The anchoring effect of climate change acts: a policy streams analysis of Ireland’s Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021

The number of national governments adopting climate change acts (CCAs) to guide the development of climate policy has risen rapidly since the Paris Agreement. As framework legislation that lays down general principles and obligations for climate policy-making, CCAs seek to provide anchoring points for ambitious future legislation to reduce emissions in specific sectors. Despite extensive research on the negotiation of CCAs, understanding of the factors affecting their ability to generate strong anchoring effects on other climate policies remains limited. This article address this deficit by utilising Kingdon’s multiple streams framework to analyse debates in the Irish Houses of the Oireachtas on the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021, including provisions for sector emissions ceilings across the Irish economy. It examines how political agreement was secured on the case for greater action on climate change (problem stream), the CCA and sector emissions ceilings as a policy response (policy stream), and cross-party support for these measures (political stream). Although consensus on the policy stream was achieved with limited dissent, different interpretations of the climate problem emerged during discussions on the Act’s more specific provisions. Support was also secured on its general goals and structure, though greater tensions surfaced over the ramifications of sectoral emissions ceilings for equity between urban and rural areas and more and less affluent sections of the population. Consensus in the political stream proved challenging as representatives used contentious elements of the Act to question other parties’ commitments to climate action, just transition, and procedural fairness. The paper concludes by arguing that consensus in the political stream is crucial in ensuring CCAs exert a long-term anchoring effect on climate policy while recognising that this depends on the forms of problem consensus achieved and careful balancing of the design of CCAs between framework obligations and specific provisions.