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  • Perspective
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A research roadmap for quantifying non-state and subnational climate mitigation action

Nature Climate Change volume 9, pages 11–17 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Non-state and subnational climate actors have become central to global climate change governance. Quantitatively assessing climate mitigation undertaken by these entities is critical to understand the credibility of this trend. In this Perspective, we make recommendations regarding five main areas of research and methodological development related to evaluating non-state and subnational climate actions: defining clear boundaries and terminology; use of common methodologies to aggregate and assess non-state and subnational contributions; systematically dealing with issues of overlap; estimating the likelihood of implementation; and addressing data gaps.

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Fig. 1: Different ways of comparing city non-state climate action with state targets.
Fig. 2: Overview of key data missing for selected actors participating in transnational climate initiatives or reporting to city climate action platforms.

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Data availability

The data and R script to produce Fig. 2 are available upon request from the authors of this study.

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Acknowledgements

We thank participants at an April 2017 workshop held at University College London in London, UK, as well as a November 2017 workshop in Bonn, Germany, who provided feedback on early thinking and drafts of this paper. This work was funded by ClimateWorks Foundation grant no. 17-1101.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Angel Hsu

  2. Yale-NUS College, Singapore, Singapore

    Angel Hsu

  3. Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Niklas Höhne

  4. NewClimate Institute, Cologne, Germany

    Niklas Höhne, Takeshi Kuramochi & Katharina Lütkehermöller

  5. Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands

    Takeshi Kuramochi

  6. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, The Hague, the Netherlands

    Mark Roelfsema

  7. Data-Driven Yale, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, New Haven, CT, USA

    Amy Weinfurter & Yihao Xie

  8. Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik, Bonn, Germany

    Sander Chan

  9. New Climate Economy, Washington, DC, USA

    Jan Corfee-Morlot

  10. UN Environment, Nairobi, Kenya

    Philip Drost

  11. CDP, London, UK

    Pedro Faria & Shirin Reuvers

  12. AG Climate and Energy Ltd, Reading, UK

    Ann Gardiner

  13. University of California, Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    David J. Gordon

  14. Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Thomas Hale

  15. School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Nathan E Hultman

  16. Drawdown Switzerland, Nyon, Switzerland

    John Moorhead

  17. Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

    Joana Setzer

  18. World Resources Institute, Washington, DC, USA

    Neelam Singh

  19. World Wildlife Fund, Washington, DC, USA

    Christopher Weber

  20. Institute for Environmental Studies, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands

    Oscar Widerberg

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  1. Angel Hsu
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Contributions

A.H., N.H., T.K., M.R., A.W., Y.X. and K.L. conceived the concept and led the analysis and writing. All other authors substantially contributed suggestions, ideas and writing.

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Correspondence to Angel Hsu.

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Hsu, A., Höhne, N., Kuramochi, T. et al. A research roadmap for quantifying non-state and subnational climate mitigation action. Nature Clim Change 9, 11–17 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0338-z

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