of lock-in are identified in the case: institutional, technical, cultural, and material. The article describes how these rationales, one by one and in collaboration, lock-in waste handling in the Göteborg Metropolitan Area to incineration. The article also suggests that these four rationales could serve as a program to unlock urban infrastructures. Asking the question “Are we in a lock-in?” is featured as a practical starting point for planning changes in urban infrastructure governance that contribute to sustainability.A revised version of this paper is published in Journal of Cleaner Production, Volume 50, 1 July 2013, Pages 32–3

Smart Mobility and Policy Instruments : Broadened Definitions and Critical Understandings

The point of departure of this book is that smart mobility will only be developed in a desired direction and fulfil societal objectives if it is steered in that direction. The market, left to itself, will most certainly not deliver on these objectives. This message has been conveyed extensively in recent literature, but this book aims to take this discussion one step further by focussing on what governance of smart mobility looks like today and in the future. In this introductory chapter, the authors provide a framework of different understandings of policy instruments, how they are selected, developed and used. After the array of policy instruments within the transport sector has been extensively discussed, the authors turn to discussing a broader understanding of policy instruments found within political science and political sociology. In doing so, this book contributes to the critical scholarship on policy instruments, while exploring the why, the how and the what of policy instruments in relation to smart mobility. The chapter closes with a brief introduction to the structure of the book as well as a description of the content of each chapter.</p