Multi-level Governance, Climate Change, and Municipal Solid Waste Management: Insights from Murmansk, Russia

The past three decades witnessed a proliferation of academic research on climate change governance in cities around the world. This research has largely focused on case studies of large cities with populations of over several million. However, Arctic cities have received little attention in the urban governance literature, despite being located in the region most impacted by climate change. This paper examines climate change governance in the Russian city of Murmansk, evaluating how the theoretical framework of multi-level governance—derived primarily from EU and North American scholarship and experience—operates in the Russian urban context. We take municipal solid waste (MSW) management in Murmansk as a case study to better understand how climate change issues are framed and governed by the Murmansk city administration. We assess interactions of Murmansk authorities across vertical and horizontal dimensions, with regional authorities and non-state actors (voluntary associations and NGOs) in MSW governance. The research is based on document analysis, news media, and semi-structured interviews with state and non-state stakeholders in Murmansk. Our analysis finds that Murmansk authorities do not frame climate change as a challenge needing to be addressed by explicit climate-related policies. It also shows the absence of major, multi-level governance (MLG) characteristics in the Murmansk case. Our findings suggest further research is needed to better understand urban climate change governance practices in more centralized states like Russia and this contributes to a critical reflection about the limits and utility of the MLG theoretical framework in many parts of the world.