Integrating Earth system changes into sub-national governance. Case of territorialised translations of planetary boundaries-related frameworks
Résumé
Recognizing the impact of political decisions on global tipping points, sub-national governments have emerged as part of Earth system tipping point governance (ESTP- Milkoreit et al., 2024). However, integrating global environmental goals into local governance remains a challenge. We reviewed 81 translations of planetary boundaries and related frameworks in terms of territorialised impact assessments. We explored how the methodologies developed provide an opportunity to share a systemic assessment of territorial contributions to global environmental problems faced with downscaled boundaries (Bai et al., 2024). This represents a potential for setting goals for governance arising from Earth system analysis, which is emphasised in these publications that integrate different agenda-setting intentions (Kingdon,1995). Going further, we have identified the justice issues (Gupta et al., 2023) inherent to the methodological choices for translating from global to local that affect this goal-setting process. To investigate the influence of the translations in the setting of local goals, we interviewed French sub-national governance actors involved in the application of these methods. We identify a range of different interests, from a better understanding of the environmental stakes to providing guidance for a paradigm shift in public action. However, the methods they used were limited in terms of integrating systemicity and justice issues due to socio-technical difficulties, the scope of the actors' missions and commitment of higher-level actors. Overall, planetary boundaries translations are contributing to the agenda-setting of Earth System issues in sub-national governments, but face limitations that need to be addressed to define goals that could inspire ESTP governance.