Perils and chances of local-level cooperation in implementing a climate action plan

Local actors assume a key role in achieving carbon neutrality as it starts with joint efforts on the ground. However, their role in the governing of pathways to carbon low futures remain underresearched. This includes local stakeholders in the German university city of Marburg, which declared a „Klimanotstand“ (climate emergency) on June 28th, 2019. Based on approximately 25 semi-structured interviews with experts and representatives from both, the municipality and civil society engaged in climate protection, observational data of their interactions, reports and policy documents, this paper studies the impact of institutional arrangements between local-level government and civil society initiatives in implementing the city’s action plan to carbon neutrality by 2030. While both sides committed to close collaboration in the process, their working relations have partly developed hazardous and conflictual. Through a stakeholder-mapping exercise, our research identifies the barriers to cooperative interactions when elaborating the concrete steps to implement the action plan. Preliminary analysis points to differential understandings or framings of and attitudes to participatory governance and citizen engagement between the municipality and civil society but also among different civil society initiatives. Our action-research approach further allows for generating insights into the impact of different institutional arrangements, based on the case of Marburg, on the implementation process, and potential promising practices which go beyond token approaches of giving citizens and civil society a voice.