Dealing with Political Volatility to Advance Climate Change Mitigation Strategies

As the recent withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement has shown, political volatility directly affects climate change mitigation policies. This particularly holds true for sectors such as transport, which are associated with long-term investments by individuals (vehicles) and by local and national governments (urban form and transport infrastructure and services). There is a large potential for cost-effective solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to improve the sustainability of the transport sector that is yet unexploited.

This study aims to explore some well-established political science theories on the particular example of climate change mitigation in the transport sector in order to identify some of the factors that could help explain the variations in success of policies and strategies in this sector.

The paper "Continuity and Change: Dealing with Political Volatility to Advance Climate Change Mitigation Strategies - Examples from the Transport Sector" by Wuppertal Institute's Oliver Lah was published in Sustainability, volume 9, issue 6. It is available for free download.