Multilevel climate governance in Brazil and Indonesia: Domestic pioneership and leadership in the Global South

Abstract

This chapter analyses what role multilevel governance has played in bringing about domestic pioneership and leadership, characterise different types, and scrutinise whether these pioneers and leaders trigger other domestic actors to follow and replicate climate change mitigation actions. It focuses on these interactions in two emerging economies, namely Brazil and Indonesia. The chapter provides a brief overview of the national climate policy in the countries and then investigate their respective forest and urban climate policy. Until the end of the military regime in 1984, forest management in Brazil was highly centralised. Most major Brazilian cities have implemented municipal plans to reduce emissions and set up councils for urban climate action while some of them actively participate in transnational fora. Indonesia hosts the third largest tropical forests in the world, but its high rates of deforestation resulted in the decline of forest cover from 65% to 50% from 1990 to 2015.