Monash Institute of Transport Studies, Department of Civil Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Australia.
J Environ Manage. 2024 Oct;369:122419. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2024.122419. Epub 2024 Sep 5.
Climate change is an undeniable reality, prompting governments worldwide to devise strategies to avoid or reduce its adverse impacts. Ensuring the effectiveness of these strategies is crucial; they must be both comprehensive and coherent to minimize trade-offs. While substantial research has focused on assessing climate policy coherence within a single level of government (horizontal coherence), there is a relative scarcity of studies examining coherence between different levels of government (vertical coherence). This study adapts an evaluation framework from the literature and transforms it into two distinct assessment frameworks: one for evaluating the comprehensiveness and the other for assessing the vertical coherence of Climate Change Action Plans (CCAPs) from three levels of government (local, state, and national) in Australia. Adaptation and mitigation plans were assessed separately for five local government areas in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth, and their respective states: New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia. National government plans received higher average comprehensive scores (83%) than state (75%) and local (71%) CCAPs. High coherence was observed between national and state levels, with significant variations between state and local levels. Sydney-New South Wales exhibited the highest coherence (90%), while Perth-Western Australia scored the lowest (35%). Key issues identified include a lack of exclusive climate change funding body and an inadequate assessment of vulnerability profiles in various plans. These findings provide insights for designing more comprehensive and integrated policy actions across multiple government levels. The refined frameworks can be applied to test the comprehensiveness and coherence of CCAPs in other contexts at various scales.
气候变化是一个不可否认的现实，促使全球各国政府制定战略以避免或减少其负面影响。确保这些战略的有效性至关重要；它们必须全面且一致，以最小化权衡。虽然大量研究集中在评估单个政府级别（水平一致性）内的气候政策一致性，但相对缺乏研究考察不同政府级别之间的一致性（垂直一致性）。本研究从文献中采用了一个评估框架，并将其转化为两个不同的评估框架：一个用于评估全面性，另一个用于评估澳大利亚三个政府级别（地方、州和国家）的气候变化行动计划（CCAP）的垂直一致性。悉尼、墨尔本、布里斯班、阿德莱德和珀斯五个地方政府区域及其各自的州（新南威尔士州、维多利亚州、昆士兰州、南澳大利亚州和西澳大利亚州）的适应和缓解计划分别进行了评估。国家政府计划的综合得分（83%）高于州（75%）和地方（71%）CCAP。国家和州之间观察到高度一致性，州和地方之间存在显著差异。悉尼-新南威尔士州表现出最高的一致性（90%），而珀斯-西澳大利亚州得分最低（35%）。确定的关键问题包括缺乏专门的气候变化资金机构以及在各种计划中对脆弱性概况的评估不足。这些发现为在多个政府级别设计更全面和综合的政策行动提供了参考。经过改进的框架可用于在其他背景和不同规模下测试 CCAP 的全面性和一致性。
