With the adoption of the Paris Agreement on 2015 a historic outcome was achieved. For the first time, almost all countries of the world were able to come to terms in general on a legally binding, global climate protection agreement. 

But even though a majority of the world’s population lives in cities, the Paris Agreement does not explicitly focus on this crucial target group. The international climate protection policy is, of course, primarily concerned with the nation states. However, the success of the agreement – so the main thesis of the chapter – will above all be decided in the growing cities and metropolitan areas of the world.

There is a need for a variety of specific climate neutrality concepts that differentiate between the underlying structural, climatic, and political circumstances in the respective countries. Within this chapter the city of Berlin is taken as example for such a climate neutrality concept for a large city in the European Union.

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