Climate protection as a pawn in local politics

100 cities in Europe are to become climate-neutral by 2030. But what happens when this top-down plan collides with power plays at the local level? Cultural anthropologists in Klagenfurt, Warsaw, and Ljubljana are investigating how the urgency of climate protection measures is transacted – or blocked – amid local political skirmishing.

Culture and Society

by Alois Pumhösel

June 29, 2026

Climate neutrality by 2050, a 90 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2040 compared to 1990: these are the current, EU climate targets that have already been watered down. In order to meet these objectives, Europe’s cities must be on board, as their traffic flows, heating systems, and energy supplies generate a significant proportion of emissions. With its “100 Climate-neutral and Smart Cities by 2030” mission – or EU Mission 100 for short – the EU aims to create incentives, promote innovation, and provide model examples. While the participating cities are highly divergent in terms of their individual situations, they are united by their desire to align their climate protection activities with the principles of social justice. Their guiding principle: no one is to be left behind.

Researchers in the international project “Competing Urgencies: Translating Climate Neutrality in the EU,” which is co-funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), are setting out to approach these transformation processes from a unique perspective. Alexandra Schwell, director of the Institute for Cultural Analysis at the University of Klagenfurt, and her colleagues have teamed up with colleagues in Poland and Slovenia. In order to investigate how climate protection measures are implemented they are using methods from cultural anthropology, comparing how policymakers and the general public grapple with the same issue in three very different cities.

Three model cities, three different ideas

Like Warsaw and Ljubljana, Klagenfurt is participating in the EU Mission 100. “The three cities are very different – not only in size, but also when it comes to economic, political, and social aspects. They also have very different ideas about how to implement climate action,” Schwell explains. “But the one commonality between them is that they are part of the same EU program. While they face the same requirements, they are confronted with vastly different conditions at the national and municipal levels. We want to compare the resulting negotiations in the three cities.”

Climate Neutrality in the EU

The EU’s “100 Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities” mission aims to make 100 cities climate-neutral by 2030. In this project, the very different cities of Warsaw, Ljubljana, and Klagenfurt serve as model cities. The focus is on how EU climate goals can be implemented with social justice in mind.

EU URGE

Glass exterior facade of a counseling center, featuring a “Smart Climate Lab” banner — The Smart Climate Lab in Klagenfurt is a resource and advisory center for citizens, businesses, and organizations that want to implement climate-neutral project ideas. © IPAK

How societies set priorities

The EU mission sets the framework for “politics of urgency” that prioritize climate protection and insists on results. The theoretical approach of Schwell and her colleagues is also based on the concept of urgency: “The simultaneity of many crises generates uncertainty and fear. In the context of an ‘anthropology of urgency,’ we want to examine how society deals with this uncertainty – and the resulting necessity for fast action,” Schwell explains. “So what is given higher priority and what is postponed as a trade-off? How are issues characterized as urgent, and what images, arguments, and metaphors are used? Whose sense of urgency is relevant, and how does it work as a mobilizing tool? Asking these and similar questions, we aim to gain a better understanding of societies and their inherent power dynamics.”

The methods of cultural anthropology include participant observation, conversations, and structured interviews. As a qualitative discipline that does not seek to test preconceptions but instead proceeds in an open-ended and exploratory manner, ethnographic research is not representative. It conducts deep investigation of specific contexts that enable the researchers to draw conclusions that can be generalized. In Klagenfurt, the researchers focus on two main areas: Schwell’s colleague Johannes Kröger focuses his work on the city’s water policy. Built on marshland near a lake, Klagenfurt is particularly vulnerable to flooding caused by heavy rainfall.

By approaching water not only as a material reality but also as a sociocultural and institutional one, Kröger analyzes the growing conflicts between urban development, nature conservation, cultural practices, and technical solutions. “Infrastructure measures that seemed sensible in the past are now giving the city headaches. This would involve investments, but the available funds are scarce,” notes Schwell. For his research, Kröger talks to experts, politicians, and also to socially disadvantaged people who use nearby Lake Wörthersee’s outflow as a low-cost recreation area.

Protesters hold up cardboard signs in the town square in front of City Hall — Citizens are protesting against the Klagenfurt city government's environmental and cultural policies. © Johannes Kröger

Reversal on electric buses despite EU targets

Schwell herself is exploring how the legitimacy of emergency policy is negotiated. One aspect that is particularly interesting in this context is a reversal regarding a pivotal measure for CO2 reduction in Klagenfurt. “A key pillar of the city’s climate policy – and ultimately also its participation in the EU Mission 100 – was the conversion of its bus fleet to electric vehicles. A major investment was planned in this context,” explains Schwell. In the fall of 2025, the project was ultimately ditched at the political level. “The city government argued that there was no money for it and that the public was opposed to the upgrade. Funds that had already been disbursed must be repaid,” notes Schwell. Thus, a significant emission reduction – which was supposed to account for about a quarter of the city’s total CO2 reduction on the path to climate neutrality by 2030 – was cancelled.

As Schwell reports, this decision was “highly frustrating” from the perspective of many stakeholders. “A long-term climate protection project was sacrificed to short-term populist calculations – that was the perception among all those who had advocated for climate neutrality in Carinthia and the 100 Cities Initiative.” Despite the framework of the EU initiative, the urgency of the long-term existential threat posed by the climate crisis was not strong enough to implement a prestigious, high-visibility measure. “Urgency, even when backed by scientific facts, must be defended politically time and again,” Schwell emphasizes. “The political actors in Klagenfurt ultimately construed justification for new goals by citing alleged voter sentiment and financial considerations.”

Klagenfurt’s EU mission – barely known in Austria

An aspect that is consistent with this trend of local decision-makers showing resistance to environmental and EU goals, is how the EU initiative is communicated in Austria. “It’s very telling that the EU Mission 100 is virtually unknown in this country, even though Klagenfurt is the only Austrian city to have achieved this status,” says Schwell. “In Ljubljana and Warsaw, the situation is quite different: there, the EU initiative is actively promoted – in part to give political decision-makers a progressive image.” In an ironic twist, it is the public buses there that are plastered with advertisements for the 100 Cities Mission.

The political narratives surrounding the EU project also differ fundamentally across the cities in this comparison. “In Warsaw, the focus is on urban development. In addition to construction measures such as insulating as many apartments as possible, greater urgency is being placed on the vision of a vibrant urban community. This also includes making the climate protection discourse part of the political mainstream,” explains Schwell. “In Ljubljana, climate neutrality is also accorded a high degree of urgency in public discourse. However, it often seems to be used merely as a label that is also put on projects having little to do with climate protection. Local politicians are accused of greenwashing – i.e. green rhetoric used to present them in a favorable light.” In Klagenfurt, the situation is different. Here, pressure from the EU level translates into neither a driver of climate protection nor a PR façade – it simply tends to be perceived as a disruptive political factor.

About the researcher

Alexandra Schwell studied European Ethnology, Sociology, and Political Science in Berlin and Poznań, Poland, and earned her Ph.D. in Comparative Cultural and Social Anthropology at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder. Since 2019, she has been a professor of Empirical Cultural Analysis at the University of Klagenfurt. Her research focuses on security and fear, borders, and Europeanization processes from a cultural anthropological perspective.

Set to run from 2024 to 2028, the project “Competing Urgencies: Translating Climate Neutrality in the EU” receives EUR 385,000 in funding in Austria in the context of the WEAVE program of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). For this project, Schwell and her team are collaborating with researchers led by Saša Poljak Istenič from the Institute of Slovenian Ethnology at the Research Center of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (ZRC SAZU) in Ljubljana, as well as Anna Horolets from the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Warsaw.