This chapter identifies and analyses the main climate change strategies at federal, state and municipal levels in Brazil, focusing on two processes: (i) the favourable context for decentralised policymaking and (ii) the scope for experimental policymaking and associated learning process among the constituent units. Two features of Brazilian federalism are highlighted. One is the fact that all levels of government have constitutional responsibilities for climate change policy, with a distinguished range of policymaking powers relevant to climate change governance, including both mitigation and adaptation. The subnational level of government (state and municipal) has been taking the lead in climate governance, especially to compensate for the federal level refusal to deal with climate change. Brazilian states and municipalities have developed climate change policies in order to govern issues relating to both mitigation and adaptation. The second is the availability of multiple forums for ‘experimental’ policymaking triggering processes of policy diffusion among the constituent units. Such forums constitute institutional arrangements that encompass multi-level units as well as agents from different segments of society, such as transnational cooperation networks and agencies, research groups, among others.

Indonesia represents an interesting case for analysis of the relationship between multi-level governance and climate governance for three main reasons. It is a highly decentralized country; it is a major contributor to land-based greenhouse gas emissions; and it is extremely vulnerable to climate change. The chapter first provides a broad overview on Indonesia’s climate governance in the context of decentralization, and then focuses on sub-national governance of climate change mitigation in the land use sector, the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the country. Our research suggests that Indonesia illustrates key advantages of highly decentralized polity structures. Political autonomy has facilitated sub-national climate action through direct engagement of provinces with transnational climate initiatives, and the multiplicity of forums for policymaking has allowed certain provinces to champion sub-national engagement in climate change policy. Decentralization has also facilitated experimental policies in the form of innovative sub-national jurisdictional approaches to climate action in the land use sector. At the same time, peculiarities of the decentralization approach in the land use sector have led to perverse incentives that hamper forest-based climate change mitigation action.

The United States case demonstrates the challenge of adopting and implementing effective and durable policies to address climate change in a political system that combines federalism with formal separation of powers at both federal and state levels. Federal legislative and executive branches have regularly failed in past decades to produce climate legislation, frequently limiting federal policy engagement to unilateral executive actions in select presidencies that often fail to endure. These challenges are exacerbated by growing hyper-partisanship and deep divides between states and regions in recent decades, whereby state opposition coalitions often form to veto or weaken federal initiatives. Some states have sustained their own climate policy regimes, contributing to some reductions in national emissions and providing potential models for future federal adoption. But state policy diffusion has generally proven uneven and demonstrated little capacity to motivate vertical diffusion through federal adoption.

Using climate-induced displacement in the United States as an example, this chapter puts forth ideas that climate change resiliency, which has primarily focused on impacts to social-ecological systems, should be expanded to include ‘governance resiliency’ – the resilience of governance itself, or the processes through which impacts and effects are managed. Climate change governance has largely focused on spatial relationships, including vertical, multi-layered ones from the local to international levels, and horizontal relationships among various governmental and non-governmental actors. With effects as prevalent, long-lasting, and regressive as those arising from climate change, however, this spatial approach lacks two governance dimensions: the temporal, and the more imperceptible structural dimension, which is connected to systemic marginalisation commonly associated with inequality, poverty, and discrimination. The chapter analyses the spatial, temporal, and structural dimensions together through five fact scenarios that consider sudden and gradual changes as well as decisions not to govern. In considering such multidimensional governance and the scenarios, this chapter argues that transformative governance, or what we refer to as transformative resiliency, is required to address systemic inequities and to achieve sustainable governance resiliency.