Integrating the sustainable development goals into climate planning in British and Japanese cities

We are requesting the funding to develop social science research collaboration between De Montfort University (UK) and the Institute for Global Energy Strategies (Japan). We are proposing a series of networking and knowledge exchange activities on the timely theme of making climate planning more sustainable in cities in United Kingdom and Japan. The world is urbanising rapidly and more than 50% of the global population now lives in cities around the world. As the economic output is concentrated in cities, their contribution to climate change is significant and growing rapidly. While many cities have climate action plans and city administrations are seemingly well-positioned to align their climate change plans with other sustainable development concerns, little is known about the sustainability of city climate plans. Relatively little is known about the steps cities are taking to make climate plan sustainable. In fact, whether and to what extent cities are making links between their climate and sustainability objectives remains an open question.This proposal aims to fill this knowledge gap through this networking and knowledge exchange activity. This would help us in identifying and developing a larger action-oriented, multidisciplinary research programme on the integration between climate planning and the SDGs in cities.

We are proposing the work in a number of distinct phases. In the networking phase, we will develop a list of cities that have already produced climate change plan. In the scoping phase, we aim to develop screening criteria to help identify the links and gaps between that climate plan and the SDGs. The screening criteria will be used to create a shortlist of cities in both countries to determine the status of integration of Sustainable Development Goals in climate action plans, identify the reasons for weak alignment and find ways of improving the linkage. This scoping exercise would consist of interviews and surveys with a manageable number of cities in both Japan and the United Kingdom.

In the final phase, the research teams in both countries would develop a set of knowledge products and learning materials that would summarise the preliminary results of the networking and then scoping phase. The main outputs would consist of an introductory paper that outlines the objectives, key questions, scope, methods, and relevant literature on the themes covered in the project. This would then be complemented by two additional papers-one each for Japan and the United Kingdom-that lays out the main results for both of those countries. An additional paper would focus on some of the comparative insights from looking across the results of cities in the two countries.

We plan to develop collaboration through two-way researcher exchanges, joint workshops, scoping studies in UK and Japanese cities, developing an online platform to share ideas and solicit inputs into a full research proposal around the integration of climate and SDG planning in the UK and Japan. Both the teams are well placed to undertake the work given their respective strengths in energy systems (for DMU) and climate policy (IGES) and their existing networks with the local city administrations as well as other stakeholders. The work is planned for 18 months and both the teams are committing significant financial resources in addition to the requested fund.

The beneficiaries of the proposed research collaboration would include the following:
a) DMU and IGES are the primary beneficiaries of the proposal. They will develop a collaborative research agenda and will develop a proposal for funding.

b) At the national level, our research collaboration and networking activities would influence the sustainability thinking and open-up opportunities for a joined-up thinking in aligning climate action plans and SDGs. Through our contacts at the national/ provincial policy-making bodies (e.g. city administration) and our interactions with them through targeted engagements, we aim to influence the decision-making processes. Evidence from our case studies would provide support to our cause.

c) We also anticipate considerable impacts originating from the potential of applying our screening criteria and evaluation frameworks to the local decision-making processes. The city administrations will develop better appreciation of linkages between climate action plans and SDGs and our thought process and research findings could be adopted to produce sustainability benefits locally and globally.

d) In addition, academic impacts will also arise through publication and dissemination of the research and through development of research capacity at each collaborating centre.