Climate Impact Assessment by Default: the Climate Emergency Status and Local-Level Policymaking

Starting with the city of Konstanz, around 60 German cities declared a climate emergency in 2019. While this declaration is predominantly of a symbolic nature nature, as it indicates that the local policymakers are willing to take climate action, in many cities this status obliges the local council to assess the climatic impact of any policy decision. Climate impact assessment corresponds to a specific form of horizontal policy integration, which gives priority to climate concerns when deciding on other sectoral policy issues. In other words, the declaration of a climate emergency establishes a decision-making system in which climate impact assessments must be carried out on a routine basis. We expect this new decision-making procedure to have far-reaching consequences for how local-level parliaments and bureaucracies operate, since they now have to engage in more demanding policy analysis and horizontal coordination. How have the processes in the local parliaments changed? How have the processes in the local bureaucracies changed? And how, if at all, has the relationship between elected politicians and bureaucrats changed? These research questions guide this study, in which we provide insights from three cities that have declared a climate emergency. The database consists of interviews and document analyses. We consider the German case to be insightful for drawing conclusions on the consequences of climate impact assessments made by default and for providing a better understanding of the politics of policy integration.