This field of research focuses on the local and regional levels of administration as executors of environmental policy, with emphasis on the special challenges related to the goal of sustainable development. During the past decade, local environmental policy in Norway has displayed a shift from following up the Brundtland Commission’s report through Local and Regional Agenda 21 to paying increasingly more attention to climate issues.
This shift has also been reflected in the project activity undertaken by Vestlandsforsking. In addition, local climate policy has evolved from climate and energy planning, with a one-sided emphasis on emission mitigation, to also being concerned with climate vulnerability. Through the work done on local climate vulnerability, emergency preparedness and civil protection have also become important research topics.
