Harriet Bulkeley

Professor of geography at Durham University and at Utrecht University, Bulkeley has studied since the early 2000s what cities really do about climate change, beyond plans and declarations. Her work with Michele Betsill on transnational city networks, such as ICLEI or the C40, showed that urban climate policy is made as much between cities as within each one, and that cities got ahead of states.

Cities and Climate Change (2013) is the synthesis for students: the city as source of emissions and as victim, mitigation and adaptation as fields of conflict over who pays and who decides, and the warning that climate policies can produce new inequalities, green gentrification among them. Accomplishing Climate Governance (2016) developed with Vanesa Castán Broto the idea of urban climate experiments, low-carbon neighbourhoods, alliances with firms, pilot programmes, that govern the climate without a master plan.

A fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has coordinated large European projects on nature-based solutions in cities. Her contribution is methodological: looking at practices rather than documents, and asking about the justice of each climate solution, not only its effectiveness.

In her work with Kristine Kern she distinguished four ways in which local governments act on climate: self-governing, cutting emissions from their own buildings and fleets; enabling, supporting residents and businesses; provision, through services such as transport or energy; and regulation, through planning and fiscal rules. Her conclusion is that most cities stay with the first two, the easiest, and rarely use regulation, which is what cuts emissions most.