Research on sustainable climate and nature governance funded
The collaborative project ECOBUDGETS will explore ways to integrate climate and nature budgets into administrative and political decisions at the municipal and county levels.
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– This project gives us the opportunity to connect basic research with practical collaboration with societal actors. This is what we at CET call ‘actionable knowledge,’ and it is at the core of our strategy,” says Professor Håvard Haarstad, Director of the Center for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET) and project leader.
The project is a collaborative project to meet societal and industry-related challenges, bringing together partners at the forefront of climate budgeting and land use accounting – City of Bergen and Vestland county council – with knowledge from human geography, biology, political science, and law at the University of Bergen, NIBIO, and NINA, as well as sustainable future agents from Fremtenkt.
– We already have close collaboration with the City of Bergen and Vestland county coucil, and now we get to work with them on this important topic. They are national leaders in mapping and budgeting for nature and climate, so they are perfect partners in the project,” says Haarstad.
Nature loss and sustainable land management
Nature loss and land degradation have been high on the public agenda thanks to media coverage on this topic. Earlier this year, the Norwegian government announced a new public inquiry into the risks of nature loss.
– Nature is being mapped, and climate emissions are being budgeted in many places around Norway. What we want in this project is to ensure that these new budgets are actually used in decision-making processes – that they don’t just end up in a drawer. We will both research these decision-making processes and contribute to making decisions better informed by nature and climate considerations,” says Haarstad.
UiB Professor of Biology, Vigdis Vandvik is a partner on the project. Vandvik has been part of the IPBES panel and is an active communicator on this subject. She leads the ECOMAP project which will be tied closely to ECOBUDGETS led by Haarstad.
Budget approach to sustainability
Norway has committed to reducing emissions by at least 50 percent compared to 1990 levels. Many municipalities in Norway, such as the City of Bergen, have been even more ambitious in their climate goals. To achieve these climate goals, a climate budget approach has been implemented in several municipalities.
A climate budget is a management tool for achieving greenhouse gas reductions and other established climate goals. This is done by integrating the city’s climate goals into the financial budgeting process and assigning responsibility for implementation, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting across the city’s authorities.
