Implications of declaration of climate emergency on Australian local government policy in the State of Victoria

Abstract

The 2015 Paris Agreement acknowledges the shift to a more polycentric climate governance system where non-state actors are developing climate policies and each develops to suit its unique needs and circumstances. Shifts in the policy landscape towards achieving the ambitious net zero carbon target of 2050 are difficult to assess due to the variation in scope, approach and format of policies from the numerous non-state actors. We have set out to test the use of a large language model (LLMs) in a retriever-reader pipeline to apply an existing conceptual framework to a dataset of climate policy documents. We do so by developing a tool called PALLM which we applied to local government climate policies in Victoria, Australia to detect the presence of “climate emergency mode”. Our contribution is firstly, a new tool for high-level, large-scale policy analysis. Secondly, through using this tool, we make evidentiary contribution with a large-scale analysis of over 90 policy documents. Lastly, we contribute new knowledge and conclude that local governments that have declared a climate emergency have a greater presence of the climate emergency mode. This demonstrates that such a declaration has an influence on local governments’ policies, and goes beyond symbolic politics. Our analysis also identifies attributes that need more attention from local governments in their climate emergency movement, such as equity. Ultimately, our results demonstrate that the use of LLMs with policy-informed conceptual frameworks enables a more nuanced large-scale policy analysis, providing a detailed and sophisticated view of the climate policy landscape. Show more