Speaker
Description
Climatechange policies are cross-sectoral in the sense that they need to be deployed in many policies and across different scales of governance. It entails that several levels of governments and authorities are competent for climate policies. This poses some serious governance challenges, notably in federal structures. Climate federalism literature studies and evaluates how federal structures organize themselves to achieve climate policies. Contributing to this rich literature, this contribution first recalls the principal tenets of Belgian climate federalism and evaluates their strengths and weaknesses based on existing literature. It is generally assessed that Belgian climate federal structure is ill-equipped to address climate change wicked problem. Among the challenges highlighted by literature, it has been argued that the exclusive separation of powers between the State and the subnational entities (SNE) or the lack coordination between them impair Belgian federalism to pursue climate objectives. From this this state of art, this contribution elaborates different legal pathways to improve Belgian climate governance and focuses particularly on the residual competence of the federal Authority, on the federal competence on security and civil protection and on the principle of mutuality. It is argued that residual power could empower the federal Authority to pursue climate policies. Federal competence on security matters could also empower the federal Authority on climate questions. We elaborate on the principle of mutuality, that has already been proposed by the doctrine and recognized in Brussels law as a principle that would seek mutual reinforcement of the effectiveness of States and SNE’s measures.
| If your abstract is not accepted for an oral presentation, would you be interested in presenting it as a poster instead? | No |
|---|---|
| If accepted by the Scientific Board, I agree to have my presentation/poster and abstract published on the Belgian Climate Centre websites and social media. | Yes |
