Development of Sustainable Cities - Policy development and implementation challenges of climate mitigating efforts in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Abstract

The rise of subnational governments promoting the climate change agenda introduces new scenarios, goals and challenges. In this thesis are addressed the challenges in planning and implementing climate change policies in Belo Horizonte, a big metropolis in Brazil. The city launched its local plan for reducing the GHG emissions encompassing low-carbon policies, PREGEE, pursuing the title of sustainable city. In this study its three main axes - transportation, sanitation and energy are analyzed, according three category of analysis: local government capacity, local framing, and political actors and factors. The analysis was sustained by the data collection on documents and interviews, used to support stakeholder analysis and policy implementation theory. In this sense, this study investigates the challenges of implementing the low-carbon policies in Belo Horizonte s context and background, taking into account also the national framework for the climate change agenda. It is aimed to provide a better understanding on those challenges in order to promote a better path to low-carbon policies and actions planning and implementation processes.