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Alan Fenna

Climate change is one of the great challenges of our time, but is it more so or less so for federal systems? Federalism could be an asset, thanks to its more numerous sites for action and different governance scales. On the other hand, its division of powers and number of governments could well complicate and undermine climate governance through conflict, shirking, or poor coordination. Examining a diverse range of country experiences, as has been done in Climate Governance and Federalism: a Forum of Federations comparative policy analysis, helps to provide some insights into that question.

That diversity reminds us, though, that federalism is a generic term for a broad type of government and, as discussed later in this paper, each federation embodies the federal principle in its own way. Each federation also has its own underlying social and economic character that determines the way it operates. And the institutional structures of federalism are likely to have varying and often contradictory effects with complex interactions depending on the issue at hand and the political dynamics at the time.