1. Introduction
Sustainable development has attracted significant attention from scholars, policymakers, and industry since 1987, when it was first proposed in the Brundtland report [
1,
2]. While it is a global issue, achieving sustainable development also requires local community-level efforts [
1,
3]. In 1992, Agenda 21, which is an action plan for pursuing sustainable development, was adopted at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development [
4]. Within Agenda 21, a local approach called Local Agenda 21 (LA21), which addresses community-level sustainable development planning and implementation, was introduced [
4]. Worldwide, the LA21 process has been adopted by communities to form and implement community sustainability plans (CSPs). A CSP, created through the LA21 process, embodies a holistic perspective of sustainability, integrating social, environmental, and economic aspects into a community’s sustainability visions, goals, and targets [
5,
6]. Due to their holistic and integrated approach, CSPs tend to cover a broad range of topics, including energy, land use, transportation, water, waste, air, housing, civic engagement, social infrastructure, safety, financial security, employment, local economy, food security, ecological diversity, and climate change [
7]. In essence, CSPs are a localized version of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals [
7]. Among these topics, climate change, as a serious global issue, has been included in most plans [
7].
Due to the massive anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), mainly carbon dioxide (CO
2), the global temperature is rising, and climate change is happening [
8,
9]. Human economic activities, such as burning fossil fuels, destroying forests, and practicing modern agriculture, are the main contributors to the emissions [
10]. The adverse effects caused by climate change, such as a higher frequency and greater intensity of extreme weather, the destruction of animals’ and plants’ habitats, and the increased severity of water shortage, are threatening ecological integrity, economic development, and social stability [
10]. While numerous policies and initiatives have been introduced at international and national levels to address the issue, action plans at the local level are also necessary, since local communities have direct control over many emission sources, such as public transportation, heating/cooling municipal buildings, waste management, and land usage, and indirect control over other emissions [
11,
12,
13]. Therefore, implementing CSPs that cover climate change topics offers an important avenue toward reducing emissions.
Integral to local sustainability planning that is informed by the LA21 process is the principle that CSP goals must be developed and achieved through “democratic dialogue and decision-making” [
14] (p. 148). Thus, implementing CSPs often involves stakeholder collaboration, which can take the form of a cross-sector social partnership. Cross-sector social partnerships are voluntary collaborations among organizations from two or more sectors (i.e., private, public, and/or nonprofit) that have agreed to collectively address a mutually prioritized social problem [
15,
16,
17].
When a partnership forms to address local sustainability issues, it is also common for a new governance arrangement to be created in order to help coordinate partner action for implementing agreed upon sustainability initiatives [
18,
19]. Such arrangements—referred to in this article as partnership structures—are made up of organizational features that are designed to improve partner coordination and goal attainment [
20]. Examples of such features include processes that facilitate ongoing partner communications and engagement, an entity, such as a secretariat that oversees partnership activities, as well as monitoring and evaluation systems that assess partnership progress on its sustainability goals [
20,
21,
22]. Past research indicates that the structural features of a partnership can influence outcomes [
23]. For example, processes that facilitate collaborative decision-making have been linked to higher levels of social capital in partnerships [
24]. Thus, to create effective partnerships and make better use of the collaborative approach to addressing local sustainability issues, it is vital to study whether and how different partnership structural features can influence climate outcomes.
Despite the pressing issue of climate change, little is known about the effectiveness of local partnerships and plans that tackle the issue [
25]. Past research on collaborative approaches to address sustainability issues have primarily focused on understanding the new governance structures that form to coordinate partner action [
26]. Few studies have examined how different features of collaborative governance structures influence outcomes [
23,
27], and the studies that have tended to focus on partner outcomes, such as human or social capital accrued by partner organizations as a result of partnering for sustainability [
28,
29,
30]. Very little, if any, research has been done to understand how structure affects plan outcomes, such as reductions in GHG emissions [
20,
21]. Conducting such studies is challenging due to the limited availability of partnership structure and plan outcome data. In addition to a lack of data availability, it is difficult to obtain objective data on plan outcomes that can be compared across communities. This is because there are no standard metrics or targets that have been universally adopted by communities with CSPs. One objective metric that can be compared across communities is GHG emissions; still, the communities that track and report on their GHG emissions reductions are in the minority. Of the 106 communities that participated in our survey, only 24 had publicly available GHG emissions reduction data. This paucity of data limits the number of communities that we can include in our study for that specific analysis. While some of our results are based on a small sample, our data are adequate to highlight initial insights about the key structural features, as well as provide exploratory points that can guide future research on this critical topic.
The present study examines the relationship between the partnership structural features and CSP climate change mitigation outcomes. Specifically, this study explores how the abovementioned structural features might influence three climate change outcomes: (1) proactivity of the plan’s community-wide climate change actions, (2) progress made on climate goals stated in the CSP, and (3) reduction in community-wide greenhouse gas emissions.
2. The Role of Cross-Sector Social Partnerships in CSP Implementation
As mentioned, cross-sector social partnerships are often part of how CSPs are formulated and implemented [
19]. Four different types of partnerships have been identified in the research on cross-sector social partnerships: (1) private-public partnerships, (2) nonprofit-public partnerships, (3) nonprofit-private partnerships, and (4) multi-stakeholder partnerships [
16,
31]. While all four partnership types have been associated with implementing projects or initiatives that are linked to sustainability goals in CSPs [
16], the focus of this article is on multi-stakeholder partnerships. Multi-stakeholder partnerships have one or more partners from each of the public, private, and nonprofit sectors [
31]. Multi-stakeholder partnerships typically involve a wide array of stakeholders, a strategy which is generally accepted as best practice for addressing problems that are beyond the capacity and jurisdiction that any single organization could address alone [
16,
32]. For example, typical partners in CSP multi-stakeholder partnerships include the local government, universities, environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), community associations, local businesses, industry associations, etc. [
3].
Implementing CSPs through multi-stakeholder partnerships means that diverse partners are engaged, which is thought to bring together diverse knowledge, experience, resources, and perspectives needed to address complex challenges [
33,
34,
35]. Indeed, recent studies provide empirical evidence that more comprehensive forms of collaboration are linked to desirable outcomes for climate change [
36] and support community-wide plan implementation and goal realization [
37]. However, in practice, these large partnerships are highly complex and demand significant investment to create, develop, and sustain [
38,
39].
The challenges and limitations associated with multi-stakeholder partnerships are attributable to factors such as the diversity of partner goals and priorities, conflicting aims and views on the precedence of different sustainability goals, and obstacles in developing collaborative modes of operating [
40]. Implementation performance of partnerships often relies on the stability of the situation, the status of the consensus among partners, and the capability of partners to accomplish tasks and take actions [
39]. The challenges can result in costly, time-consuming, and ineffective partnerships [
38,
39]. Therefore, care is required while designing and implementing partnerships so that they are applied only where appropriate and have realistic expectations about their potential [
41].
Past research suggests that certain governance arrangements or structures can help to lessen the impact of the above-mentioned challenges of multi-stakeholder partnerships [
32,
42]. For example, the design of decision-making processes has been found to influence the capacity of a partnership to achieve its sustainability goals [
24]. Likewise, formalized systems for monitoring and reporting on partnership progress and impact have been shown to have a positive impact on ongoing partner engagement [
38,
43]. Clarke [
20] proposes that there are five key features of a partnership’s implementation structure that will determine its effectiveness when implementing a CSP, they are: (1) oversight, (2) monitoring and evaluation, (3) partner engagement, (4) communications, and (5) community-wide actions.
2.1. Oversight
Research on CSP partnership suggests that oversight responsibilities can be assumed by an arm’s length organization, the local government, or a multi-organizational body, such as a committee or secretariat made up of different partners [
20,
44,
45]. The oversight structure oversees and monitors plan implementation and identifies—or helps the partners to identify—issue-based short-term actions [
20,
44,
45]. Having an oversight body that allows partners from different municipal departments and sectors to get involved in decision-making, monitoring, evaluation, and collaborative activities could improve the availability of data and resources and help with generating responsive and innovative solutions [
44,
45]. A participatory oversight structure that allows for collaborative decision-making has been shown to be important for improving partnership performance regarding setting periodical targets, making high-quality decisions, information sharing, and enhanced partner motivation and commitment [
46,
47,
48]. For example, Barcelona (Spain) has a multi-stakeholder council, which oversees the partnership’s sustainability activities, deals with communication, monitors progress towards partnership goals, and engages partners from various sectors [
35]. Barcelona’s oversight council helped to coordinate the climate actions taken by the partners and the community, and these efforts resulted in a decrease of CO
2e emissions by 29% per capita within 14 years (from 1999 to 2012) [
35]. In this study, we examine two dimensions of oversight, (1) the oversight structure, and (2) decision-making processes.
Hypothesis 1 (H1). There is a positive correlation between partnership structures that have collaborative oversight entities (composed of partner organizations) and CSP climate change mitigation outcomes.
Hypothesis 2 (H2). There is a positive correlation between partnership structures that facilitate collaborative decision-making and CSP climate change mitigation outcomes.
2.2. Monitoring and Evaluation
Monitoring and evaluation involve mechanisms for developing status and action indicators, collecting and interpreting data on an ongoing basis, and evaluating progress based on the collected data [
20,
49,
50]. Such mechanisms facilitate consistent and regular adjustments to be made to the implementation actions and initiate plan renewal as needed. The essential functions of monitoring and evaluation processes is that they facilitate the articulation of plan outcomes and impacts and help to identify areas in which improvements are required [
50]. In other words, monitoring and evaluation ensure the continuous improvement of the plan and its implementation [
20,
49,
50]. Past research suggests that having a clear sense of plan outcomes and impacts helps to orient the direction of actions and motivates partners to fulfil their commitment to the plan’s implementation [
50]. However, research has found that this is often a forgotten stage, because of time constraints, expertise, and financial resources [
50,
51]. To this end, we hypothesize:
Hypothesis 3 (H3). There is a positive correlation between partnership structures with mechanisms for monitoring and evaluation and CSP climate change mitigation outcomes.
2.3. Partner Engagement
Partner engagement mechanisms help partnerships to identify key stakeholders, engage stakeholder organizations from different sectors in the implementation of the CSP, and expand the number of partners involved on an ongoing basis [
52]. Research has shown that it is not only essential to involve key organizations in partnership activities, but also to reach a critical number and high diversity of partners for taking actions related to community-wide topics [
53,
54]. This feature is considered important, as it is thought to contribute to the diverse expertise and knowledge within the partnership, which is considered an asset to innovative problem-solving [
37,
41]. This leads to the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 4a (H4a). There is a positive correlation between partnership structures that have mechanisms for partner engagement and CSP climate change mitigation outcomes.
Conversely, it is also possible that this structural feature could create new challenges, as collaborator diversity is also known to contribute to communication and coordination problems [
55]. Such negative impacts are equally as likely to result in disengagement of some partners from the partnership, which could have a negative impact on goal achievement [
40,
56]. Thus, we also hypothesize:
Hypothesis 4b (H4b). There is a negative correlation between partnership structures that have mechanisms for partner engagement and CSP climate change mitigation outcomes.
2.4. Communications
Communication systems are composed of processes that ensure information exchange and sharing within the partnership and with the public [
20]. This structural feature helps to facilitate partner networking and keeps citizens updated and informed about CSP activities and progress. Examples of partner networking events include annual task force meetings, monthly networking breakfasts, or awards nights [
20]. Such events are designed to let partners learn from each other’s success stories, provide opportunities for new collaborations to form, and help with building new and stronger relationships among partners [
57]. Moreover, reporting to the public and disseminating findings that show the plan’s progress towards achieving local sustainability is crucial for building trust between the public and decision-makers [
57]. Besides this, the quality and quantity of the information provided by communication systems and having diverse communication approaches are both vital for organizations, in terms of understanding sustainability and planning goals, as well as knowing how to get involved [
58,
59]. Previous research shows that communication systems help to build mutual respect and understanding between partners, which improves the implementation of climate actions [
43].
Hypothesis 5 (H5). There is a positive correlation between partnership structures with communication systems and CSP climate change mitigation outcomes.
2.5. Community-Wide Actions
Community-wide actions are a structural feature of partnerships that helps to enable individual partner organizations to integrate sustainability into their own organization’s actions. This might involve partners integrating sustainability into their core values, strategic plan, and operations [
60,
61,
62]. Incentive programs, such as awards nights that provide recognition for high performing partners or free training workshops that help partners to identify areas in their organization where they can reduce waste or energy use, help promote community-wide actions [
27,
33,
38]. In partnerships with this structural feature it is not sufficient for partners to support the plan in principle and provide advice to the local government on how to implement, as the partners themselves are also expected to implement the CSP through their organizational effort [
20,
63]. Partner organizations that implemented the Montreal Community Sustainable Development Plan 2010–2015 were asked to commit to taking a certain number of sustainability actions each year and to report back to the local government on their progress [
27]. Actions taken at the individual partner level are essential constituents of a collaborative strategy, including CSP implementation, since more can be achieved when as many local organizations as possible take actions to reduce their GHG emissions [
19,
64].
Hypothesis 6a (H6a). There is a positive correlation between partnership structures with community-wide climate action and progress made towards climate change mitigation goals.
Hypothesis 6b (H6b). There is a positive correlation between partnership structures with community-wide climate action and community-wide GHG emission reductions.
6. Conclusions
The interest in community-level sustainable development has greatly increased over the last few decades, due to the realization of its importance [
84]. Since the introduction of LA21 in 1992, over 10,000 communities have adopted this approach to achieve local sustainability goals [
6,
85]. One strategy that responds to the complexity that LA21 sustainability issues present is to form cross-sector social partnerships to help with the implementation of community sustainability plans [
27]. However, a gap still exists in understanding the degree to which these partnerships address the climate issues that they are formed to resolve, and if successful, how they achieve results [
86]. The present study sought to address this gap in understanding by examining the structural features of CSP partnerships and their impact on climate outcomes.
Table 6 provides an overview of our main research findings, where ‘No’ indicates that there is no statistically significant relationship, and ‘Yes’ means that there is a positive relationship between variables. In sum, our findings suggest that three key structural features have a direct impact on climate outcomes, (1) an oversight structure that facilitates collaborative implementation, (2) decision-making by the local government partner, and (2) the proactivity of climate actions.
This study contributes to research on cross-sector social partnerships by validating past findings that overseeing the implementation of the CSP through a collaborative process tends to have direct or indirect positive effects on climate change outcomes. Moreover, since research about achieving climate goals through CSP partnerships is at an early stage, this research makes a theoretical contribution by identifying two structural features that may contribute to the achievement of better climate outcomes.
The findings from this study also have practical implications for local governments and other partners implementing local sustainability initiatives. For example, improvements can be made to oversight structures. The results of this research indicate that the communities that choose to organize implementation activities through partner collaboration have better climate outcomes. However, these results come with the caveat that due to the complexity of the issue itself and the inherent conflict among some sustainability goals, climate change policies can be challenging to plan and implement. Therefore, when addressing climate change issues, it is likely that the design of the CSP, among other situational factors, is also essential. Thus, while collaboration and partnership may contribute to achieving sustainable development, it is necessary to recognize the potential limitations of the partnership approach [
41], as well as the influence of other success factors.
This study also has some limitations. First, when answering the research question, we considered the five partnership structural features separately; however, these features could be interrelated [
20]. According to Clarke [
20], without an oversight entity, it becomes difficult to renew the plan systematically, just like without the engagement of organizations from multiple sectors, it is impossible to get them to implement the sustainability initiatives that contribute to the CSP’s goals. Also, the monitoring, evaluation, and communication systems are fundamental for complementing the initiative and maintaining the partnerships [
20]. Moreover, we only investigated the relationship between the structural features and climate change outcomes, and so it is possible that for different sustainability topics, the relationships could be different. Thus, a future study is needed to examine and compare these differences.
Another limitation of this study is that we did not examine power dynamics and other limitations of partnerships, such as the challenges of coordinating action among many and diverse partners. Future research is needed to understand better how such aspects impact CSP climate outcomes. As well as this, we cannot make claims about causality between the variables examined in the present study. Our data do not eliminate all other variables that could impact our results, and so it is possible that our findings are attributable to factors other than the partnership’s structural features. For example, the number of partners in the partnership [
54], demographic characteristics of the community, and time horizon of the plan [
87] are additional factors that have been shown to influence plan outcomes. Furthermore, our study does not escape the limitations of self-reporting that exist for most studies that use a survey design. However, the GHG data that were collected from the cCR and official local government reports should be sufficiently reliable, and self-reported survey data on GHG emissions were triangulated with these public sources. We also standardized the data before conducting statistical analysis to ensure its comparability.
For future research, case studies and surveys could be conducted to obtain information, particularly for a single topic, such as climate-specific partnerships tied to climate action plans. It would be interesting to see if climate targets embedded in local sustainability strategies and sustainability partnerships are more holistic in addressing vulnerable citizens and climate justice than those that are pursued as separate climate action strategies and partnerships. There might be other advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches that have yet to be explored and understood.
Moreover, the actual effect of proactively taking climate actions inside organizations could also be an interesting future research topic and deserves more attention. Although it has become obvious that taking actions to mitigate and adapt to climate change will be a future policy tendency, some firms continue to resist making these changes because of the relatively high costs of the actions [
75]. Taking a comprehensive view that realizes the actual short-term, long-term, ecological, social, and economic effects of climate change on firm performance can help them to make the right decision from both a social and economic view.
Finally, our study draws attention to the urgent need for publicly available climate change data at the local level, for instance, standardized community-wide GHG inventory data. Regular, ideally annual, recording of the local emissions data is required, as such data are needed to provide robust evidence of the effectiveness of climate change initiatives and plan implementation. In the absence of such data, it is difficult to differentiate between efforts that are wasting valuable resources and actions that are having real and positive climate change mitigation impacts.
In conclusion, this study highlights the potential importance of partnership structure to enabling achievement of climate mitigation. There is still an incredible amount of research and effort needed to help local communities achieve significant (80–100%) reductions in GHG emissions by 2050.