Paper tiger or useful governance tool? The role of long-term strategies in climate governance

While climate change is often examined as a collective action and a market problem, we look at it as a problem of planning and coordination. Specifically, climate action in line with the goals of the Paris agreement and reaching net-zero goals requires long term policy making whereby countries plan and coordinate structural changes and communicate these both to domestic and international audiences. Governing by targets and strategies is a well-developed approach to addressing complex problems, including climate change. Inclusion of a requirement into the Paris Agreement for states to develop a long-term climate strategy (LT-LEDS), begs a question what these strategies represent in terms of approaches to address climate change and their role as a planning and a governance instrument. In this study we explore how these strategies describe countries’ climate plans and what the perceptions of government officials are about the role of these strategies as governance instruments, their content and usability. We structure our analysis along the following dimensions: (1) planning (the what, who and how of decarbonization by examining the sectors, actors and processes described in the strategies) using automated text analysis of 50 strategies; (2) perceptions of the roles and content of these plans and challenges to their implementation among government officials of four countries (11 semi-structured interviews) representing different parts of the world and GDP. This study is an exploratory analysis of long-term climate strategies as governance instruments toward achieving net-zero goals. The study thereby contributes to examining the links between domestic and international factors shaping climate governance, advancing our understanding of global climate policy making and identifying important political and institutional responses to climate change.