Municipalities in Climate Emergency: Processes, Properties and Focuses

With the worldwide movement of local communities and municipalities, as well as state and regional governments, to declare a climate emergency, they acknowledge the urgent need for climate protection and initiate or increase climate mitigation measures or goals. Since the City of Constance became the first German municipality to declare a climate emergency on 2 May 2019, 70 further German municipalities have followed. With a self-financed, empirical study, the IÖW researches – in cooperation with the Berlin Climate Emergency Initiative – the hypotheses, that we are now witnessing the awakening of a promising new stakeholder in local climate protection policy. Additionally the IÖW intends to support communication and networking between these municipalities, which were invited by the Berlin Climate Emergency Initiative for a fist meeting on 2 November 2019.