Powerful stories of local climate action: Comparing the evolution of narratives using the “narrative rate” index

Abstract

The complex relationship between local climate action and reducing global emissions is often difficult to grasp and cities might scale back their ambitions if they realize that the way is hard and rocky. We analyze local climate change narratives through the lens of the narrative policy framework (NPF). Following the NPF, policy actors use narratives to communicate information to change an existing system in order to achieve a specific goal. For our study, this implies that local climate action can be improved by using narratives to communicate information to achieve climate neutrality. We focus on the position and interplay of the most important and dominant actors and concepts in the plot of the narratives. To better analyze the main actors and content of the NPF plot in a systematic and comparable way, we offer the “narrative rate index” to dynamically trace the narratives. To include the dynamics and effects of global significant developments in the plots of the NPF narratives, we selected three phases between January 2018 and June 2021. What are the main characters and dominant actors in the plot of the narratives in the two cases? Are the narratives different depending on the context of the city, and are there general observable patterns? Our findings identify the central actors in the narratives of both cities: the science institute in Karlsruhe and the City Administration in Mannheim. Karlsruhe, a climate change pioneer, has slowed down its climate change activities somewhat, while Mannheim is a latecomer with high ambitions.

Alternative policy narratives of the future of climate change: Analyzing Finland's energy and climate strategy and news reports

“…To identify the implicit narratives of climate change and the climate change policy process, our qualitative content analysis is structured and guided by the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF). According to the framework, narratives are communicative tools aimed at changing the prevailing system or achieving a goal for policy actors (Nagel & Schäfer, 2023). NPF was developed over a decade ago, as “[…]a quantitative, structuralist, and positivist approach to the study of policy narratives” (Jones & McBeth, 2010, p. 330).…”

Towards a Refined Climate Urbanism Typology: Comparing Local Policy Debates in German and American cities

“…To find out how dominant actors and groups of actors are in the discourse, we focused in our study on the top 15 organizations based on their degree centrality and frequency. Measures of high centrality and high frequency are indicators of strong connection, importance or dominance in the discourse 21 .…”

Tackling climate change on the local level: A growing research agenda

“…The article by Nagel and Schäfer (2023) focuses on powerful stories of local climate action in two medium‐sized German cities. The study assumes that local climate action can be improved by narratives to communicate information to achieve climate neutrality and to better adapt to climate impacts.…”

“…Harvey‐Scholes et al (2023) focus on the role of citizens in the process of climate emergency declarations and to do so draw on the policy entrepreneurship theory (see, e.g., Mintrom, 2019) to demonstrate how citizen entrepreneurs drive local climate policy by collaborating actively with traditional political elites. Nagel and Schäfer (2023) use the narrative policy framework (see, e.g., Shanahan et al, 2013) which involves a constructivist view on the policy processes to trace climate policy narratives in two German cities. Finally, Stoddart and Yang (2023) apply framing theory (see, e.g., Boykoff, 2011) with a specific view on regional and local political arenas and actors to investigate the media visibility of local‐level climate action.…”