Paper short abstract:

This research considers the governance of carbon and carbon offsets in two Australian municipalities - City of Melbourne (VIC) and Byron Bay Shire (NSW) - using cultural theory to explore the role of policy cultures and institutional differences in shaping local responses to climate change.

Paper long abstract:

Cities are increasingly recognised as important sites, and local governments as important actors, in reducing emissions in response to climate change.

This research examines how decisions about carbon and carbon offsets are made in City of Melbourne (VIC) and Byron Bay Shire (NSW), and how these decisions and flows of carbon are entwined with other sites, scales and institutions. Both municipalities are aiming for net zero emissions (by 2020 and 2025 respectively), but each is taking a different approach to managing carbon offsets as a way to neutralise remaining emissions.

Carbon is an important boundary object to understand the role of cultural and institutional differences in climate change governance. Carbon is generated by everyday practices but only comes to be known through scientific and technical practices. Carbon also permeates and transgresses the various sites and scales of climate governance through its release into the atmosphere, and through its entanglements with a complex array of institutional structures. Decisions about flows of carbon (or how to account for, and redirect carbon between, various sources and sinks) can reveal how boundaries are constructed and contested in the policy and governance of climate change.

By examining carbon governance in terms of cultural differences, this research will help to reveal how institutional dynamics might shape, and re-shape, policies and processes within and between the various sites and scales of climate governance.