Planning, Monitoring and Integrating Climate Action and SDGs in Belgium: The Rise of Techno-administrative structures in a Multi-Layered System

Vander Putten, Norman [UCL]

Since 2015, Belgian (sub-)national authorities have, with a varying intensity, progressively put in place legal and administrative structures to ensure that the implementation of the 2030 agenda is planned, (quantitatively) monitored and coordinated. Among the seventeen SDGs, the implementation of climate action (SDG 12), in particular, benefits from specific legislation, instruments, targets and governance mechanisms. The aim of this presentation is to firstly present a comparative overview of SDG and climate governance in Belgium. It will do so by evaluating the degree of implementation of five governance tools at the Belgian federal and/or federated (Regions and Communities) level. Secondly, based on this descriptive analysis, this paper will argue that while these five areas may be deepened, one of the main shifts in the institutional governance that occurred in the past 10 years is the progressive elaboration of techno-administrative expert and epistemic structures such as climate and environment risk assessment centers, strategic bodies, official indicators, refined GHG emissions inventories.