On the evening of October 16, 2023, the BDA/bdla Policy Talk with Dr. Anja Weisgerber, environmental policy spokeswoman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag, and Chris Kühn, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, took place in Berlin. BDA President Susanne Wartzeck and bdla President Prof. Stephan Lenzen jointly led the discussion on climate adaptation.

The timing was deliberate, because on October 19, the Bundestag debated the federal government's draft bill for a federal climate adaptation law for the first time.

Prof. Stephan Lenzen commented: "The law will come. But what is much more important, so that finally nationwide the strengthening of the resilience of our cities to the consequences of climate change, of heat stress and heavy rain events, droughts and water scarcity, species extinction is addressed, we need an adaptation of §91a of our Basic Law as soon as possible. Only the definition of climate adaptation as a joint task in the Basic Law enables and allows the federal government to take over the necessary financial and continuous support of the states and municipalities in this generational task. The Bundesrat supports this demand, which is one of our 20 Essentials for climate adaptation."

For the period from 2025 to 2030, 25 billion euros are needed for the appropriate expansion of the green-blue infrastructure for climate adaptation; that is from 2025 annually 1, to 2 billion euros from the federal government for these existential and life-saving landscape architectural measures and proportionately the states and municipalities in equal parts, according to Stephan Lenzen. But, he sums up, the cities will become more attractive, more beautiful and more livable than they are today through the expansion of green infrastructure and the creation of higher proportions of open space, the necessary mobility turnaround. "Climate change is forcing us to do this, but we will like the results!"

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