At the occasion of the 16th NESS – Nordic Environmental Social Science Conference in Turku (Finland), from 4 to 6 June 2024, Ecologic Institute's Doris Knoblauch presented the findings of two projects in a workshop dealing with "Governing urban climate transformations: Towards climate neutrality and resilience".

The workshop was convened by Prof. Dr. Kristine Kern and Dr. Elisa Kochskämper, and brought together around 15 scientists from five countries, discussing a total of eleven papers in depth. Doris Knoblauch presented the findings from two projects, highlighting challenges in implementing climate mitigation measures: Despite the ambitious long-term climate neutrality goals set by many cities, there is a significant knowledge gap in comprehending the causal mechanisms that contribute to the successful implementation of climate neutrality strategies and the realization of a long-term vision. The presentation explored the integral factors that underpin the design and implementation of successful long-term climate neutrality strategies in cities and drew on the results of the EUKI-project Ready4NetZero. The main factors are:

1. Effective institutional and governance arrangements.
2. Hearing different voices.
3. Vision, coherent goals and achievable targets.
4. Mechanisms to revise and monitor progress.
5. Transformation pathways.

The presentation contributed to the growing discourse on urban climate transformations, focusing on the mechanisms that drive the effectiveness and scalability of climate actions.

The workshop furthermore focused around different aspects of co-creation. Therefore, Doris Knoblauch also provided several insights from the INTERLACE project in which six cities co-created a total of 19 governance instruments and gathered a deep understanding of what works and where the pitfalls are.