Introduction

Throughout the course of this book, we have undertaken analysis that delineates the emergence and functioning of TCCG and examines the new authority dynamics and sources of legitimacy that such initiatives draw upon and create. From this analysis, it is clear that there is a great deal of climate governance activity going on outside the halls of multilateral treaty negotiations. This governance activity is institutionally innovative, operating across multiple scales and engaging a wide range of actors in the global response to climate change. Yet perhaps the most important question has yet to be addressed: what does it all add up to? In other words, so what?

Chronicling and analysing the world of transnational climate governance initiatives is not the same as demonstrating that they are having a significant impact on the global response to climate change. For many commentators, such activity is merely a distraction from the hard work of addressing the climate crisis, either because it does not impact upon the real power politics of the issue or because the momentum for change comes from below (Soroos 2001; Bond 2012). We are optimistic that TCCG cannot merely be dismissed as an irrelevance, though we are cognizant that our grounds for optimism stem as much from the understanding of the potential for TCCG as they do from concrete evidence of accomplishments of TCCG initiatives to date. As we explore further in this chapter, establishing both the basis upon which such accomplishments might be measured and accruing substantial evidence in this regard remain challenging and relatively unexplored research tasks. We also note that the plurality of TCCG this book has revealed implies that some initiatives may represent useful societal responses to climate change, while others may not. To begin to address the question of how TCCG is having an effect on responses to climate change, and the effectiveness of such endeavours, in this chapter we explore if and how TCCG is reshaping the architecture of global climate governance. We scrutinise whether and how it is having an impact upon the climate change problem, and we discuss the pathways through which these initiatives might advance the goals of transitioning to a low-carbon future.