Vinita Rodrigues, Vivek Mustafa Gilani, Saranya Acharya, Maya Seshagiri
Extended abstract 3-240-26 Urban Poor Women in India, living in heat-trapping buildings in conditions of cooling-energy poverty (i.e. inadequate energy access for operating active cooling appliances and no access to passive cooling solutions) are inequitably impacted by climate-crisis induced extreme heat which causes health issues stemming from homes being too hot to sleep in before midnight and social reproduction roles which require them to wake up hours before other family members. Paradoxically, women are under-represented in the ‘green economy’ response to extreme heat (eg. cool roof programmes). The paper presents insights from, and the way forward from the field-test phase of a Women's Heat Action Cooperative (WEHAC) programme underway in an informal settlement in Chennai, India to enhance access to passive cooling solutions co-created with the community. The WEHAC offers cooling products and services to residents who pay an affordable estimated monthly-installments (EMI) to the WEHAC to maintain a revolving fund that serves as future investment capital. The paper presents learnings related to structure of financial/social incentives for initial mobilization of women’s entrepreneurial interests, outcomes of testing solutions to underwrite risk of residents not paying EMIs, and elucidates the process of establishing an ecosystem of trades, material supply chains to foster a locally-owned decentralized response to cooling energy poverty. It also presents results of an ongoing effort to establish a One-Stop-Shop ( technical and finance assistance facility) for WEHACs where finance and in-kind assistance is derived from a multitude of sources (e.g. microfinance institutions, impact investment) and through repurposing municipal development schemes. The paper presents results from the applied policy research work of policy ‘hacking’ (i.e reinterpreting, repurposing) of existing policies (eg. heat action plans, women’s empowerment programs) and unlocking financing from under-subscribed schemes. Download presentation.
Abstract Environmental transition is increasingly governed through multilevel systems in which authority is shared across supranational, national, and regional governments. Existing research on multilevel climate governance has focused on coordination, implementation, and compliance, largely treating environmental objectives as politically consistent among territorial levels once adopted. This paper argues that multilevel governance also reshapes the political content of environmental transition itself, a process we call political reinterpretation: common climate objectives are selectively reprioritized and reframed as they enter territorially distinct political arenas. We test this argument using text analysis of parliamentary discourse, applying structural topic modeling to 10,564 speeches delivered across Spain’s seventeen Autonomous Communities (ACs) between 2019 and 2024 to uncover five substantive dimensions of environmental-transition discourse directly from legislative text. We find that these dimensions are distributed unevenly across regions, and, more critically, that Spain’s major statewide parties do not reproduce their national environmental-transition profiles across territories: territorial variation in the topics they prioritize within each party systematically exceeds the variation observed between parties operating in the same region. This pattern holds even among parties whose organizational structure gives them a strong incentive toward national uniformity, indicating that territorial incentives can outweigh the integrative pressures of statewide party organization. Understanding climate governance in decentralized systems therefore requires attention not only to how environmental policy is implemented across levels of government, but to how its political meaning is reconstructed as authority becomes territorially dispersed.
Crises confront decision makers with persistent, interdependent demands that intensify under conditions of urgency, uncertainty, distributed authority, and public scrutiny. They must act rapidly while exercising judgment, coordinate centrally while preserving local discretion, and stabilize operations while remaining attentive to consequences that may emerge later and elsewhere. Drawing on paradox theory, crisis governance, and research on decision making in extreme contexts, this dissertation examines how such tensions become governable in practice. Its overarching research question is: How do decision makers navigate paradoxical tensions in crisis response? The dissertation develops a cross-level account spanning the response system, the central–local interface, and concrete decision episodes. The first study examines crisis response at the system level through a systematic review of 211 empirical studies published between 1993 and 2025 in management and public administration journals. It develops the Extreme Context Response System (ECRS) model, which links response mechanisms to operational and environmental outcomes and to feedback channels characterized by different temporal latencies. The review identifies recurring patterns in how consequences unfold over time. Operational outcomes tend to stabilize before environmental outcomes become visible; feedback travels through partially distinct channels; and time pressure concentrates attention on immediate operational priorities. Where environmental feedback is weak, delayed, or politically muted, operational primacy can displace risks and contribute to later environmental extremes. The second study examines hybrid crisis governance at the central–local interface during the Dutch public-health response to COVID-19. It focuses on the relationship between a central coordinating body and 25 regionally autonomous Municipal Health Services. The analysis identifies three coupled coordination mechanisms: a decision ledger, an exception interface, and a synchronized cadence. These mechanisms preserve decisions and their rationales, provide a bounded route for surfacing locally unworkable directions, and establish recurring moments for coordination, adjustment, and reconsideration. Together, they sustain accountability, predictable timing, and shared understanding while keeping central direction and local discretion jointly workable across levels. The third study examines concrete decision episodes in which leaders experienced paradoxical demands as undecidable. Drawing on interviews with all 25 regional public-health leaders, internal organizational documents, and field-based involvement, the study shows how leaders relied on ethical consideration when protocols, categories, and formal authority did not fully settle what should be done. Four recurring domains emerged: allocative prioritization, rule interpretation, temporal sequencing, and cross-audience alignment. Across these domains, leaders weighed duties, procedures, anticipated consequences, and audience expectations in order to render action defensible under uncertainty and scrutiny. These studies interconnect and conceptualize crisis governance as a cross-level process in which consequences, coordination, and ethical accountability remain connected over time. The integrated argument is that paradoxical tensions remain navigable when later consequences remain visible, cross-level tensions remain revisable, and difficult action remains defensible while response is still unfolding. The dissertation contributes to research on extreme contexts, crisis governance, and organizational paradox by connecting temporal, organizational, and ethical dimensions of crisis response. It further identifies practical design principles for response systems that preserve visibility of delayed consequences, support adaptation across interfaces, and sustain accountable decision making under pressure.