A new study fills a major evidence gap by examining how advice from climate advisory bodies, such as the UK’s Climate Change Committee, actually influences climate policy.
A peer-reviewed study in Climate Policy has broken new ground in climate governance research by analysing how independent climate advisory bodies influence government decisions, focusing on the UK’s Climate Change Committee (CCC) – the oldest such institution in the world.
More than 40 countries have now established climate advisory bodies, and the findings provide timely and critical evidence for improving the effectiveness of their policy impact.
What increases policy impact?
Despite the growing role of climate advisory bodies, there has been little systemic research into the policy impact of their recommendations.
Researchers Harriet Dudley, James Holmes, Andrew Jordan and Irene Lorenzoni are the first to empirically analyse how governments respond to advisory input, using a new method to assess uptake. They analysed UK government responses to the CCC’s recommendations from 2009–2020.
The research found that 23% of the CCC’s recommendations were accepted by the UK government, and only 2% in full.
The findings shed light on the characteristics most likely to influence policy:
- For mitigation recommendations, those with a cross-sectoral focus (involving more than one policy area) were over four times more likely to be accepted.
- For adaptation, the only significant predictor of acceptance was repetition: repeated recommendations were nearly five times more likely to be accepted.
- All accepted recommendations were more likely to be short, direct and clear, including a specific addressee and a single action point.
Lessons for climate governance
The study has wide implications for how advisory bodies are designed and used worldwide. By identifying the features that improve the uptake of climate advice, the findings offer a roadmap for making advisory input more actionable.
The authors emphasise that future research is needed: for example, to consider other factors that influence government responses, or to assess how far accepted recommendations are implemented.
However, as more countries establish independent climate advisory bodies, the current research fills a crucial gap in our understanding of how expert advice becomes policy – or not.
