Climate change knowledge acquisition in Norway's municipalities Open Access

During the 1990s a shift in focus from government to governance occurred in Norway. One strand within the literature associated with this shift has focused on the different layers of administrative units, and another has focused on networks between different actors (Hooghe and Marks, 2003). The second of these strands acknowledges that “governing” means interaction between a wide range of institutions and actors within and outside traditional government; a declining role of the state in governing; and more extensive coordination through networks and partnerships (Rhodes, 1997). Governance has also acquired a central role in relation to “climate change” policies through mitigation and adaptation, in order to avoid and cope with, e.g. extreme weather events such as droughts and floods, sea‐level rise and storm surges, and food and water shortage (IPCC, 2007). Within the framework of climate change governance, some argue that a top‐down legal architecture is decisive (Hare et al., 2010), whereas others argue for bottom‐up approach (Rayner, 2010).

Gupta et al. (2007, p. 144), on the other hand, conclude that:

This conclusion resembles the outcome of the discussion on the slogan “think globally, act locally”, commonly attributed to David Brower and his founding of the Friends of Earth movement in 1969 (Reed, 2000), that appeared in the beginning of the 1970s and was adopted by environmental movements. The slogan signalled a belief that local actors, by applying the strategy of grassroots organisations (often also with a left flavour) and taking into consideration the conditions of the whole earth, could bring the world onto a sound environmental course. However, O'Connor (1993, p. 2) called for “greens (and reds) [to] not only ‘think globally, act locally’, but also ‘think locally, act globally, and, ultimately’, ‘think and act both globally and locally’”.

Nevertheless, Betsill and Bulkeley (2007, p. 450) stress that “Despite these attempts to ‘join up’ climate change governance across levels of social organisation, climate policy often remains fragmented at the local scale”. Notwithstanding the popularity of multi‐level governance, establishing well‐functioning multi‐level practices might be easier said than done. One of the factors making it difficult is that climate change policies are cutting across traditional administrative structures. Another factor is linked to knowledge and the process of learning, and especially popularising scientific knowledge and introducing the correct technical and organisational measures. In addition, as underlined by Bulkeley and Betsill (2003, p. 185):

In a study from Sweden, Granberg and Elander (2007, p. 545) claim that “networking within and across municipal borders has become commonplace in local and regional climate governance [and] networks are forums for exchanging experience and mutual learning.” Similar findings are reported in Young (2007). On the other hand, networking at the local level is at an early stage of development in the USA, although it is now experiencing an increase (Brody et al., 2010; Rice, 2010) that demonstrates the role played by a federal administration that is sceptical towards the climate change message. Furthermore, a case study by Gustavsson et al. (2009) indicates that industrial structure matters and findings by von Borgestede and Lundqvist (2006) indicate that occupation plays a role.

To investigate similar topics in the case of Norway, the focus in this article is on the information and knowledge network of municipal mayors and municipal officers responsible for environmental issues associated with climate change and policy measures targeting mitigation and adaptation. On the basis of questions addressing:

• the information sources that mayors are relying on regarding mitigation policies and adaptation policies and their importance;

• the usefulness of actors the environmental officers are receiving information from in relation to mitigation actions and adaptation actions; and

• which non‐governmental actors are making contact with environmental officers about mitigation and adaptation, this article documents the importance of the information network and information sources horizontally and vertically from the perspectives of municipalities, inside the public sector and beyond the public sector.

The objective of this study is to address whether differences in information sources and interaction with other actors (dependent variables) are linked to certain personal and/or spatial characteristics (independent variables) such as gender, education, work experience and positions, the political dimension, and centre‐periphery relations. These are all variables potentially influencing the structure of information networks and governance through cultural, social, economic and symbolic capital in the field of politics (Bourdieu, 2005).

The analysis is conducted by using data from a 2007 electronic survey comprising all 431 municipalities^[1] in Norway, first distributed in February 2007 and followed by two reminders, the last being circulated in April 2007. The response rate among mayors was 46 per cent (196 municipalities) and among the environmental officers 51 per cent (221 municipalities). Tests of representativeness revealed no significant bias regarding population figures, centrality of the municipalities, or political parties, and although there are some differences in response rates, the data basis is considered reliable (Berglund and Nergaard, 2008). The data were analysed using SPSS 15.0 for Windows. The questionnaire for environmental officers covered different environmental issues which might not have been handled by one person, and due to the fact that many municipalities do not have a designated environmental officer, in some cases several persons might have contributed to filling in the questionnaire. Nevertheless, in this article the term “environmental officer” is used to denote these people.

The analysis presented below is based on explorative statistics (frequencies, means and correlations) establishing an overall pattern, and next multivariate regression analysis for elucidating independent variables important for the variance of the dependent variables. The dependent variables for mayors are questions asking which organisations are more important or less important as sources of information about mitigation and adaptation. Similarly, the environmental officers are asked about how often they are in contact with different actors for mitigation and adaptation tasks, respectively, and how satisfied they are with these actors. In addition, the number of requests received from different non‐governmental organisations is included. These questions allow for an analysis of horizontal and vertical contact patterns within the governmental bureaucracy, as well as contact patterns outside of governmental channels – and not only the magnitude of these contacts but also their importance for different categories of mayors and environmental officers.

Turning to the independent variables, these differ somewhat between mayors and environmental officers. For mayors, individual characteristics such as age, gender, educational level, educational discipline and party affiliation, as well as the regional characteristics of the municipality as a centre‐periphery classification and region classification, are considered. For environmental officers, individual characteristics including gender, educational level, educational discipline and years of experience as an environmental officer, plus municipal characteristics such as full time – part time environmental officer position, political composition of the local council, centre‐periphery classification, and region classification, are used. Tables I and II for further details.

The dependent variables are partly of an ordinal type with five levels, partly scaled intervals with five levels, and partly scaled numerical. The scaled interval questions providing options such as once a month, one to two times each quarter, once per half year, less often, and never, are similar in structure to the ordinal questions. It is only the question about the number of requests by different non‐governmental organisations that is purely scaled. Consequently, categorical regression analysis is the preferred regression model.

The independent variables are generally categorical, except for storms and floods that are reported in terms of total monetary expenses, but these variables are categorised through a scale comprising five levels. The other independent variables are either defined as scaled numerical or nominal. The nominal variables do not provide any ordering of the values, but the analysis applies simple correlations to indicate the order of the values by listing them in brackets following the variable being analysed.

The independent variable of full time – part time environmental officer position could also be a relevant variable for mayors. However, introducing this variable in the analysis of mayors reduced the number of active cases to about 50 and to just a few for several of the value classes. Some might argue that previous experiences with extreme weather events should be included in the analysis due to the conclusions by for example Zahran et al. (2008) and Amundsen et al. (2010). These studies in different ways claim that previous experiences with floods and storms are linked with later actions against similar events. Admittedly, it is possible to claim that experiences from extreme events might influence which actors mayors and environmental officers are seeking information from, at least for adaptation tasks. However, tests with variables for storms and floods revealed a general lack of statistical significance. In short, there is both a weak theoretical basis and weak statistical relationship for this variable and it was not included in the analysis.

The variables of political affiliation and political composition of local council differ in the sense that the first classifies the mayors according the party they represent, whereas the second classifies municipalities according to which parties are the most relevant for the municipal administration. For party affiliation the analysis uses three categories: the labour party (DNA), which is left‐of‐centre by Norwegian standards; the centre party (SP), which is centrist by Norwegian standards; and the conservative party (H), which is right‐of‐centre by Norwegian standards. These were the parties with a sufficient number of mayors. The local council variable was constructed by first categorising the national parties into three categories: the left consisting of the red alliance (Marxists), left party (socialists) and the labour party (social‐democrats); the centre consisting of the centre party, the liberals and the christian party; and the right consisting of the conservative party and the progressive party (right‐wing populists). This categorisation classifies parties that may share little common ground into the same category, at least on the rhetorical level, and it is a traditional approach that avoids establishment of a green dimension. Nevertheless, it was chosen because municipalities were categorised according to the constellation having majority, and for instance identifying a truly green alliance that would hold the majority in many municipalities was not possible.

The educational discipline has been shown to be important regarding mayors' opinions on climate change (Orderud and Kelman, 2011) and the same categories are used for the mayors in this study. However, most environmental officers belong to the environmental discipline category. The other categories comprise relatively few cases, but by merging humanities/social science with economics, a category of “social science” is introduced, whilst maintaining the technical discipline category.

Starting with responses from the mayors, Table III shows that, based on mean scores, research institutes and research papers are the most important source of information for mitigation actions as well as adaptation actions, and in addition the variance of these two variables are the lowest of those tested. The second and third positions for both mitigation and adaptation are occupied by the county governor's environmental department and the environmental officer in each municipality, respectively, but in both these cases the relative variance is medium to high. The difference between the third highest and fourth highest mean is relatively large for both mitigation and adaptation, and if the same interval is subtracted from the fourth position, we find almost all the remaining sources.

Except for the environmental officer, other information sources within the municipality are not amongst the most important sources used by mayors, especially for mitigation. On the other hand, the internal sources are somewhat more important for adaptation, which is a reasonable finding because adaptation is linked to the expertise of the municipal staff running municipal services such as drinking water provision and waste water handling. Higher level public agencies are generally important, along with the county governor's environmental department and the association of local and regional authorities (position four for both mitigation and adaptation). Private sector actors are characterised by diversity, with the research sector in the top and, surprisingly, consultancy firms in the bottom. Industrial and labour organisations, local environmental organisations, and businesses, are also to be found in the bottom category, whereas mass media and seminars (which might be organised by public or private actors) are in the middle category. Generally, we can conclude that mayors trust science, and beyond that the private actors are to a large extent either considered to be mere interest organisations or without a scientific basis – mere consultancy.

The picture is more chaotic when it comes to the results of the categorical regression analysis, with differences between mitigation and adaptation with respect to statistical significance, signs, size and consistency across sources. Notwithstanding the chaos, the discipline of education is important for 11 of the 13 listed sources, and party affiliation is important for eight, but this might be due to both variables being classified as nominal with four and three values, respectively. Table IV shows the results for six of the sources, and for these we can notice:

• the intra‐municipal arena (municipal departments and environmental officer): increasing centrality and political affiliation along the left‐right axis;

• the upward vertical channel (county governor's environmental department and association of local and regional authorities): increasing age and party affiliation along the left‐right axis and partly the green‐blue axis; and

• research and consultancy: gender, with females for research and males for consultancy; centrality, with central municipalities for research and peripheral for consultancy; educational discipline with humanities and environment for research and economics and technical for consultancy; and for consultancy, decreasing age and Northern Norway.

For environmental officers, the information sources comprise state agencies at the national, regional and local levels; municipal agencies at the state, regional and local level; and lastly private actors, as researchers, consultants, and sub‐suppliers. As is evident from Table V, the information source pattern does not differ systematically between these three categories, but generally reveals more interactions for mitigation than adaptation, and the ranking of frequency is fairly similar for mitigation and adaptation. The county governor, other primary municipalities, and the county municipality, are most frequently contacted sources, proving both vertical and horizontal links to be important. Consultancy follows next, and also research is found in the middle group, demonstrating that private information links are also important. The ministerial level is at the bottom, as would be expected. The actors most frequently approached are generally those with the highest mean score for satisfaction, but we should notice that the variance is relatively high for consultancy and research in this respect.

The categorical regression analysis reveals that gender, environmental work experience, and centrality sporadically yield significant regression coefficients. Table VI, presenting significant regression coefficients for mitigation and adaptation for some selected actors, reveals some patterns regarding the variance:

• increasing educational level is linked to increasing interaction with public actors, such as directorates, county municipality, and other primary municipalities, but not so with research institutes and consultancy companies;

• increasing work time as environmental officer is linked to increasing interaction with both other governmental actors and other (private) actors;

• neither educational level nor environmental officer work time are linked to the frequency of contacts with the county governor's environmental department, indicating that this agency is a fairly common source of information; and

• political composition is generally found to be a significant factor for information about mitigation and adaptation gathered from governmental sources, but not from other (private) sources, and lacks any clear order along the left‐right axis.

Turning to satisfaction with the different sources of information, Table VII shows:

• increasing educational level is generally linked to the increasing interaction with governmental actors, but not with research and consultancy; and

• increasing work time of the environmental officer, on the other hand, is linked to all three non‐governmental actors, but not systematically to governmental actors.

Table VIII presents frequencies for non‐governmental actors contacting the environmental officer during the year preceding that of the survey. The mean scores are higher for mitigation than for adaptation, but for both mitigation and adaptation, the same six actors show the highest score: individuals, environmental organisations, local media, private companies, political parties, and community organisations. However, the variance is relatively high for these actors. A simple correlation test reveals that, except for the category of individuals, the scores are positively correlated (at the 0.01 level) with the population of the municipality^[2]. In addition and not surprisingly, Fishermen's organisations are positively, although rather moderately, correlated at the 0.05 level (0.198) along the inland‐fiord‐coast‐island categorisation.

This article has documented and analysed the information network within municipal politics represented by mayors and within the municipal administration represented by environmental officers. For both groups, several information sources distributed horizontally and vertically within the public sector, as well as into the private sector, were examined. In the following discussion, mayors and environmental officers are considered separately before the common issue of information network and climate change politics is addressed.

The mayors' reliance on scientific research, the environmental officers in their own municipality, and the county governor's environmental department as sources for mitigation and adaptation information stand out as key characteristics, signalling trust in knowledge‐based information. Moreover, the reliance on research is increasing along the periphery‐centre axis, and is strongest within the educational disciplines of humanities and environment, in contrast to consultancy. Furthermore, we can notice that the intra‐municipal and vertical channel is linked to the left end of the political axis.

A central question is whether changing opinions about climate change at the political right will cause a change in their reliance on different information sources, or whether there are different mechanisms operating. In addition, there is the question of whether the periphery's lesser confidence in the climate message and lesser reliance on research will be replaced by increased confidence and reliance if the climate message becomes accepted wisdom and becomes more established in the coming decade, or whether this group's low confidence is linked to more basic centre‐periphery cleavages: such cleavage has been documented in politics and culture, and in attitudes to individuals' perceptions of what nature is and how natural resources in the periphery are going to be used (Rokkan and Valen, 1964; Krange and Skogen, 2003; Skogen, 1999). Most likely it is a combination: the political right has been shown to distrust the climate message; a stance that might weaken if the claimed changes materialise during the coming years, but the political right also has a tradition of opposing environmental regulations that can restrict initiatives by developers. Similarly, politicians in the periphery will most likely accept the climate message when evidence is beyond doubt, but will still tend to oppose solutions provided to them by representatives of the centre – regarded as far away living bureaucrats and intellectuals.

Environmental officers generally make use of multiple channels for acquiring information about mitigation and adaptation, with the county governor's environmental department (state), the county municipality (regional level), and other primary municipalities (horizontal level) used the most; a truly multi‐level pattern. Adding that consultancy and research follows next completes the picture of multiple information sources. Increasing educational level and increasing number of work hours allocated to the environmental officer are contributing to the frequency of governmental contacts.

These findings indicate that the observed pattern is linked to different factors: the role of educational level can be linked to the finding of Johnson and Scicchitano (2009, p. 837) that more highly educated people are “more comfortable with the information presented to them by decision makers”, or in a rewritten form, higher education seems to make local environmental officers more comfortable with the language and information circulating in governmental channels. A study by von Borgestede and Lundqvist (2006) found that those in an environmental professional role had a higher acceptance of climate policy measures, regardless of whether these measures were considered easy or hard to introduce (low‐cost versus high‐cost measures). Our study complements this result by finding that educational level and discipline of education differentiate where and how often these officers search for information. These differences will influence the knowledge of what is actually considered as low‐ or high‐cost. Furthermore, working hours allocated to environmental tasks display the rather obvious pattern that those who have time available for environmental tasks are more active in searching for information through governmental channels and other channels. This result might also influence the knowledge base of groups of municipal officers engaged in climate change issues.

Comparing mayors and environmental officers, it is noticeable that whereas mayors express the strongest reliance on research, environmental officers more frequently interact with consultancies and express similar confidence in the information provided by consultants. However, the variance of the confidence in research and consultancy among environmental officers is high, and mainly caused by the number of working hours by the environmental officer: those having time to be in contact with research and consultancy express more confidence with the message provided. Furthermore, the fact that environmental officers express the strongest confidence in actors they are most frequently interacting with indicates that the information network to a certain extent is based on experiences. Furthermore, the multivariate analysis of Norwegian mayors (mostly males) and environmental officers (mostly females) does not show females to be less frequent users of science than males: gender is not a significant variable for environmental officers, whereas female mayors tend to use science more than male mayors. This can be added to the findings of a recent poll showing that confidence in research‐ and science‐based information is evident for the Norwegian population as a whole, with relatively high scores compared with other countries (Aftenposten, 2010)^[3].

Turning to the topic of governance, the above analysis has documented information networks as part of climate change governance. In general, Norway has a decentralised governing structure, with municipalities, that are comparatively small in population size and that play a central role. Consequently, there is a push for seeking information outside the municipal administration, as documented by Orderud and Sørlie (1996) in a study of professional competence in small and (mostly) peripheral municipalities;, e.g. municipal environmental officers sought information from the staff of the environmental department of the county governor. Furthermore, Hovik and Reitan (2004) argue there has been a weakening of the local institutional capacity following a change from a strong national focus on developing local institutions to delegation of responsibility.

In relation to climate change issues, Amundsen et al. (2010) find that municipal authorities and environmental officers ask for and depend upon national (legislative) guidelines for being able to carry out effective policies at the local level. This also means clearer state regulations (and guidelines) for coping with climate changes. Similar opinions were expressed during interviews by municipal planners in the Oslo region (Vevatne and Westskog, 2007). An important factor in this respect is that initiatives and responsibilities have been transferred from municipal planners to developers, thereby also moving competencies in the same direction. For planners to cope with developers they need to refer to clear regulations, or else they risk losing the case. Consequently, the argument made by Urwin and Jordan (2008) for national government's top‐down prioritisation of policy foci and local governments' bottom‐up freedom of planning is not straight forward. On the contrary, national regulations might enable local governments to make sound adaptation to climate change.

Taking this further, to expect that local communities, or municipalities, are in general going to act for the global good could be considered to be wishful thinking. Global acting is necessary, especially if the focus is broadened from pure climate change mitigation and adaptation to also encompass societal effects, and in particular distributive justice, which are inevitable aspects of politics. The dynamics between local justice and global justice are instructive in this respect: local injustice gives rise to local pressure for more just systems, and as local justices emerge, the potential for global injustices increases, thereby creating a pressure for more global justice, and so on (Elster, 1992). The above analysis does not provide any information about how this mechanism might operate and its consequences for climate change policies at different geographical scales. That would require other questions in addition to including qualitative methods.

Lastly, the finding that full‐time environmental officers are more active in searching for information makes it relevant to ask whether increasing the number of full‐time environmental officers could contribute to developing better climate change policies and policy measures. True, the first decisive step for doing the right things is willingness to seek information. Aall et al. (2007) document that 50 per cent of the municipalities taking part in the voluntary climate change policy programme during the years 1998‐2000 had a full‐time environmental officer, compared with 23 per cent for all municipalities. However, this does not prove that these municipalities made any better climate plans than municipalities without a full‐time environmental officer, but taking actions versus not taking actions are two different things. Perhaps the central government would strengthen the role of environmental policies by funding full‐time positions for environmental officers at the municipal level. Of course, the full‐time environmental officer might be an intervening variable in this respect; between political support and environmental policies, and any environmental officer would knock his head against the wall wherever the political support for climate change policies is lacking. Nevertheless, we should also acknowledge that full‐time positions for environmental officers could attract well‐educated professionals able to provide good arguments for environmentally sound policies.

The article is based on a survey conducted by Frode Berglund (NIBR), with input from Helene Amundsen (CICERO), Hege Westskog (CICERO), and Geir Inge Orderud (NIBR). The funding for the survey and the article is based on two Strategic Institute Programmes; the Regional and Local Social Effects of and Adaptations to Climate Change (NIBR), and Adapting to Extreme Weather in Municipalities: What, How and Why? (CICERO lead partner). Many thanks to the three anonymous referees for constructive comments; helping to improve the analysis. Thanks also to International Science Editing for English copy editing.

Geir Inge Orderud graduated from the University of Oslo (Human Geography) in 1987, and he has been with the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research since then. His research spans industrial analyses, migration studies, urban social structuring, the concept of space, and environmental studies. In the last decade, he has been engaged in environmentally oriented research in the Czech Republic and currently in China. Geir Inge Orderud can be contacted at: geir.orderud@nibr.no