Ranking local climate policy: assessing the mitigation and adaptation activities of 104 German cities

Antje Otto (), Kristine Kern, Wolfgang Haupt, Peter Eckersley and Annegret H. Thieken
Additional contact information
Antje Otto: University of Potsdam
Kristine Kern: Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space e.V. (IRS)
Wolfgang Haupt: Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space e.V. (IRS)
Peter Eckersley: Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space e.V. (IRS)
Annegret H. Thieken: University of Potsdam

Climatic Change, 2021, vol. 167, issue 1, No 5, 23 pages

Abstract: Abstract Climate mitigation and climate adaptation are crucial tasks for urban areas and can involve synergies as well as trade-offs. However, few studies have examined how mitigation and adaptation efforts relate to each other in a large number of differently sized cities, and therefore we know little about whether forerunners in mitigation are also leading in adaptation or if cities tend to focus on just one policy field. This article develops an internationally applicable approach to rank cities on climate policy that incorporates multiple indicators related to (1) local commitments on mitigation and adaptation, (2) urban mitigation and adaptation plans and (3) climate adaptation and mitigation ambitions. We apply this method to rank 104 differently sized German cities and identify six clusters: climate policy leaders, climate adaptation leaders, climate mitigation leaders, climate policy followers, climate policy latecomers and climate policy laggards. The article seeks explanations for particular cities’ positions and shows that coping with climate change in a balanced way on a high level depends on structural factors, in particular city size, the pathways of local climate policies since the 1990s and funding programmes for both climate mitigation and adaptation.

Keywords: Climate mitigation; Climate adaptation; Climate policy integration; Urban planning; City ranking; Germany (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-021-03142-9 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:climat:v:167:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1007_s10584-021-03142-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10584

DOI: 10.1007/s10584-021-03142-9

Access Statistics for this article

Climatic Change is currently edited by M. Oppenheimer and G. Yohe

More articles in Climatic Change from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().