Klagenfurt has a water problem, or rather, it has many, or none at all, depending on who, or what, you ask. Nestled between the Alps and the Adriatic, the city sits beside one of Austria’s most beloved lakes, fed by rivers and an Alpine aquifer that would be the envy of drier regions. And yet that same water floods, contaminates, and at times simply disappears, turning abundance into threat with little warning. Legend has it the city was founded after warriors slew a dragon lurking in the swamps. What followed was centuries of drainage, channelling, and sealing. Now, in an ironic twist, the very swamps that were drained to build the city are reclaiming a central role in its climate neutral future. At SIEF2025, EU-URGE project member Johannes Kröger traced what happens when a city under pressure to become climate neutral by 2030 must reckon with a landscape it spent centuries engineering away.
The 2023 floods, which overwhelmed Klagenfurt’s drainage infrastructure and submerged thousands of households, made clear how fragile that bargain had always been. Meanwhile, protected wetlands still continue to be sealed over for real estate, and access to the lake is almost entirely privatized. Flood protection and emissions targets dominate the agenda while slower emergencies, rising water tables, soil erosion, and the exclusion from cooling areas, are quietly submerged. Invoking the EU Mission’s own promise to “leave no one behind”, Johannes turned the phrase back on itself: who, or what, counts as no one? Climate neutrality measured only in emissions cannot account for the everyday intimacies and fears that water inspires, the informal ways people and other species navigate, use, and live alongside it, or the ecological rhythms that predate any planning document.
