Cross cutting issues require the coordination and collaboration across different policy fields. Thus, the integration of cross-cutting issues in decision-making within and between governments constitutes a real challenge as horizontal cooperation between ministries and vertical cooperation between different levels of government are hard to achieve. Mitigation and adaptation to climate change are prime examples for such cross-cutting issues affecting various actors and policy fields. Climate policy integration is particularly challenging in federal states where responsibilities for policy-making are not only distributed among different ministries but also among different levels of government. To increase our understanding of how climate concerns are integrated into decision-making in federal states, CLIP-IN investigates climate policy integration and the effectiveness of climate strategies in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

The research project investigates how governments in these countries integrate existing climate policies both horizontally and vertically. How did climate strategies evolve over time, which experiences have been achieved in these countries, and were integrated strategies successfully implemented? How did countries learn from good practices and challenges that have been encountered in the implementation of earlier strategies and are there overlaps and synergies with other strategy processes, particularly in the field of sustainable development?

The project analyses and compares the development, implementation and effectiveness of climate mitigation strategies in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. By way of example, the integration of climate concerns into building and small-space heating policies will be analysed in order to identify good practices and remaining challenges. Research will take stock of developments on both the federal and the regional level, the latter by means of two case studies (on the Länder Baden-Württemberg and Hamburg). On the basis of expert interviews, conclusions will be drawn on the achievements and remaining challenges of current climate mitigation policy. Furthermore, the scholarly debate on environmental and climate policy integration will be advanced.

The FFU team conducts the case study on Germany and provides input to the other work packages of the project.