Local climate action obstacles and support for polycentric governance in Municipalities from Wallonia.

In municipalities of Wallonia (Belgium), local climate stakeholders such as renewable energy cooperatives, wind turbine opposition movements and Transition Town Network local sections have emerged in the period between 2008 and 2021. At the same time, local authorities have started to (re)develop the energy competence in order to meet climate targets. This context offers an interesting framework to look at local climate action obstacles through the lens of polycentric governance. This paper is based on a fieldwork in 18 municipalities covered through 59 semi-direct interviews and on a review of local media content. The data analysis has been conducted through the use of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) methods. In those municipalities, the slow development of local climate actions is sustained by obstacles such as weak institutional capacity, lack of knowledge/ideas about how to conduct the energy transition, citizen’s distrust towards local public authorities, the importance of daily urgent issues and a lack of money. In this paper, I argue that municipalities that have supported polycentricity are better equipped to face these obstacles. Indeed, local climate stakeholders may speed up local climate actions, enhance energy and social experimentation, increase trust amongst local stakeholders through (non) institutionalized participative mechanisms and reinforce local institutional capacity with both site-specific knowledge and energy expertise. However, in some municipalities, wind turbine opposition movements may reinforce existing local climate obstacles. Ultimately, this paper sheds light on the role of local authorities and local stakeholders in leading local climate actions. The use of the concept of polycentric governance allows to look at local energy (public) actions from an innovative angle. However, its use throughout this fieldwork allows me to underline its limits, one of them being its weak support to formulate useful operational recommendations for (local) decision makers.