Trade-offs and synergies in urban climate policies

Vincent Viguié () and Stephane Hallegatte

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Abstract: Cities are at the forefront of climate policies(1-6). However, urban climate policies are not implemented in a vacuum; they interact with other policy goals, such as economic competitiveness or social issues. These interactions can lead to trade-offs and implementation obstacles, or to synergies(7,8). Little analysis investigating these interactions exists, in part because it requires a broad interdisciplinary approach. Using a new integrated city model, we provide a first quantification of these trade-offs and synergies, going beyond the qualitative statements that have been published so far. We undertake a multicriteria analysis of three urban policies: a greenbelt policy, a zoning policy to reduce flood risk and a transportation subsidy. Separately, each of these policies seems to be undesirable because each one negatively affects at least one of the different policy goals; however, in a policy mix, the consequences of each policy are not simply additive. This nonlinearity permits building policy combinations that are win-win strategies. In particular, flood zoning and greenbelt policies can only be accepted if combined with transportation policies. Our results show that stand-alone adaptation and mitigation policies are unlikely to be politically acceptable and emphasize the need to mainstream climate policy within urban planning.

Keywords: mitigation; adaptation; cities; climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://enpc.hal.science/hal-00716121v1
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Published in Nature Climate Change, 2012, 2 (5), pp.334-337. ⟨10.1038/NCLIMATE1434⟩

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Journal Article: Trade-offs and synergies in urban climate policies (2012)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00716121

DOI: 10.1038/NCLIMATE1434

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