title: National climate policies across Europe and their impacts on cities strategies.
abstract: Globally, efforts are underway to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change impacts at the local level. However, there is a poor understanding of the relationship between city strategies on climate change mitigation and adaptation and the relevant policies at national and European level. This paper describes a comparative study and evaluation of cross-national policy. It reports the findings of studying the climate change strategies or plans from 200 European cities from Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. The study highlights the shared responsibility of global, European, national, regional and city policies. An interpretation and illustration of the influences from international and national networks and policy makers in stimulating the development of local strategies and actions is proposed. It was found that there is no archetypical way of planning for climate change, and multiple interests and motivations are inevitable. Our research warrants the need for a multi-scale approach to climate policy in the future, mainly ensuring sufficient capacity and resource to enable local authorities to plan and respond to their specific climate change agenda for maximising the management potentials for translating environmental challenges into opportunities.
authors.affiliation: School of Civil Engineering & Geosciences and Research Fellow with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK. Electronic address: Oliver.heidrich@ncl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: O
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Heidrich
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, PO Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands. Electronic address: dianareckien@gmail.com.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Reckien
authors.affiliation: Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), Alameda de Urquijo 4, 48008 Bilbao, Spain. Electronic address: marta.olazabal@bc3research.org.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Olazabal
authors.affiliation: Queen's University Belfast, School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Ashby Building, Stranmillis Road, Belfast BT9 5AH, UK. Electronic address: a.foley@qub.ac.uk.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Foley
authors.affiliation: Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis - National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IMAA), C.da S.Loja, 85050 Tito Scalo (PZ), Italy. Electronic address: monica.salvia@imaa.cnr.it.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Salvia
authors.affiliation: Technical University of Madrid, School of Architecture, Department of Urban and Spatial Planing, Avenida de Juan de Herrera, 4, 28040 Madrid, Spain. Electronic address: sonia.degregorio@upm.es.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: de Gregorio Hurtado
authors.affiliation: University of Tartu, Department of Public Health, Ravila 19, 50411 Tartu, Sweden; Estonia and Principal Research Engineer at Umea University, Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine, 901 85 Umeå, Sweden. Electronic address: Hans.orru@ut.ee.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Orru
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, PO Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands. Electronic address: j.flacke@utwente.nl.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Flacke
authors.affiliation: University of Trento, Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, Via Mesiano 77, 38123 Trento, Italy. Electronic address: davide.geneletti@unitn.it.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Geneletti
authors.affiliation: Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis - National Research Council of Italy (CNR-IMAA), C.da S.Loja, 85050 Tito Scalo (PZ), Italy. Electronic address: filomena.pietrapertosa@imaa.cnr.it.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Pietrapertosa
authors.affiliation: Université de Paris-Est, 5 boulevard Descartes, Cité Descartes, Champs-sur-Marne 77454, Marne-la-Vallée Cedex 2, France; Researcher at Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement (CIRED), Campus du Jardin Tropical, 45 bis, Avenue de la Belle Gabrielle, 94736 Nogent-sur-Marne Cedex, France. Electronic address: hamann@centre-cired.fr.
authors.forename: J J-P
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Hamann
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton, UK. Electronic address: a.tiwary@soton.ac.uk.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tiwary
authors.affiliation: Energy and Environment Division of Tecnalia Research & Innovation, Edificio 700 Parque Tecnológico de Bizkaia, E-48160 Derio, Spain. Electronic address: efren.feliu@tecnalia.com.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Feliu
authors.affiliation: Earth Systems Engineering at the School of Civil Engineering & Geosciences and Research Fellow with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK. Electronic address: Richard.Dawson@ncl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: R J
authors.initials: RJ
authors.lastname: Dawson
mesh_terms: D002947:Cities; D057231:Climate Change; D005060:Europe; D006801:Humans; D011050:Policy Making; D014507:Urbanization
keywords: Adaptation; Climate change; Local climate policy; Mitigation; National climate policy