ECOBUDGETS

Work package 1: Policy evaluation of existing initiatives.

There are multiple and diverse pilots, initiatives, and projects in Norway, Europe and beyond that attempt to use the budgeting approach to advance sustainability. Learning from the experiences of these will help us situate the initiatives of our partner authorities (WP2 and WP3) and find transferable insights. ‘Best practices’ can be helpful in identifying potential solutions, anticipating problems and avoiding repeating failures – although research on the use of best practices also points out that ‘best practices’ typically have to be understood in their proper context in order to make sense (Bulkeley, 2006). Nevertheless, the identification of lessons from existing initiatives can be highly useful as a starting point for the project, given a systematic and analytical approach to the collection. The objective of WP1 is to map existing initiatives and gain insights into their experiences with using budgeting in decision-making processes.

We will: (1) use secondary sources such as websites, reports, media articles and academic articles to map existing initiatives, (2) identify 10 initiatives (half climate, half land use) for further exploration, and use in- depth virtual interviews with key stakeholders (2-4 interviews in each case) to conduct policy analysis. (3) We will develop a typology of types of budget approaches and pathways into concrete decision-making. The typology will systematize experiences from existing initiatives through analyses of types of tools, what actors are involved, what roles different actors are playing in the process, and what can be said about potential impacts. This typology will then provide a frame of reference for the other work packages.

Work package 2: Assessing the actionability of climate budgets. Climate budgeting has been developed and tested over some years by the City of Bergen, Vestland County Council, and others. It is time to assess the approaches they have tried and to some extent tested, in order to learn about the experiences from the various sub-agencies and collaboration partners that have been involved. Working with our partners, WP2 will meet the objective of uncovering barriers and opportunities for using climate budgets in decision-making for improved uptake. Previous research has emphasized how budgeting has made the future more relevant to the present and made visible the political implications of how current decision-making practices can enable foresight, modeling, and the management of uncertainty (Grandin, 2023). However, few systematic attempts have been made to assess the concrete experiences of using climate budgeting in decision-making.

The lessons from WP1 will be used to generate hypotheses and analytical entry points, and we can draw insights from the RCN-funded Climate Budget 2.0 project in which we were partners. We will use qualitative research methods to (1) convene a workshop to begin the work, to identify the status of various climate budgeting processes and a baseline set of experiences. (2) We will follow concrete decision-making processes in partner institutions, to assess how climate budgets are used, using qualitative interviews, document analysis, and observation. (3) Evaluate how, when, and to what extent climate budgets have been used in concrete decision-making. This work will focus on ongoing processes in the City of Bergen and Vestland County Council, where climate budgeting has to some extent been integrated into decision-making.

Work package 3: Developing land use accounting. 

The ‘Areas under press’ calls have enabled a number of projects that are now producing relevant data for these accounts and layers, including EcoMAP, focused on downscaled modeled biodiversity and nature-type maps. These approaches are under development from the natural sciences side, but their applicability and usage in a ‘real’ planning setting have not yet been tested. The objective of WP3 is to ‘ground truth’ the ongoing work to develop approaches for land use and nature accounting, and quality control categories used in ‘real-life’ decision-making.

In WP3, through a bottom-up process, we will leverage these new data streams to (1) refine and enrich the current course-scale areal account maps under development (Agder-modellen consists of layer for areal planning, areal types, tree species, productivity, bedrock/soil type) with additional layers on biodiversity and nature types (based on EcoMAP downscaled modeled maps of all multicellular species and nature types in Norway) (2) ground-truth this information by sampling biodiversity and ecological information from stratified and randomly-selected points within Bergen and Vestland, (3) produce and test aggregate biodiversity and ecosystem information as map layers for planners and decision-makers. These layers will be combined and compared with the map layers from Agdermodellen mapping and with the ‘gray area’ and ‘wetland’ maps from the NYVEST project. We will thus work bottom-up by combining newly developed map products, testing these layers vis ground-truthing, and communicating area accounts on a local scale, using Bergen municipality as an example. The work in WP3 will produce an area account for Bergen municipality, which is based on (1) current professional systems for mapping Norwegian nature; (2) updated knowledge bases for distributions of habitat types and species, (3) management-relevant categories for the municipal sector. We will also conduct a systematic literature review in order to understand how systems for no-net-loss/offsetting/commensurability function and why some of them “fail”, i.e. lead to results opposite of the actual biodiversity policy goals (Vaissière & Meinard, 2021). The work package includes a PhD scholarship holder to work with nature accounting, and student active research projects focussing on empirical mapping of biodiversity and ecosystem functions (e.g., carbon, water, pollinators).

Work package 4: Legal and governance frameworks.

Budgeting approaches appear to be welcomed by administrative and political decision-makers across the country and at different levels. But integrating them in decision-making presents a range of known and likely some unknown challenges – legal, procedural and managerial. In practice, municipal councils exert the strongest control through the municipal plan's land-use element, which to a lesser extent directly governs rights and obligations in relation to citizens. There can be a gap between the desire for goal achievement and what is achievable with simple means. Nevertheless, there is a need to further examine the scope of the legal basis of the law and the extent to which it can be adjusted in line with developments. The question then arises whether it is possible to amend the current regulations so that authorities can have a better foundation for decision-making to steer towards environmentally and climate- friendly directions. The objective of WP4 is to identify the constraints and opportunities for sustainability budgets in existing legal and governance frameworks.

We will assess the governance structures that actionable budgets will operate within. In particular, implementation of environmental requirements in the Planning and Building Act can be challenging because this law primarily sets conditions for new activities and, as a starting point, cannot impose new obligations and requirements on ongoing activities and operations without resorting to expropriation. We will examine the possibilities provided by the Norwegian Planning and Building Act to impose new requirements on existing activities, including, for example, new requirements for green infrastructure and paths across private properties. Legal studies suggest that “cumulative effects” are increasingly given weight, and that clarification of nature and climate accounts can make it easier to discern the individual contributions required for the allocation of benefits in construction or business development (Myklebust 2022) We will analyse the forms that ongoing and potential mainstreaming of the budget approach to sustainability takes in decision-making, using the categorization of add-on, programmatic, organizational and regulatory mainstreaming (Wamsler & Pauleit, 2016). The research in this work package is conducted through legal methodology, meaning that the basis for assessments is grounded in the interpretation of laws, legislative history, and other accepted legal sources, which are also utilized by the courts in dispute resolution cases. In WP5, we will work with our partners, who are using these laws in practice, to discuss potential conflicts, potentials, and solutions.

Work package 5: Co-producing actionable budgets. 

ECOBUDGETS combines several different approaches to knowledge production – it starts with research-driven data analysis in WP1 and collaborateswith partners to varying degrees in WP2-4. WP5 centers on the co-production of knowledge with non- academic partners, an approach we have developed, tested and published on extensively (Haarstad et al., 2018; Kolstad et al., 2019). Co-production of knowledge starts from the assumption that knowledge is created in the interaction between researchers and societal partners – as opposed to the assumption that scientists possess knowledge that can be transferred to the practical users of that knowledge. When it comes to climate and nature accounting and budgeting, our non-academic partners in governance are important holders of knowledge, while our partner in the non-profit business sector provides additional tools and methods with which to co-produce knowledge. The objective of WP5 is to co-produce concrete recommendations for how sustainability budgeting can be made more actionable and usable in decision-making.

Good co-production requires the development of relationships over time, across the lifespan of the project – not something to be done only at the end when the data has been collected. Throughout the project, we will co-produce aspects of the project’s starting assumptions, employment of methods, and conclusions, drawing on the methodology of Futures Literacy (Miller, 2007) with the help of Fremtenkt. We will: (1) organize four full-day workshops throughout the project period, focusing on assessing budgeting tools in decision-making, (2) Use co-production and methods, identify formats, effective presentation styles, and development processes of an actionable budget, and (3) write a report with final recommendations with both academic and non- academic partners as co-authors.

Work package 6: Project management and communication. 

Ensuring effective and transparent project management is key to success in this project. The lead institution, the Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET) provides the institutional infrastructure for ECOBUDGETS, alongside the administrative departments at the University of Bergen. CET has ample experience in managing both academic and administrative aspects of research projects, as well as contacts with non-academic partners. The project will have a Steering Group, consisting of the PI, two of the researchers, and representatives of each the three non-academic partners, which will check progress towards project objectives.