Rural Mayors as Climate Actors: Potentials and Constraints of Local Agency

Rural areas are vulnerable to climate change but also contribute to it through their close ties to the natural environment through agriculture, forestry, tourism and resource extraction. Unsurprisingly, then, the local level is considered one of the key areas where reaction to climate change should be conceived (European Commission 2021); however, their responses are often considered in need of strengthening (IPCC, 2023). Although Nalau et al (2015) and others stress that the local reactions are constrained by the actors on higher scales and the local level should not be overestimated, this blog argues that the rural context itself deserves closer academic attention.

But who is supposed to act locally? According to Petzold et al (2023), the most frequently recognised actors are individuals and households. However, this view risks individualising responses to climate change while overlooking the structural character of issues, other relevant actors and potential for meaningful agency. Moreover, rural conditions often tend to be divided into separate policy sectors (Arora-Jonsson & McAreawey, 2023). They are also presented in terms of deficiencies and barriers (Biesbroek et al., 2013). As a result, the rural situation and their capacities for action are not considered in their complexity.

To address this gap and explore how the municipal representatives navigate the complicated nature of local responses (Ferenčuhová, 2019), with its potentials and constraints, without individualising the reactions to climate change, our fieldwork in 2021 took us to the Czech rural areas affected by climate change (Pelikán & Galčanová Batista, 2025). Here, we focused on mayors of the municipalities that are responsible for a range of local issues and often understood as key actors by the residents and local subjects (Lokšová & Galčanová Batista, 2021). To learn about their perspectives and experiences, we interviewed the mayors of two contrasting Czech cases that differed in municipal size, climate, and effects of climate change. Nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with mayors and vice-mayors exploring their views on climate change and their roles in addressing local challenges. And to identify potential shifts linked to the energy crisis, we returned in 2024, interviewing two groups with five participants, and the following were the findings.

Everyday Responsibilities, Embedded Knowledge

Municipalities are legally responsible for planning land use and providing public services that are directly related to local responses to climate change. Similar to the findings of Young’s (2019), which highlight that mayors benefit and gain long-term experiential knowledge from diverse local connections and their proximity to the environment, we discovered that representatives from rural municipalities in the Czech often have deep roots in their villages, having lived there for decades or even their entire lives. This long-term residence grants them an in-depth understanding of the local landscape, its associated issues, and historical context. They are also embedded within a dense network of relationships that includes their families and other community members, often spanning generations. At this level of local knowledge and involvement, I believe it can enhance efforts for climate adaptation through cooperation, enabling informal agreements that might otherwise be difficult or undesirable to establish.

Secondly, apart from their legal responsibilities, residents expect overwhelming responsibilities and agency from the rural mayors that can range from organising the local events to mediating local conflicts (Šaradín et al., 2019). And as the title of the blog illustrates, the mayors are usually addressed as the first point of contact, whether it concerns a sandstorm, uncut grass, or relations between agricultural companies and owners of neighbouring smaller plots of land, “the citizens ask what you will do about it.”

To which I infer that such overwhelming mundane responsibilities may limit or improve the capacities of rural municipalities to react to climate change.

Climate Change Consideration: Aspirations and Constraints

Clar & Steurer (2018) suggest that since mayors are the prime contact figures, they often approach problems on the go, in a reactive manner. Rather than the long-term, proactive, strategic approach implied by the EU (e.g. European Commission, 2021). The interviewed Czech mayors repeatedly emphasised the complications regarding the long-term strategic planning. As a result, climate change considerations tend to appear only in strategic documents at the national level and the level of regions (NUTS 3). However, in rural municipalities, the strategic documents are mostly lacking, and when they exist, climate change is not mentioned. The underlying reasons differed between the two research localities:

• In smaller municipalities in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands, the long-term strategic planning was understood as unrealistic due to the overwhelming number of daily tasks and the heavy load of paperwork linked to governance and external funding.
• In contrast, larger South Moravian municipalities saw external funding programmes as an indirect tool to perform strategic, future-oriented steps regardless of the absence of actual strategic plans.

This contrast highlights how administrative and fiscal capacities shape a municipality’s ability to plan for future climate responses.

To sum up, the role of municipalities in formulating local responses to climate change is far from easy despite the rich knowledge and social ties. Climate change is typically only one of many issues on the local agenda (Loring et al., 2016), and therefore, it may not receive sustained attention. Some local activities may have an unintended mitigation effect even if not originally planned as such (Ferenčuhová 2022).

One example from our fieldwork was the installation of solar panels on the roof of the village grocery store. Operated by the municipality to provide basic shopping and socialising opportunities, it was hit by the soaring prices of electricity. The shift to renewable resources supported by state funding was thus motivated by social and economic reasons. This example shows that the substitution may also have climate-related effects, even if unplanned.

In conclusion, empirical examples from Czech rural municipalities reveal both the potentials and constraints to local climate change response. While mayors hold valuable knowledge and social capital, their capacity is constrained. At the same time, while their actions often don’t follow the climate agenda, the outcomes may have positive effects. Following this embedded, relational form of agency invites us to see rural governance as a site of situated knowledge and practical potential that deserves further research interest at the very least.

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Acknowledgement

This post is based on the work of the project team (Lucie Galčanová Batista, Vojtěch Pelikán, Terezie Lokšová, Tereza Válková) supported by a grant from the Czech Science Foundation, “Ageing and Older People in the Time of Climate Change” (GA20-12567S).

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Offline references

1. Ferenčuhová, S. (2019). Komplikace při formulování lokálních reakcí na klimatickou změnu. Urbanismus a územní rozvoj, 22(3), 5–9. ISSN 1212-0855.

2. Young, N. (2019). Responding to rural change: Adaptation, resilience and community action. In M. Shucksmith & D. L. Brown (Eds.), Routledge international handbook of rural studies (First issued in paperback ed.). Routledge.

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