Emergent processes of adaptive capacity building: Local government climate change alliances and networks in Melbourne

Urban Climate xxx (2015) xxx–xxx

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Emergent processes of adaptive capacity building: Local government climate change alliances and networks in Melbourne Susie Moloney ⇑, Hartmut Fünfgeld School of Global Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476, Melbourne, VIC 3001, Australia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 4 December 2014 Revised 24 June 2015 Accepted 30 June 2015 Available online xxxx Keywords: Adaptation planning Adaptive governance Network governance Local government Climate change responses Adaptive capacity building

a b s t r a c t This paper presents a critical review of multi-level climate governance and adaptive capacity building in the context of Melbourne, Australia. The role of local government is highlighted as significant within the Victorian Climate Change Adaptation Plan (2013) and it is recognised that the state government must work in partnership with local municipalities and communities to effectively respond to the impacts of climate change. This paper reflects on the characteristics of institutional responses to climate change and the extent to which local government ‘climate change alliances’ constitute an emergent and effective form of adaptive and integrative governance. The analysis draws on a review of recent literature and government reports focusing on local scale adaptation in Victoria as well as qualitative data from interviews with local government alliances. The traditionally weak institutional architecture at the local scale in Australia creates a significant challenge in adaptive governance for climate change. The research highlights the current and potential role of regional alliances to overcome structural, institutional and political obduracies as evidence of progress in building adaptive capacity at the local government and community scale. Ó 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.

1. Introduction Over recent decades climate change adaptation has become increasingly important as a policy issue with the policy agenda more recently shaped by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Fifth Assessment Report (IPCC, 2014a). The AR5 found that ‘it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century’ (IPCC, 2013: 17) and that ‘in recent decades, changes in climate have caused impacts on natural and human systems on all continents’ (IPCC, 2014a: 4). Adaptation, considered a necessary strategy for managing the risks of climate change, has been defined as ‘the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects’, seeking to ‘moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities’ (IPCC, 2014b: 5). The IPCC goes on to propose a set of principles for effective adaptation, including that ‘adaptation is place- and context-specific, with no single approach for reducing risks appropriate across all settings’ and suggesting that ‘adaptation planning and implementation can be enhanced through complementary action across levels, from individuals to governments’ (IPCC, 2014c: 85). These two points frame some of the

⇑ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Moloney). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2015.06.009 2212-0955/Ó 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Please cite this article in press as: Moloney, S., Fünfgeld, H. Emergent processes of adaptive capacity building: Local government climate change alliances and networks in Melbourne. Urban Climate (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2015.06.009

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key practical challenges of adapting to climate change in human systems: how can collaboration and coordination across scales and between individuals and organisations be supported whilst also being highly place- and context-specific? In this paper, we explore this question using examples of emergent forms of networked local climate change governance in the form of regional local government alliances, that have demonstrated potential for facilitating learning and capacity building towards more effective adaptation. While the role of ‘cross border’ institutional and governing arrangements has been highlighted as important in addressing complex natural resource management issues, there is to date little research around how these arrangements are emerging to address climate adaptation (Steele et al., 2013: 700). We situate our analysis of local government alliances by reviewing theoretical literature on adaptive capacity development and multi-level and network governance to elaborate key characteristics of cross-scale adaptive governance. We then examine the role of selected state and non-state actors, operating at the local scale, in responding to climate change in the context of state level climate change adaptation policy. Based on a review of adaptation research and evidence of local practices of adaptation planning, we show how new forms of regional adaptive governance are contributing to building the capacities of local governments and communities to respond to climate change in the state of Victoria, Australia.

2. Learning institutions: What constitutes effective local adaptation governance? In order to adapt, systems, institutions, or individuals need to develop their adaptive capacity, i.e. an ability to ‘adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities, or to respond to consequences’ of climate change (IPCC, 2014b: 5). For climate change responses to be effective, multi-level governance approaches with interactions across all levels of government from the national to state and local scales have been deemed important (Bauer and Steurer, 2014; Hanssen et al., 2013). There is widespread agreement that local scale institutions will bear the brunt of adaptation actions, and adaptation more so than climate change mitigation requires ‘understanding how things work locally’ (Barnett, 2010). However, in any governance context, adaptation decisions do not occur in isolation from other decisions but are enmeshed with ‘demographic, cultural and economic change, as well as transformations in information technologies, global governance, social conventions and the globalising flows of capital and [. . .] labour’ (Adger et al., 2005: 77). Climate change adaptation as a policy issue is cross-cutting, multi-disciplinary and multi-sector by necessity, requiring significant degrees of collaboration and cooperation in order to be successful. While a certain degree of such integration can be achieved by Type I multi-level governance (Hooghe and Marks, 2003), where a few levels of government agree to share decision-making power with regard to a policy domain (for example, in a federal political system), the problem nature of climate change adaptation is likely to engender a more messy Type II governance regime, where jurisdictions operate at numerous, often intersecting scales and with intersecting membership (Hooghe and Marks, 2003). Type II governance jurisdictions include task-specific citizen groups or alliances of local governments for example. Table 1 provides an overview of the characteristics of Type II governance, their linkages to, and opportunities for, building adaptive capacity. Importantly, Type II governance regimes are inherently more flexible than more traditional Type I multi-level governance that draws its strength from durable structural governance arrangements across a system. Creating more resilient and adaptive governance systems will always need to involve changing existing institutions. Pelling and High 2005: 309) highlight the value of differentiating adaptation actions that ‘reinforce existing organisational or system stability and those that modify institutions to add resilience through flexibility’. Pahl-Wostl (2009) and others raise the importance of network governance and processes of social and societal learning as important features of adaptive governance necessary to respond to the complexities of current resource management and climate change challenges (see also Folke et al., 2005; Pahl-Wostl, 2007). Adaptive and integrative (Type II) governance modes move away from a ‘command and control’ paradigm to one that constitutes more active, deliberative involvement from a range of stakeholders in the design and management of policies and plans (Pahl-Wostl 2009: 354), acknowledging that any form of resource management is a political processes. While some of the public participation process may rely on formal institutions, informal ‘adaptive networks’ play an important role as ‘self-organising groups of policy makers’ who are influential in, and have knowledge about, different power networks but, importantly, ‘‘try to break away from the existing policies in those power networks and develop joint understanding about new, more effective policies in these informal adaptive networks’’ (Pahl-Wostl 2009: 361).

Table 1 Characteristics of Type II multi-level governance and their relevance for adaptive capacity building (based on Hooghe and Marks, 2003). Characteristic

Description

Relevance for building adaptive capacity

Task-specific jurisdictions Intersecting membership Many jurisdictional levels Flexible design

Multiple, independent jurisdictions fulfil distinct functions Overlapping and sometimes competing membership

Ability to focus on mitigation and adaptation planning and implementation across jurisdictions Opportunity for building adaptive capacity through collaboration and reflexive learning Opportunity for better vertical integration of adaptation decisionmaking

Organised across existing levels of government

Intended to respond flexibly to changing functional requirements or preferences

Embracing adaptive management as an ongoing process

Please cite this article in press as: Moloney, S., Fünfgeld, H. Emergent processes of adaptive capacity building: Local government climate change alliances and networks in Melbourne. Urban Climate (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2015.06.009

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To better understand how institutional change can occur in the context of climate change, Pahl-Wostl (2009) developed a conceptual framework for addressing the dynamics and adaptive capacity of governance regimes, which are understood as multi-level learning processes (Pahl-Wostl, 2009). Learning is conceptualised here as either single-loop (i.e. refining actions to improve performance), double-loop (i.e. a change in the frame of reference or guiding assumptions) or triple-loop (i.e. transforming the structural context, including the dominant governance regime as a whole) (Pahl-Wostl, 2009, drawing on Argyris and Schön, 1978; Hargrove, 2002). This framework highlights the important role of multi-level and polycentric governance for complex problems such a climate change adaptation and the dynamic and processual aspects of environmental governance, which require understanding the roles and interactions of state and non-state actors across administrative boundaries and vertical institutional structures. In highlighting the importance of looking at informal networks or ‘shadow networks’ for double and triple loop learning attention is paid to how these ‘can prepare a system for change by exploring alternative system configurations and developing strategies for choosing among possible futures’ (Pahl-Wostl, 2009: 361). Understanding the strength of linkages between these networks and formal policy cycles is considered important and the right balance between the strength of this linkage to influence policy and maintaining the capacity to innovate and experiment is identified as a key question for empirical research. The fundamental premise of this framing for understanding the adaptive capacity of governance regimes is that in order to manage environmental resources sustainably, current resource management regimes must undergo a transition towards more adaptive and integrated resource governance (Pahl-Wostl, 2007; Folke et al., 2005). In line with Hooghe and Marks’ characteristics of Type II governance regimes, adaptive governance regimes are characterised by ‘‘self organisation, emergence and diverse leadership’’ (Pahl Wostl, 2009: 356). Table 2 draws together key characteristics of adaptive governance described above with aligned processes of change for developing adaptive capacity, providing an analytical framework to examine the relative role of different dimensions/characteristics of adaptive governance in facilitating change at the organisational level. By identifying these characteristics and processes of change of adaptive governance while also acknowledging that ‘adaptation is place- and context-specific’, it is possible to better understand the extent to which ‘informal and shadow networks’ (Pahl-Wostl, 2009) constitute an emerging form of adaptive governance and demonstrate processes of learning (ie. from single to double and triple loop) and adaptive capacity building at the local scale. Building on previous work that identified local government climate change alliances (CCAs) as an important and emerging feature of climate governance in Victoria (Moloney and Horne, 2015; Moloney et al., 2010), we explain how CCAs have emerged within the Australian multi-level climate governance context and consider their governance characteristics, processes of learning, and their contribution to adaptive capacity building in Victoria as ‘cross-border’ arrangements identified as important in addressing complex challenges like climate change adaptation (Steele et al., 2013). We draw primarily on policy analysis and a review of key policy documents as well as data from interviews carried out with nine of the climate change alliances in October 2014. 3. Multi-level climate change adaptation governance in Australia While there has been some effort in Australia to clarify the roles, responsibilities and liabilities of the three (Federal, State and Local) levels of government in developing adaptation strategies (Standing Committee on Climate Change, Water and the Table 2 An analytical framework to examine adaptive multi-level governance. Characteristic

Adaptive governance

Processes of change

Governance Type – Adaptive and Integrative

    

Reflexive Learning Processes

 Single-loop (i.e. refining actions to improve performance)  Double-loop (i.e. a change in the frame of reference or guiding assumptions)  Triple-loop (i.e. transforming the structural context, including the dominant governance regime as a whole)  Argyris and Schön (1978), Hargrove (2002), Pahl-Wostl (2009)

Creating opportunities to reframe problems through collaboration and reflexive learning leading to structural reconfigurations Creating flexible institutional processes for adaptive management as an ongoing process

Institutional architecture

 Minor modification of existing institutional architecture through problem solving based on ‘adaptive ingenuity’ (resilience)  Making adaptive changes in institutional architecture without challenging overarching regime of norm and principles (transition)  Radical changes to the institutional architecture through ‘critical reasoning’, to establish new governance regime.  Pelling (2011)

Aligning adaptation with strategic goals and develop institutional processes to embed adaptation Socio-technical and systemic changes to improve adaptation outcomes Redesigning institutions to create new governance regimes

Task-specific jurisdictions Intersecting membership Many jurisdictional levels Flexible design Hooghe and Marks (2003)

Operationalising climate change adaptation and implementation across jurisdictions (horizontal integration) Creating opportunities for improved vertical integration of adaptation decision-making

Adapted from Hooghe and Marks (2003), Pahl-Wostl (2009) and others; and Pelling (2011).

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Arts, 2009) and foster multi-level collaboration, in reality multi-level governance for adaptation remains largely aspirational. The clarification of roles is a ‘work in progress’ and much of the adaptation effort can still be characterised as ‘muddling through’, largely focused on developing adaptation plans, in particular at local government level (Council of Australian Governments, 2012; Preston et al., 2010). Of the 560 local governments in Australia, approximately 150 have been involved in various federal government funded adaptation initiatives and state and territory initiatives (Webb and Beh, 2013). At least one third – and perhaps more – local governments have engaged in some form of adaptation risk or planning. These mostly include assessments and awareness-raising, with far fewer examples of local governments moving to significant adaptation responses and actions. Of those that have progressed further they have been identified as coastal local governments, or those that have done so as part of regional groupings and networks of councils. This is consistent with earlier findings (Gurran et al., 2011) that most local government adaptation initiatives were focused on the level of risk analysis and the development of strategic frameworks for adaptation. Less than a fifth of the local governments involved in a study by Gurran et al. (2011) had changed their planning controls, yet more than half of them were in the process of doing so, suggesting that a ‘continuum of climate change adaptation responses’ was emerging at the local level perhaps reflecting processes of reflexive learning.

3.1. The Federal policy context Climate change and the appropriate policy responses remain hotly contested issues in the Australian political environment. At the national level, there has been significant political debate around appropriate climate change mitigation responses, highlighted by the controversial decision by the Federal government in 2014 to repeal the national Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), introduced by the previous Labor government. The current government has also reviewed and weakened the renewable energy target (previously 20% by 2020) and replaced the polluter pays model of the CPRS with an Emissions Reduction Fund, designed to provide incentives to reduce emissions across sectors of the economy. In the lead up to the 2015 COP 21 meeting in Paris, Australia’s climate policy has been considered ‘one of the weakest and more ineffective in the developed world’ (Schlosberg, 2015). Current targets are to reduce emissions by 5% below 2000 levels by 2020; far short of the rest of the world. At the state level in Victoria, a similar political shift and rejection of climate change science can be observed over recent years with a conservative government replacing the words ‘climate change’ with ‘climate variability’ in policy documents and repealing a legislated emissions target. The recent state election (November 2014) returned the Labor government, who originally introduced the Victorian Climate Change (VCC) Act 2010 (Victorian Government, 2010), and who have a stated commitment to addressing both mitigation and adaptation. In 2015, the state government is reviewing the legislative and policy frameworks governing climate change in Victoria, including the VCC Act 2010 and the Victorian Climate Change Adaptation Plan (VCCAP; Victorian Government, 2013). While a commitment to climate mitigation waned significantly at both the national and state levels, there has been bi-partisan support for the need to progress climate change adaptation, reduce vulnerabilities and build resilience particularly at the local scale. This is perhaps a result of devastating extreme weather events over recent years – including the 2009 bushfires in Victoria and 2011 floods in Queensland – which highlighted the importance of planned adaptation initiatives. A National Climate Change Adaptation Framework, adopted in 2007 by all Australian governments (Council of Australian Governments, 2007), provides some high-level framing for the VCCAP; however, much of the focus and effort in adaptation planning has been at the local government scale. The VCCAP and the Council of Australian Government’s Select Council on Climate Change highlighted the critical role that local governments are playing ‘on the frontline’ in responding to climate change impacts (Council of Australian Governments, 2012). According to the Select Council, local governments must ensure that ‘particular local circumstances are adequately considered in the overall adaptation response and in involving the local community directly in efforts to facilitate effective change’ (Council of Australian Governments, 2012: 8). In the same document, the point is made that local governments are strongly positioned to inform state and Commonwealth governments about the on-the-ground needs of local and regional communities, to communicate directly with communities, and to respond appropriately and in a timely manner to local changes. These statements are a strong endorsement for developing context-specific approaches to climate change adaptation that are firmly grounded within an understanding of local needs and capacities, as well as to a better integration of adaptation policy and implementation across all levels of government. This latter concern for a more integrative form of governance was picked up as a key challenge for local governments in Victoria in making progress on adaptation (Municipal Association of Victoria, 2011), highlighting the tensions around multi-level governance and place-based adaptation. For local government in Victoria, adaptation has largely been driven by financial and reputational concerns and framed around ‘averting organisational risk’, or placed in the context of ‘avoiding disasters’ and building ‘community resilience’ (Fünfgeld and McEvoy, 2014). While it is broadly acknowledged that climate change impacts are unevenly distributed across different places and communities, requiring localised and context-specific adaptation responses (Bisaro et al., 2010; van den Berg and Coenen, 2012), there is ongoing debate about the capacity of local governments and other local actors to fund, develop and implement the types of co-ordinated responses required (Australian Government, 2007; Head, 2014). In the following, we review the types of adaptation planning responses at the local scale in Victoria, focusing particularly on the political and institutional dimensions of urban climate change adaptive capacity and identify some of the gaps and challenges. We then focus on the emergence and work of local government climate change alliances in Victoria and other Please cite this article in press as: Moloney, S., Fünfgeld, H. Emergent processes of adaptive capacity building: Local government climate change alliances and networks in Melbourne. Urban Climate (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2015.06.009

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Table 3 Climate change projections and associated risks and management strategies for Victoria. Source: Adapted from Victorian Government (2013). Climate change projections  More days over 35 degrees  Higher annual mean temperature  Reduced average rainfall and stream flows  Fewer and heavier rainfall days  Reduced snow cover  Sea-level rise and storm surges

Associated risks  Bushfires  Heatwaves  Floods  Drought  Sea level rise and coastal impacts

Placed-based risk management strategies⁄  New approaches to managing bushfire hazard  Land-use planning and flood risks  Improving certainty for coastal developments  National building codes

state and non-state actors as emergent forms of adaptive governance at the local scale that, as we show, are playing a crucial role in building adaptive capacity particularly across metropolitan areas. 4. Climate change adaptation governance in Victoria A number of recent reports have outlined climate change impacts and risks specific to the Victorian context (Climate Commission, 2011; Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability, 2012; Victorian Government, 2013). Five key risks have been associated with climate change projections for Victoria (Table 3): bushfires, heatwaves, floods, drought, and sea-level rise and coastal impacts with the current and projected future impacts influencing the types of place-based risk management strategies that need to be employed (Victorian Government, 2013). The Climate Change Act 2010 required the Victorian Government to prepare a state-wide climate change adaptation plan every four years (Victorian Government, 2010: s16). The first Victorian Climate Change Adaptation Plan (VCCAP), published in March 2013, set out how the state government will ‘manage risks and build climate resilience across essential public infrastructure and services’ (Victorian Government, 2013: 1). The VCC Act 2010 and VCCAP have to date formed the state-level policy framework guiding adaptation governance in Victoria. While the VCCAP states that ‘Victoria’s local governments have an important role to play in climate adaptation’ and that ‘partnerships between the Victorian Government and the local government sector are a critically important mechanism for adaptation planning across Victoria’ there is little detail around the actions needed to build local capacities or partnerships (Victorian Government, 2013: 38). The VCCAP specifically recognised the importance of local knowledge and experience in adaptation planning and outlined broadly shared responsibilities in allocating management of climate change risks among the three levels of government as well as the private sector. Within this framework the suggested national, state and local government roles are outlined, recognising that these will evolve and adapt over time (see Table 4). Whilst this might be characterised as Type I multi-level governance (Hooghe and Marks, 2003) where each formal tier of government is understood to have clearly defined and complementary roles, the plan offers little detail around the processes and actions needed to improve management and collaboration across different levels. The VCCAP does clearly identify the place and context specific nature of climate change impacts and recognises that local councils and their communities will be exposed in different ways to the impacts of climate change and that they will have varying capacities and resources to respond effectively to those impacts. It acknowledged that regional and local adaptation plans are best developed and implemented by those with local knowledge and risk management responsibilities and highlighted the need for partnerships and collaboration across Councils to progress planning processes (Victorian Government, 2013: 38). Despite some attempts to identify adaptation roles across multiple levels of government, there continues to be a significant lack of clarity. In 2014 a Climate Change Adaptation Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed (Victorian Government, 2014) which was developed in response to rounds of consultation highlighting the unclear division of responsibility for adaptive measures across key priority areas including sea-level rise; agricultural productivity and economic development; community engagement and empowerment and information provision; resilience to extreme weather events and vulnerable communities (Victorian Government, 2014: 4). The MoU did not define responsibilities across these issues but stated that ‘these matters will need to be considered within each priority area in the next phase of work’ (Victorian Government, 2014: 5). While not legally binding, the MoU defines a set of agreed principles underpinning the relationship between state and local governments, namely: mutual respect between state and local government; adaptation mainstreaming; giving special attention to socially vulnerable areas and groups; not accepting scientific uncertainty as a cause for delay; supporting adaptive management; embracing a future focus in decision-making; informed and integrated decision making, and community empowerment (Victorian Government, 2014). The MoU received 40 submissions raising a number of important issues needing further clarification including the need for guidance around legal liabilities for local government, responsibility for costs and more broadly how funding for adaptation measures will be determined. This process of clarifying roles continues under the new Labor government as it reviews current legislation and frameworks. 5. ‘Muddling through’: Gaps and challenges for local climate change adaptation governance in Victoria ‘. . .the lack of formalized practice for adaptation planning and the inconsistent use of existing adaptation guidance means that many institutions are largely ‘muddling through’ the planning process.’ [Preston et al., 2010: 427]

Please cite this article in press as: Moloney, S., Fünfgeld, H. Emergent processes of adaptive capacity building: Local government climate change alliances and networks in Melbourne. Urban Climate (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2015.06.009

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Table 4 Adaptation roles and responsibilities across three tiers of government. Source: Victorian Government (2013), p. 6. National priorities  Providing national science and information  Managing risks to Commonwealth assets and programs  Providing guidance on national adaptation reform  Maintaining a strong, flexible economy and well-targeted social safety net

State priorities/strategies  Managing risks to public assets and services managed by the Victorian Government  Managing risks to Victoria’s natural assets and natural resource-based industries  Building disaster resilience and integrated emergency management  Improving access to research and information for decision-making  Supporting private sector adaptation  Partnering with local government and communities

Local priorities/strategies  Managing risks and impacts to public assets owned and managed by local government and to local government service delivery  Supporting measures to build adaptive capacity and climate resilience in local communities  Collaborating across councils  Working in partnership  Implementing relevant legislation to promote adaptation  Contributing appropriate resources

In reflecting on progress around adaptation planning and governance, recent research highlights an ongoing lack of systematic and rigorous adaptation planning in Australia, and Victoria is no exception (Gurran et al., 2011; Preston et al., 2010; Webb and Beh, 2013). The need to improve problem framing was identified (Fünfgeld and McEvoy, 2014), along with a requirement to better integrate local adaptation into social, urban and regional planning, and into emergency management and sustainable development efforts (Municipal Association of Victoria, 2011). In the Victorian context, a 2011 review of local government climate change adaptation found that the majority (three quarters) of Victoria’s 79 councils had undertaken some form of adaptation planning (Municipal Association of Victoria, 2011). However, over two thirds of those had focused on single issues such as rising sea-levels, heatwaves or water use. At the time of the study in 2011, over one quarter of Victorian local governments had not undertaken any adaptation planning initiatives at all. Lack of ongoing and sufficient funding is a key barrier for expanding climate change adaptation planning and decision-making to a wider group of local governments. Most local governments do not have the funds for projects and to provide for dedicated staff, who could carry out assessments, research and engage with all areas of the organisation and other relevant stakeholders (Municipal Association of Victoria, 2011). Short term grants from state government, while important, are difficult to get and not sufficient to ensure ongoing progress in adaptation planning and implementation (Municipal Association of Victoria, 2011). Evidence from the past three years seems to confirm this trend that an increasing number of local governments in Victoria are moving from risk analysis to identifying adaptation options, only gradually beginning to implement these. In addition, a large gap remains between a small number of leading municipal governments, mostly located in metropolitan areas, and many, typically rural and less well-resourced local governments that struggle to engage or make progress with adaptation. Inconsistencies across climate change policy and law at different levels of government are considered key impediments to effective adaptation planning and implementation, including making changes to the planning system that can be applied across all local governments (Gurran et al., 2011; Municipal Association of Victoria, 2011; Pillora, 2010).

6. Local government climate change alliances: The role of informal networks in adaptive capacity building We now focus on the emergence and role of Climate Change Alliances (CCAs) as local and regional scale networks contributing to adaptive capacity building in Victoria, arguing that they have, in many instances, filled a policy gap that has opened up in climate change adaptation between state and local government level. While other states in Australia include a number of partnerships and local government associations, Victoria is unique in having what could be considered an ‘informal’ tier of regional governance with 72 of Victoria’s 79 local governments involved as voluntary members in regional climate change alliances or partnerships. The following draws on document analysis and interview data with the Chief Executives (and one project officer) of nine of the ten CCAs. The interviews were semi-structured and in-depth and were carried out in October 2014. The purpose of the interviews was to identify characteristics of Type II multi-level governance, associated processes of social learning, and the extent to which CCAs are advancing processes of structural change in their particular local and regional contexts (see Table 2). In this paper we focus specifically on the four ‘urban’ alliances covering all but six of metropolitan Melboure’s local governments. These include the Western Alliance for Greenhouse Action (WAGA), Northern Alliance for Greenhouse Action (NAGA), Eastern Greenhouse Alliance (EAGA) and South Eastern Councils Climate Change Alliance (SECCCA) (see Fig. 1 and Table 5). Of the ten alliances in Victoria, the metropolitan alliances have tended to be more adequately resourced and perhaps, because of proximity (not covering such large geographical areas) and a longer period of operation in most cases, have had more success in building momentum amongst member councils in responding to climate change. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to provide a comparison of the rural and urban alliances, suffice to say, there is more work to be done to explore the challenges of network governance in rural areas. Please cite this article in press as: Moloney, S., Fünfgeld, H. Emergent processes of adaptive capacity building: Local government climate change alliances and networks in Melbourne. Urban Climate (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2015.06.009

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Fig. 1. Melbourne metropolitan climate change alliances: WAGA⁄, NAGA, EAGA and SECCCA. (⁄Note: WAGA also includes the City of Greater Geelong and Moorobool Shire not shown on map.)

6.1. Internal governance of climate change alliances Each local government contributes an annual membership fee in the order of AU$15,000 which funds the salary of executive officers and some operational expenses. While each CCA has a different governance structure, all include an Executive Officer and most have an Executive Committee (constituted by local government directors and sometime elected councillors) and an Operational Committee (often made up of sustainability officers). SECCCA is unique in that it chose to become an ‘incorporated association’, affording it a degree of independence from its member local governments. While SECCCA primarily serves its member councils, as an incorporated association it has the capacity to apply for grants and act as a consultancy without necessarily needing the approval of its member councils. ‘‘What it means is, we can enter into contracts on our own basis. So we don’t have to, if you’ve got eight councils, you can only move as fast as your slowest one of them. And with eight councils, that’s, there’s one likely to be quite slow and there are. So we can operate in our own right’’ [SECCCA EO, Oct 2014] Each alliance has a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with their member councils, which is reviewed every three to five years. This means that annual contributions and membership can be ’fluid’, with both up for discussion during periods of renewal. This means that alliances must continually prove their ‘value-add’ in terms of services and capacity building provided to member councils to ensure ongoing voluntary membership fees are maintained.

Table 5 Melbourne metropolitan climate change alliances. Metropolitan alliances

Year established

Current members

Western Alliance for Greenhouse Action (WAGA) Northern Alliance for Greenhouse Action (NAGA) Eastern Alliance Greenhouse Action (EAGA) South East Councils Climate Change Alliance (SECCCA)

2006 2002 (formally 2006) 2008 (2012 formally) 2004

8 9 6 8

local local local local

governments governments; Moreland Energy Foundation governments governments

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‘‘. . ..every time we did our annual strategic planning session, we have to answer - why does SECCCA need to exist for another year? As a tough a question that is, it’s a very good question. We don’t have a God given right to exist, we only exist so long as we’re doing something of worth to them, and if we can’t answer that question in the affirmative, see you later’’ [SECCCA EO, Oct 2014] 6.2. From informal to strategic partnerships: The emerging role of climate change alliances The alliances originally formed as informal ‘information sharing’ networks amongst local government sustainability officers. These networks were facilitated more formally through a 2002 ‘Regional Partnerships Program’ as part of the then Labor state governments Victorian Greenhouse Strategy. The need to improve capacity at the local scale was recognised through building networks and partnerships. The program provided the salary for each alliance to fund an executive officer focusing their work around council mitigation initiatives. In the mid to late 2000s the priorities were street lighting and energy efficiency programs focusing on council owned buildings. The Regional Partnerships Program was reviewed in 2006 and was deemed a success in achieving its goals. The importance of partnerships in facilitating capacity building and progressing mitigation actions across councils was noted. Despite its success, the state government ceased its annual contributions to alliances in 2008. By the late 2000s each alliance had successfully proved their value to member councils to secure their continued support. While originally the alliances were set up to ‘do projects’ (personal communication, SECCCA executive officer), they have over time adapted and taken on more directive or strategic roles, developing regional risk assessments, greenhouse strategies and adaptation plans largely facilitated through gaining federal and state government grants. This capacity to attract external funding (in SECCCA’s case a total of AU$9 million since 2004 as compared to AU$1 million membership fees over the same time period) has been important in proving their value to member local governments: ‘‘So councils have to do stuff anyway. Right. Now whether they do it just themselves or whether they do it regionally is a luxury position they’re in because there is a regional capacity to do that, otherwise they’ll just be doing it themselves. They reckon they can get a better deal if they do it regionally, but councils don’t want to spend money outside their own municipal boundaries. The reason why we’ve been able to get them to commit to active participation in an alliance is we say: ‘We will bring in some external money’’’. [SECCCA Executive Officer, Oct 2014] A key function of climate change alliances is the ability to leverage funds from other higher tiers of government to facilitate cross municipal networking and capacity building. While this capacity building role continues to be central to their work, they are increasingly seeking funding opportunities to strengthen their strategic role through the development of long term regional plans: ‘‘Well as I said, it started off as really a collection of sustainability officers getting together to see what collaborative projects were possible, but also just to share information, and to do some capacity building amongst themselves. And WAGA still definitely has that role, and that is still a very important role. But we have, as I said, we’ve just developed a regional greenhouse strategy which addresses mitigation. We also have a regional adaptation strategy. So we’re actually becoming a lot more strategic.’’ [WAGA Executive Officer, Oct 2014] This strategic role suggests that alliances are playing a crucial role in shaping not only regional governance for climate change but in the process negotiating and aligning each council’s strategic goals across a regional scale. Each alliance includes a diverse membership from inner city councils to peri-urban and in some cases rural shires on the outer fringe of Melbourne each with different goals, resources and capacities. In negotiating the geographical and political differences across regions, alliances are playing a key role in facilitating peer-to-peer learning and collaboration and fostering a ‘healthy’ competition amongst member councils. In response to a question put to the Executive Officers about how they would describe the relationship between councils within an alliance, the NAGA EO responded: ‘‘It’s a bit of ‘coopertition’ - I think that’s probably a good word. It’s well used amongst alliances. Cooperation and competition. . ..So they do collaborate and work together on projects. There is a high degree of trust and a well established relationship amongst councils’’ [NAGA EO Oct 2014] In changing the frame of reference for local governments beyond their individual boundaries to a regional collaboration, the alliances are opening up opportunities to reframe local problems as regional and in the process contribute to processes of structural change. For example, WAGA received state funding to develop a reporting tool to monitor and evaluate climate

Please cite this article in press as: Moloney, S., Fünfgeld, H. Emergent processes of adaptive capacity building: Local government climate change alliances and networks in Melbourne. Urban Climate (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2015.06.009

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adaptation across local governments. Local governments from outside the WAGA region are participating in this project voluntarily and if successful the tool could be implemented state wide creating a system of monitoring and review for climate adaptation. This type of initiative illustrates the role played by alliances in the multi-level governance landscape in Victoria, in facilitating local capacity to address a systemic gap in planning, monitoring and review for climate change, which is not adequately provided at the state level. While alliances were originally charged with implementing mitigation actions across their member councils, over recent years climate adaptation has become a key issue for councils. This shift in focus towards adaptation and the need to improve local capacities is in part a reflection of the uncertain and hostile political context supporting mitigation efforts at both the Federal and State levels. The alliances have however, managed to progress both the mitigation and adaptation agendas across their regions largely as a result of continued concern for both at the local scale. As commented by the WAGA EO: ‘‘. . ...we started to implement the adaptation strategy, but we’re going to be implementing Low Carbon West which is our regional greenhouse strategy. So the purpose of that strategy of Low Carbon West which is our most important piece of work was to actually take, to change the role, to take it out of being sort of, ‘‘Oh well, what do we do now? What do we do next?’’ into, ‘‘Well, what actually needs to be done to really make a stepped change to reduce emissions across this region?’’ [WAGA EO, Oct 2014] Alongside the emerging strategic and integrative role of regional alliances is their important role as advocates and lobbyists for structural changes to more effectively respond to climate change. EOs work individually and collective across alliances to prepare submissions to government and are to some extent given the space to speak on behalf of their members. The regional ‘voice’ was considered to carry more weight and strengthen the legitimacy of local concerns. As stated by the project officer from NAGA: ‘‘NAGA could say things that sometimes they couldn’t say and that it had a respected voice’’ [NAGA project officer Oct 2014] The skills and capacities of alliances are increasingly being recognised at state and federal levels with alliance staff invited to present at workshops and provide formal advice on program and policy development at both levels of government (personal communication SECCCA EO). According to Pahl-Wostl (2009) informal networks need to have some relationship with, or capacity to influence, formal governance processes while at the same time maintaining some distance in order to allow for experimentation and innovation. Alliances through their advocacy work not only seek to influence structural processes but also enlist actors and agents into their strategic work. ‘‘Regional scale urgency, you know that sense, let’s scale things up, let’s work out what works and beef it up and get it to happen everywhere, as much as we can. Advocacy I’ve mentioned and capacity building which is again the role of the alliance, the network or bringing the new players and the sharing of knowledge and capability’’ [NAGA project officer, Oct 2014] The EO for WAGA highlighted a tension between their dual roles as ‘strategists’ and ‘activists’ but maintains that both are necessary and important and striking a balance is an ongoing process. The process of negotiating this balance involves a capacity for flexibility and adaptability on the part of the alliance staff and in particular the EO who have some capacity to shape strategic priorities. In a changing political context both locally and at the state and federal level, alliances need to be ready to respond to funding opportunities and issues as they emerge. Across each interview with metropolitan alliances the executive officers used words like ‘responsive’, ‘opportunistic’, ‘strategic’, ‘nimble’ and ‘agile’ to describe themselves as organisations. While this space to experiment was considered critical to their success, the need to ‘follow the money’ (i.e. state and federal grants and other funding opportunities) raises issues around their ability to maintain and build long-term capacities to achieve their goals. Despite this, most alliances agreed that annual funding from state governments would likely bring obligations that could constrain their ability to be ‘nimble’ and innovative. The challenge however is that for alliances to maintain their capacity to innovate and progress strategic goals, they require adequate ongoing funding which currently is limited to local memberships and ad-hoc project grants. The need for ‘cross-border’ institutional arrangements to address complex climate change issues (Steele et al., 2013) was reaffirmed across all interviews. Member local governments continue to fund alliances because they value and benefit from regional ‘cross-border’ collaboration and recognise that alliances are carrying out strategic work that is beyond the capacity of individual local governments. This highlights the importance of regional governance arrangements in addressing local government deficiencies in terms of resourcing and capacity. While they do not occupy a ‘formal’ role in the three tier multi-level hierarchy, CCAs are we argue, emerging as critical actors in building adaptive capacities across local governments. There is growing evidence through the number of long term plans, actions and partnerships and active processes of ‘peer-to-peer’ learning, that the metropolitan alliances are significant in building both local and regional scale adaptive capacity which has the potential to help reconfigure and adapt institutional architecture necessary to respond more effectively to climate change. Please cite this article in press as: Moloney, S., Fünfgeld, H. Emergent processes of adaptive capacity building: Local government climate change alliances and networks in Melbourne. Urban Climate (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2015.06.009

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Given, the relatively weak role of local governments in Australia, both financially and politically, there is an obvious disconnect between the plans and frameworks guiding multi-level adaptation policy which emphasise the importance of local responses and the capacities of local governments and local actors to deliver. The traditionally weak institutional architecture at the local government scale creates a significant challenge in adaptive governance for climate adaptation and mitigation. The emergence and evolving role of regional alliances is seeking to change that however and we contend is reflective of processes of ‘transition’ in institutional architecture in Victoria. As described by Pelling (2011) these processes involve ‘adaptive changes without challenging overarching regime norm and principles’. Whether the work of alliances may contribute to more radical changes in governance regimes remains to be seen but we can say that they are playing a critical role in reconfiguring the relationship between local governments both horizontally (across regions) and vertically (between local, state and federal levels) and are important actors in shaping and reframing climate change responses in Victoria within a very dynamic and challenging political context. A recent state election has altered the political landscape however, which may lead to a stronger commitment from the formal spheres of government to address the deficiencies in adaptive capacity building at the state and local scales. 7. Conclusion The Victorian example demonstrates that multi-level forms of governance remain largely aspirational and highly evolutionary in Australia. In recent years with both the state and federal governments absolving themselves of responsibility to systematically address climate change mitigation and (to a lesser extent) adaptation, local level governments have developed and demonstrated their own capacity to adapt and respond. The necessity to build adaptive capacity at the local scale has led to alternative forms of networked and informal governance, in particular the CCAs, which now involve most municipalities in Victoria. In the metropolitan context in Melbourne in particular, the rapidly increasing momentum of networked forms of governance for adaptation, as reflected in the ongoing work and development of CCAs, is encouraging. However, questions remain regarding the jurisdictional, regulatory and political authority and decision-making capacity vested in these cross-border and multi-level institutional arrangements. This paper has offered insights into their emergence as forms of adaptive governance, to help better understand the role of CCAs through formal and informal processes, networks and reflexive learning and the extent to which we can improve our understanding of how adaptation measures may shift towards more transformational outcomes (Pelling, 2011). In reviewing the context for adaptation planning in Victoria, we outlined the range of formal and informal institutions and processes at work operating across three tiers of government. While at all three levels a range of formal frameworks and plans have been developed focusing around impacts, identifying risks and sets of actions, there are also a set of challenges, gaps and obduracies constraining effective implementation. While acknowledging the relatively short policy time frames, there remain significant reasons for slow progress in advancing towards more adaptive and integrated governance regimes in Australia. Weak political leadership at both the national and state levels, accompanied by limited resources and funding means that local governments are left to muddle through with minimal guidance around decision making. Government responses are predominately framed around ‘averting organisational risk’, which focuses adaptation planning processes on those climate change impacts that pose the most severe and/or most likely financial or economic risk to an organisation (Fünfgeld and McEvoy, 2014). CCAs provide somewhat of a counterpoint to this kind of narrowing of perspective and conservatism in approach and methodology. In the past few years, CCAs have facilitated and been involved in important institutional interactions emerging across local government boundaries. These alliances are making adaptive changes in institutional architecture, opening up space for horizontal and vertical interactions across the formal three tier hierarchy of government. They are creating opportunities for reflexive learning between member local governments and partners, across regions and government scales through knowledge exchange, learning and advocacy. These alliances, we contend, are characteristically adaptive and integrative forms of governance (Type II) reconfiguring the institutional landscape at the local scale and over time offer the potential to shape new governance regimes at the state level. Further research is required to better understand the institutional processes by which alternative forms of governance such as alliances can not only drive innovation on a project-by-project or experimental basis but how they can be empowered and supported in enabling transformation. Acknowledgments This article is based on a discussion paper prepared for the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research (VCCCAR), Melbourne, Australia. 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Please cite this article in press as: Moloney, S., Fünfgeld, H. Emergent processes of adaptive capacity building: Local government climate change alliances and networks in Melbourne. Urban Climate (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2015.06.009