Under the guidance of Prof. Verena Madner a new research project funded by the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund has been launched at the Research Institute for Urban Management and Governance: The APCC Special Report 22 on Structural Conditions for Climate Friendly Living (available in German) addresses Austria’s challenges and opportunities in reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement. To this end, a deep decarbonisation of the Austrian society is needed, calling for an integrated societal transformation that entails all aspects of daily lives in Austria.

The special report provides a stocktaking of the scientific discussion on societal transformations, deals with the range of transformation options across six major fields of action and identifies cross-cutting issues like governance, innovation or finance. Prof. Madner is co-chair of the APCC Special Report 22 together with Karl Steininger, Alfred Posch (both University of Graz), Christoph Görg and Andreas Muhar (both BOKU). Ernest Aigner of the Institute for Law and Governance coordinates the project, which involves numerous authors from a wide range of research institutions including the University of Graz and the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change, the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, the Technical University, Vienna, the University of Vienna, the Johannes Kepler University Linz as well as the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT) and the Austrian Foundation for Development Research (ÖFSE).

The special report condenses the available knowledge and in collaboration with stakeholders identifies potentials, options and limits to achieve structural conditions that enable, generalize, and sustain climate friendly living within Austria. It strives for a comprehensive, inclusive and integrative assessment with stakeholder involvement and a transparent process in line with IPCC and APCC standards.

Currently, more than 50 researchers assess effective design options, with the aim of contributing to climate policy debates. At the same time, close collaboration with stakeholders from politics, administration, the economy and civil society aims to increase the report’s relevance for practitioners and policymakers. So far, the authors have produced a zero-order draft that indicates the report’s orientation and aims. Moreover, this draft has been discussed with participating stakeholders in an interesting co-design workshop.

You can find more information on the research project and current developments, as well as a complete list of project partners and participating authors here (available in German).