Transformative Accountability for net-zero Transitions

Cities and urban agglomerations have set ambitious CO2 targets that necessitate a sustainable transition over the coming decade. Recently, the Commission announced a mission to make 100 cities Climate neutral by 2030, creating climate contracts to achieve these ambitious targets. To be held accountable to their climate contracts, local policymakers need new accountability processes that not only statically measure their progress, but are designed to dynamically provide learning, legitimacy and direction. The research objective of TRANSACT is to open the black box of accountability systems in order to re-conceptualize accountability to ensure transparency, coordination, learning and effectiveness. Traditional accountability systems are static and based on pre-defined indicators and scientific investigations are limited to the study of assessment and sanctioning mechanisms or avoiding the practice of accountability altogether, ignoring horizontal accountability and learning needed to organize a sustainable transition. Combining interdisciplinary knowledge from Urban Climate Governance, Public Management with practitioner experience the first aim of TRANSACT is to re-conceptualize the dimensions of dynamic accountability processes. Leveraging these dimensions to conduct a large-scale survey aimed at mapping various accountability systems across cities empirically, TRANSACT uncovers how accountability systems are positioned to tackle the climate crisis. Finally, in collaboration with Climate-KIC during my placement/secondment, this project will develop actionable policy papers, and a set of protocols and an open source sustainability dashboard, to identify the accountability capacities needed to realize system innovation. The mixed methods approach will ensure that different cities, with their inherent diversity in socio- demographic features, level of resources, and governance systems, can learn from each other in the pursuit of their common CO2 targets.