Climate Change Mitigation Kit

Municipalities throughout Europe are increasingly pursuing climate action. The piqued interest and necessity are coupled with rising demand for innovative solutions, ideas, and strategies. To implement these strategies for climate change mitigation, municipalities need guidance, access to funding, and metrics to measure their progress. Against this background, in the framework of the EUKI project BEACON, adelphi and FC.ID – FCUL of the University of Lisbon have put together a toolkit for local climate action: The Climate Change Mitigation Kit (CCM Kit). The CCM Kit bridges the gap between theory and practice to provide municipalities best practice solutions to their local climate change action needs. The CCM Kit consists of three parts: The Roadmap for Local Climate Action (sources of inspiration and concrete ideas and examples for climate change mitigation), the Indicators Menu (indicators and metrics linked with the actions in the Roadmap), and the Guidelines (instructions on implementing the Roadmap and Indicators Menu).

The Roadmap

The Roadmap is a science-based compilation of policy briefs providing a comprehensive “roadmap” for climate action at the municipal level and is designed for European and other OECD countries. It is a guide to help local governments on their climate action pathways, which can be adapted to their local contexts. It addresses the existing gap between what science suggests and what would be feasible for local government actors. In addition, the Roadmap aims to promote understanding of the scope and cross-sectoral nature of the climate change challenge. It highlights existing linkages between various local actions, projects, and other related municipal climate change initiatives, with the goal of reducing the burden on municipalities and increasing effectiveness and efficiency.

The selected action areas are: Governance, Education and Communication, Land Use (Agriculture, Forestry and Other Land Use), Consumption Patterns, Waste Management, Energy, Transportation and Mobility, Spatial and Urban Planning.

The recommendations can be integrated into a municipality's core competency areas and are mainly anchored in IPCC guidelines. Each recommendation is also linked to a relevant Sustainable Development Goal. This allows the municipality to move forward on both dimensions (climate action and sustainable development) simultaneously. Throughout the Roadmap, case examples and practical examples are provided to flesh out and support the recommendations. The case examples draw on experiences from implemented projects around Europe, while practical examples offer general suggestions and tips for concrete next steps.

Indicators Menu

Drawing on a wide variety of sources, the Indicators Menu provides a list of 140 distinct indicators. Of these 140, 44 were selected by experts to be enriched with nationally specified information on funding opportunities related to the individual indicators and data resources to help measure them.

The Indicators Menu consists of two parts: an easy-to-navigate document giving an overview of the chosen 44, which provides selected key information pertaining to them, and a larger excel file with the specifics, links, and further information, and which also includes the other 100 indicators. The selected action areas in the Indicators Menu correspond to those in the Roadmap and each indicator is also filed under a recommendation mirrored in the Roadmap. For information on the recommendations please reference the Roadmap. The indicators are intended to serve as an inspiration and are not prescriptive; they can be adjusted and amended to fit local and national contexts. Their implementation and usefulness should be seen in the context of the wider CCM Kit and the planning steps as outlined in the Guidelines. 

The Guidelines

The final part of the CCM Kit is the “Guidelines”. They serve as an accompanying piece for the implementation of the Kit and are divided into four steps: Map, Structure, Shape, and Implement. The first step helps municipalities get an overview of their current mitigation efforts. Structuring then aids them in adapting their ideas to the framework of the CCM Kit. The third step, Shape, guides municipalities in shaping their next steps for climate action by utilising the Roadmap to get inspired for new ideas. A final step, Implement, helps create a plan to track and monitor the chosen actions, in part using the indicators, to ensure long-term success.

The Kit is available in eight European languages (EN, DE, BG, CS, EL, PL, PT, RO) and provides tailored national data sources and funding information for the Czech, Greek, Polish, and Romanian contexts.