Harriet Bulkeley
Biographic Data
| ID | 382229 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Harriet Bulkeley |
| GIVEN NAMES | Harriet |
| FAMILY NAME | Bulkeley |
| SIGNATURE | BULKELEY H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Durham University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9912-5687 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 105 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3224 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 104 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 30 |
The Changing Contours of Climate Politics
While climate change was on the political agenda for at least a decade before Global Environmental Politics was established, what climate change politics is has dramatically shifted through its lifetime. Framed initially in terms of a collective action problem and interstate cooperation, both how climate policy and politics is practiced and how we have come to understand it have changed. This article charts and provides explanations for the princ…
Conceptualizing transformative change for global environmental governance
The notion of transformative change has attracted increasing attention from research and policy communities as societies struggle with the nature and adequacy of responses to the intertwined crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and social justice. Yet while many agree that transformative change is needed, it remains an essentially contested concept. We review how the notion of transformative change has come to be understood in global envir…
Crisis of imagination/(re)imaginations for a (climate) crisis
This themed intervention emerges from a Chair's Plenary during the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual Conference 2023 on the theme of ‘Climate Changed Geographies’ and addresses geographers and allied social scientists. Drawing on Amitav Ghosh's provocation, it asks if our work on climate change is facing a crisis of imagination. Human geography has historically framed climate change as primarily an environmental problem and fallen shor…
When cities broke into the global stage
This short symposium revisits the book Cities and Climate Change by Harriet Bulkeley and Michelle Betsill and its role in establishing cities as central actors in climate change governance. The contributors to this symposium reflect on the research themes and the book’s legacy from their disciplinary perspectives. The first response explores the tensions between the elevation of cities as sites for climate action and the persistent lack of state …
Assembling authority to govern for nature
As governments, businesses, investors and civil society increasingly turn to 'Nature-Based Solutions' (NBS) as central means to govern the intertwined crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, a particular form of expertise is jostling for attention in this crowded policy arena - Nature Tech. Nature Tech is a broad term used to encompass 'smart tech' trained on nature, involving tools such as eDNA, machine learning algorithms, and other for…
Different shades of green
Nature – based solutions (NBS) are increasingly being positioned within global discourses concerning how urban sustainability challenges can be addressed. To better understand to what extent, how, by whom and with what potential implications NBS are promoted in urban Africa, this paper focuses on transnational actors and presents a dataset covering 40 NBS initiatives in 57 cities across 19 African countries. A framing analysis is undertaken to un…
Nature for resilience reconfigured
Globally, various frames of urban nature circulate, each emphasising particular challenges and natural solutions in the climate context. Yet which actors and dynamics shape their translation to the African context remains unclear. This paper explores the global-to-local translation process of frames through interventions funded by transnational actors, conceptualised as agents of policy transfer. Critical scholarship has observed that urban adapt…
Changing climate, changing geographies
Ever since climate change came to occupy a place on the research and policy landscape in the 1980s, geography and geographers have been at the forefront of understanding its dynamics and social, economic, ethical, and political consequences. In this collection, we explore how the geographical understanding of climate change has evolved over time. We reflect on what we consider to be the most significant contributions that geography has made to ou…
Transformation through transdisciplinary practice
In this editorial introduction, we introduce the special issue ?Transforming Urban Sustainability?, which seeks to understand the pursuit and practice of transformative change for urban sustainability. Uniquely, the contributions to the Special Issue were developed through trans-disciplinary collaborations and in this editorial we reflect on these practices and consider how they can catalyze transformative change in and through academic practice.…
Can you standardise transformation? Reflections on the transformative potential of benchmarking as a mode of governance
This paper is a collaborative effort between academic researchers and practitioners to consider the conditions under which global benchmarking may be used as a tool for supporting urban transformation. Reflecting on WWF’s One Planet City Challenge and UN-Habitat’s Guiding Principles for City Climate Action Planning, the paper suggests that the practice of global benchmarking can be transformative through encouraging organisational learning and re…
Generating transformative capacity
Over the past five years, there have been growing calls for transformative responses to sustainability challenges, supported by increased transformative action in the pursuit of environmental justice. In parallel to this development within the policy arena, the concept of transformation and its potential is also attracting more attention within the research community. This paper uses the example of the Urban Natural Assests for Africa (UNA) progr…
Transnational Governing at the Climate–Biodiversity Frontier
Transnational governance initiatives (TGIs) are increasingly recognized as central actors in the governing of climate change and biodiversity loss. Yet, their role in linking these domains has yet to be explored. As the climate crisis comes to be increasingly interlinked with the loss of biodiversity, such initiatives are increasingly combining this challenge of climate change with action on biodiversity loss through the deployment of nature-base…
Can the EU taxonomy for sustainable activities help upscale investments into urban nature-based solutions
We analyze the potential of the European Union (EU) Taxonomy (ET) for Sustainable Activities to mobilize investments for the sustainability transition toward urban nature-based solutions (UNBS). We map the current investment landscape of UNBS in Europe and combine this mapping with document analysis of UNBS inclusion in the ET to understand how the ET might help overcome the well-documented barriers to UNBS finance. We suggest that the ET has a l…
Transnational Governance and the Urban Politics of Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Change
Multiple visions for how urbanism can respond to the climate crisis and foster sustainability have emerged on the international agenda, including the ecocity, low-carbon city, smart city, and resilient city. These competing visions have been joined by one deploying “nature-based solutions.” We examine how nature-based solutions are emerging as a linchpin holding together the nature and climate agendas and what this means for where and by whom nat…
Mainstreaming sustainable innovation
Catalyzing sustainability pathways
Border troubles
Traditional interventions to "bring nature into the city" were often motivated by a concern to create forms of public space which would provide a public good. Despite such well-intentioned motivations, these public forms of urban nature have always been to some extent bounded, serving some in favor of others, authorizing particular uses and forms of behavior as more or less legitimate, and policing the boundaries of who is/not included in such sp…
Nature for Resilience? The Politics of Governing Urban Nature
Transcending initial efforts to make cities ‘climate smart’ by focusing on the potential of new technologies and infrastructural interventions, various actors are increasingly interested in deploying nature to help achieve urban resilience. In this context, rather than taking resilience as a given property of particular systems or entities, it is important to examine why, how, with what implications, and for whom resilience is being enacted. We e…
Climate changed urban futures
In the 30 years since the journal Environmental Politics was founded, we have witnessed a profound shift in how we understand climate from its initial framing as global problem, to one that is increasingly understood as transnational, personal, urban, networked, and regional. Charting the rise of climate change’s urban agenda over the past decade, I suggest we are now witnessing a ‘third wave’ of climate urbanism in which the challenge of address…
Decarbonizing capital
Private investment capital is now widely regarded as strategically significant to the governance of climate change. A dedicated and dynamic carbon finance sector has emerged that features techniques and practices for decarbonizing capital, facilitating investment in low-carbon projects and enterprises or enabling divestment from high-carbon firms and sectors. We bring together and develop the concepts of 'qualification' and 'assetization' to anal…
Nature-based solutions for urban biodiversity governance
Climate Smart City
The question of how the urgent transformation in fossil fuel based economies might be realised has come to occupy an increasingly prominent place within the social sciences. The challenge here is often cast in terms of how one or more existing system can be replaced by alternatives in which the carbon content has been removed or at least diluted by purposeful interventions. Here we approach the question from a different angle, asking how ongoing …
Whose city? Whose nature? Towards inclusive nature-based solution governance
Nature-Based Solutions for Urban Climate Change Adaptation
Nature-based solutions offer an exciting prospect for resilience building and advancing urban planning to address complex urban challenges simultaneously. In this article, we formulated through a coproduction process in workshops held during the first IPCC Cities and Climate Science Conference in Edmonton, Canada, in March 2018, a series of synthesis statements on the role, potential, and research gaps of nature-based solutions for climate adapta…
Reflections on Navigating Climate’s Human Geographies
In this reflection, I take up a variety of open questions and remaining concerns raised by the set of commentaries concerning the implications of the paper for: how we regard climate change as an issue; how knowledge systems might be changed to enable more diverse ways of knowing climate change to take root; and for its politics
Reconfiguring environmental governance
Government by experiment? Global cities and the governing of climate change
In this paper, we argue for an approach that goes beyond an institutional reading of urban climate governance to engage with the ways in which government is accomplished through social and technical practices. Central to the exercise of government in this manner, we argue, are ‘climate change experiments’– purposive interventions in urban socio‐technical systems designed to respond to the imperatives of mitigating and adapting to climate change i…
Cities, Europeanization and Multi‐level Governance
This article focuses on a variant of multi‐level governance and Europeanization, i.e. the transnational networking of local authorities. Focusing on local climate change policy, the article examines how transnational municipal networks (TMNs) govern in the context of multi‐level European governance. We find that TMNs are networks of pioneers for pioneers
A survey of urban climate change experiments in 100 cities
Cities are key sites where climate change is being addressed. Previous research has largely overlooked the multiplicity of climate change responses emerging outside formal contexts of decision-making and led by actors other than municipal governments. Moreover, existing research has largely focused on case studies of climate change mitigation in developed economies. The objective of this paper is to uncover the heterogeneous mix of actors, settin…
Transnational Networks and Global Environmental Governance
The past decade has witnessed a growing interest among scholars of international relations, and global environmental governance in particular, in the role of transnational networks within the international arena. While the existence and potential significance of such networks has been documented, many questions concerning the nature of governance conducted by such networks and their impact remain. We contribute to these debates by examining how s…
Rethinking Sustainable Cities
While sustainable cities have been promoted as a desirable goal within a variety of policy contexts, critical questions concerning the extent to which cities and local governments can address the challenges of sustainability remain unanswered. We use a multilevel governance perspective to examine the discursive and material struggles which take place in creating sustainable cities. In exploring the politics of implementing climate protection thro…
Transnational Climate Governance
In this article we examine the emergence and implications of transnational climate-change governance. We argue that although the study of transnational relations has recently been renewed alongside a burgeoning interest in issues of global governance, the nature of transnational governance has to date received less attention. We contend that transnational governance occurs when networks operating in the transnational political sphere authoritativ…
Conceptualizing Climate Governance Beyond the International Regime
The governance of climate change has traditionally been conceived as an issue of international co-operation and considered through the lens of regime analysis. Increasingly, scholars of global governance have highlighted the multiple parallel initiatives involving a range of actors at different levels of governance through which this issue is being addressed. In this paper, we argue that this phenomenon warrants a re-engagement with some of the c…
Geographies of environmental justice
Contesting climate justice in the city
Debates about climate justice have mainly occurred at the international scale, and have focussed on the rights and responsibilities of nation-states to either be protected from the effects of climate change, or to take action to reduce emissions or support adaptation. In this paper, we argue that it is both productive and necessary to examine how climate justice is being pursued at the urban scale, which brings into focus the need for attention t…
Local Government and the Governing of Climate Change in Germany and the UK
This paper argues that, in order to address the challenges of climate change, attention needs to be focused not only at the international level but also on how climate protection policy is taking shape locally. It provides a comparative analysis of local climate change policy in Germany and the UK. By moving the focus from an analysis of the formal competencies of local government to the multiple modes of governing through which climate protectio…
Climate justice and global cities
Cities and the Multilevel Governance of Global Climate Change
We explore how the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) program, a network that is simultaneously global and local, state and nonstate, could be conceptualized as part of global environmental governance. We suggest that traditional approaches to international relations—regime theory and transnational networks—offer limited conceptual space for analyzing such networks. These approaches obscure how the governance of global climate change takes place…
Urban living labs
Pluralizing and problematizing carbon finance
Growing emphasis on finance as key to decarbonization requires social science research that critically attends to the emergent and diverse forms taken by carbon finance. First, we pluralize research into carbon finance, building on existing work to identify four main forms: carbon markets; ecosystem services; natural capital investment; and, capital allocated to low-carbon enterprises and projects. Second, we propose that research should problema…
Revisiting the urban politics of climate change
In our 2005 paper, Rethinking Sustainable Cities, we made a case for the increasing significance of climate change in the urban politics of sustainability. Taking a multilevel governance perspective, we argued that the ‘urban’ governance of climate protection was not confined to a local arena or to the actions of the state, but rather was orchestrated through the interrelations between global, national and local actors across state/non-state boun…
Crossing boundaries
Urban living laboratories
The recent upsurge of interest in the experimental city as an arena within and through which urban sustainability is governed marks not only the emergence of the proliferation of forms of experimentation – from novel governance arrangements to demonstration projects, transition management processes to grassroots innovations – but also an increasing sensibility amongst the research community that urban interventions can be considered in experiment…
Low-carbon Transitions and the Reconfiguration of Urban Infrastructure
Over the past decade, a growing body of research has examined the role of cities in addressing climate change and the institutional and political challenges which they encounter. For the most part, in these accounts, the infrastructure networks, their material fabric, everyday practices and political economies, have remained unexamined. In this paper, it is argued that this is a critical omission and an approach is developed for understanding how…
Governing climate change
This paper examines how the politics of climate change have taken shape within Australia through the construction and contestation of concepts of obligation and responsibility. Beck’s risk society thesis offers a conceptual starting point from which to address questions concerning the nature of contemporary risk politics, and the paper examines its relevance and applicability in this case. While Beck’s theory provides insight into the nature of r…
Peak electricity demand and the flexibility of everyday life
Urban Sustainability
In the quest for sustainable development, numerous examples of 'best practice' have been created and circulated in national and international arenas. Yet despite the vast array of examples, demonstration projects, case studies, and the like, little is known about the ways in which best practices are produced and used, and their role in processes of policymaking. Focusing on best practice for urban sustainability, the author argues that, rather th…
Maintaining Climate Change Experiments
Climate change governance is increasingly being conducted through urban climate change experiments, purposive interventions that seek to reconfigure urban sociotechnical systems to achieve low-carbon and resilient cities. In examining how experiments take effect, we suggest that we need to understand not only how they are made and assembled, but also how they are maintained within specific urban contexts. Drawing on literatures from urban politic…
Decarbonizing capital
Private investment capital is now widely regarded as strategically significant to the governance of climate change. A dedicated and dynamic carbon finance sector has emerged that features techniques and practices for decarbonizing capital, facilitating investment in low-carbon projects and enterprises or enabling divestment from high-carbon firms and sectors. We bring together and develop the concepts of 'qualification' and 'assetization' to anal…
The political economy of energy transitions in Mozambique and South Africa
Discourse Coalitions and the Australian Climate Change Policy Network
Ever since the agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, climate change has become the most prominent global environmental issue on domestic political agendas. The author examines how a policy-network approach can contribute to the analysis of domestic climate change responses. Consideration is given to the role of advocacy coalitions and discourse coalitions within policy networks. It is argued that the discourse-co…
Common Knowledge? Public Understanding of Climate Change in Newcastle, Australia
This paper argues that public understanding of climate change not only involves knowledge of its physical processes, but also encompasses wider issues concerning the relation between society and nature. It examines the conclusions of previous research, and assumptions made within the policy community concerning public understanding of climate change. It is argued that in each case, in accordance with the information deficit model, recorded levels…
Down to Earth
Global environmental politics and policy are conventionally seen as the province of nation-states and international negotiations. However, there has been increasing attention devoted to the part that local places can play in the pursuit of (global) sustainable development. In this paper, I explore the role of local government in Australian greenhouse policy. A brief outline of the role of local government in environmental management is followed b…
No regrets
Governing climate change
This paper examines how the politics of climate change have taken shape within Australia through the construction and contestation of concepts of obligation and responsibility. Beck’s risk society thesis offers a conceptual starting point from which to address questions concerning the nature of contemporary risk politics, and the paper examines its relevance and applicability in this case. While Beck’s theory provides insight into the nature of r…
Some Ideas and Reflections on Teaching 'Ideas' in Geography
This paper outlines the characteristics of a seminar on realism which forms part of the teaching of 'ideas and methods in geography' in the department concerned. The seminar requires each of about a dozen students to answer a specific question by reading a single paper, writing a summary answer to the question based on this source, and delivering an oral presentation. The questions are structured to deal with abstract theoretical issues at first,…
Cities and Climate Change
Climate change is one of the most challenging issues of our time. As key sites in the production and management of emissions of greenhouse gases, cities will be crucial for the implementation of international agreements and national policies on climate change. This book provides a critical analysis of the role of cities in addressing climate change and the prospects for urban sustainability. Cities and Climate Change is the first in-depth analysi…
Participation and Environmental Governance
During the past four decades the governance of environmental problems – the definition of issues and their political and practical resolution – has evolved to include a wider range of stakeholders in more extensive open discussions. In the introduction to this issue of Environmental Values on ‘Environment, Policy and Participation’, we outline some features of these recent developments in participatory environmental governance, indicate some key …
New Realism and Local Realities
In this paper, we seek to contribute to the debate concerning the emergence of a 'new realism' in transport planning in the UK, through an examination of the development of Local Transport Plans. After describing the background to these policy changes, we consider how one central tenet of the new realism—the need to manage demand—is taking shape within the local transport planning process in Cambridgeshire and Leicester. We argue that although a …
Transnational Networks and Global Environmental Governance
The past decade has witnessed a growing interest among scholars of international relations, and global environmental governance in particular, in the role of transnational networks within the international arena. While the existence and potential significance of such networks has been documented, many questions concerning the nature of governance conducted by such networks and their impact remain. We contribute to these debates by examining how s…
Reconfiguring environmental governance
Rethinking Sustainable Cities
While sustainable cities have been promoted as a desirable goal within a variety of policy contexts, critical questions concerning the extent to which cities and local governments can address the challenges of sustainability remain unanswered. We use a multilevel governance perspective to examine the discursive and material struggles which take place in creating sustainable cities. In exploring the politics of implementing climate protection thro…
Local Government and the Governing of Climate Change in Germany and the UK
This paper argues that, in order to address the challenges of climate change, attention needs to be focused not only at the international level but also on how climate protection policy is taking shape locally. It provides a comparative analysis of local climate change policy in Germany and the UK. By moving the focus from an analysis of the formal competencies of local government to the multiple modes of governing through which climate protectio…
Geographies of environmental justice
Cities and the Multilevel Governance of Global Climate Change
We explore how the Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) program, a network that is simultaneously global and local, state and nonstate, could be conceptualized as part of global environmental governance. We suggest that traditional approaches to international relations—regime theory and transnational networks—offer limited conceptual space for analyzing such networks. These approaches obscure how the governance of global climate change takes place…
Urban Sustainability
In the quest for sustainable development, numerous examples of 'best practice' have been created and circulated in national and international arenas. Yet despite the vast array of examples, demonstration projects, case studies, and the like, little is known about the ways in which best practices are produced and used, and their role in processes of policymaking. Focusing on best practice for urban sustainability, the author argues that, rather th…
Looking Back and Thinking Ahead
This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and dr…
Responding to Climate Change
It has become an accepted wisdom within academic circles and policy discourse that climate change is a global problem in need of global solutions. More than a decade after the formation of the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol was ratiaed by a sufacient number of states to come into effect in February 2005. Strenuous international negotiations have led to the development of important structures and processes to govern reductions in greenhouse gas emissi…
Crossing boundaries
Modes of Governing Municipal Waste
From recent debates on governance and governmentality, two key analytical imperatives arise: the need to engage simultaneously with the structures and processes of governing, and the need to recognise the plurality and multiplicity of governing sites and activities. In seeking to address these imperatives, we develop an analytical approach, the modes of governing approach, which engages with the rationalities, agencies, institutional relations, a…
The Social Construction of Climate Change
Transnational Climate Governance
In this article we examine the emergence and implications of transnational climate-change governance. We argue that although the study of transnational relations has recently been renewed alongside a burgeoning interest in issues of global governance, the nature of transnational governance has to date received less attention. We contend that transnational governance occurs when networks operating in the transnational political sphere authoritativ…
Conceptualizing Climate Governance Beyond the International Regime
The governance of climate change has traditionally been conceived as an issue of international co-operation and considered through the lens of regime analysis. Increasingly, scholars of global governance have highlighted the multiple parallel initiatives involving a range of actors at different levels of governance through which this issue is being addressed. In this paper, we argue that this phenomenon warrants a re-engagement with some of the c…
Cities, Europeanization and Multi‐level Governance
This article focuses on a variant of multi‐level governance and Europeanization, i.e. the transnational networking of local authorities. Focusing on local climate change policy, the article examines how transnational municipal networks (TMNs) govern in the context of multi‐level European governance. We find that TMNs are networks of pioneers for pioneers
Justice, Nature and the City
In his 1996 work, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (JNGD), David Harvey brought together a series of debates -including those concerning environmental values, the politics of social and environmental justice, and the future of cities -which are rarely articulated within the same analytical framework.Harvey"s work established foundational concepts for understanding how space, time, place and nature are constituted and represented th…
Political science (90 works) · Sociology (63 works) · Economics (56 works) · Politics (56 works) · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance (56 works) · Law (53 works) · Climate change (48 works) · Corporate governance (43 works) · Business (42 works) · Geography (39 works)