Local Governmentrs responding to climate change: addressing mitigation and adaptation in small and medium sized communities

Since 1993 local climate protection has become a subject of a growing interest both in Europe and internationally, with a strong focus on climate change mitigation. This was also the year ICLEI’s Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) Campaign was launched. Since then there has been an emerging movement of local governments implementing pioneering actions in various fields to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. More recently the need to adapt to a changing climate has been recognised as an essential element in local responses, to address the impact of climate change and improve community resilience to inevitable changes. The focus of the paper is on small and medium-sized communities, because smaller local governments tend to remain outside the debates on climate change and energy consumption, which is addressed by the metropolitan areas and world capitals. Their challenges are numerous and include a lack of capacity, i.e. staff and finances, and a more limited awareness on their potential impact of climate change, which tends to (still) be more loudly discussed in scientific circles than in the circle where direct impact is expected. However, in smaller communities there is also greater flexibility to test and demonstrate responses – so there is a wide variety of good practices that have been developed in smaller towns.