Strengthening and accelerating effective climate action in cities

Transformative climate action in cities requires active participation of citizens. Individuals need to take actions to mitigate and cope with climate change, and accept policy to promote climate action. Therefore, it is key to understand what motivates citizens to take and accept climate action, so that effective and acceptable urban policy can be implemented that encourage and enable citizens to take and support climate action. Social science knowledge is pivotal to address these issues. We discuss how to strengthen the synergy between policy makers, practitioners and academics. What can be learned from each other, and how can we use such integrative knowledge to develop effective, efficient and acceptable climate policy? To illustrate the added value of such collaborations, we present recent projects to understand and promote climate action in the city of Groningen, the Netherlands – host of the Global Centre of Excellence on Climate Adaptation. We highlight important lessons learned, and ways to strengthen collaboration between academics, practitioners, citizens, and urban policy making communities across the world, and identify important input for the IPCC AR6 cycle.