Improving Environmental Policies and Impact Assessments through Network Analysis for Accelerated SDG 13 - Climate Action

Abstract Environmental policy design, interventions, and impact assessments are critical tools for implementing the Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDG 13: Climate Action. However, their effectiveness is often limited because decisions are made isolated between authorities and little coordination between stakeholders takes place, and evaluation processes are scarcely integrated. This paper uses network analysis to examine the outcome of the transformation of global climate governance from structural and functional perspectives using 70 key climate policy instruments, initiatives, and involved institutions. In combining qualitative policy mapping techniques with quantitative complex network modelling, this study identifies links in actors’ links, identifies significant gaps in coordination activities, manageable obstacles and possible structural inefficiencies that work against fulfilling shared climate goals. The findings highlight the emergence of movement from a centralized, governed by the state, single ownership, to more differentiated polycentric and multilayered actor system within climate governance. The analysis reveals a persistent pattern of link formation among national, regional, and transnational actors. We indicate several top-down processes that continue to integrate into this system, including legally binding climate laws which catalyzed sub-national international finance platforms, but also the acting agency of bottom-up actors such as cities, civil society, and transnational networks. The theoretical integration of both bottoms-up and top-down activities in climate governance is useful, and perhaps it needs to be implemented better. Also, the study suggests there will be weak nodes in the system where it will need enhanced cooperation, monitoring or financing urgently. The paper concludes by arguing that policy design, network-informed, will improve the outcomes of environmental governance based on connectivity, adaptability and inclusiveness into the system.