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To successfully battle climate change, it is crucial to reach people across political camps and national borders. Research from dual-party systems indicates that climate change communication is most effective when it addresses how climate action promotes recipients' political values. Yet, to our knowledge, there is no such evidence from multi-party systems. To fill this gap, we conducted three studies in two Central European, German-speaking countries: Germany and Austria. In Study 1, we framed conservative and liberal climate protection messages using values from Schwartz's Theory of Basic Human Values. Liberals agreed more with the liberally framed than with the conservatively framed climate protection message. In Study 2, we framed the climate protection message based on moral foundations. Conservative participants agreed more with the conservatively framed climate protection message than with the liberally framed one. Study 3 integrated values from multiple frameworks, and ultimately conservatives as well as liberals agreed more to climate protection statements that touched on values reflecting their political ideology. Thus, empirical findings from dual-party systems hold for countries with more than two parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is supposed to exacerbate conflicts arising from resource scarcity and contrasting objectives. Some European authors highlighted already the need to look at conflicting interests when elaborating and applying adaptation and mitigation strategies. This study analysed the level of consideration of these emerging topics arising through increased competition of resources, contrasting interests, climate change adaptation as well as mitigation measures for Austria and Southern Germany in detail. Furthermore, it surveyed the application of possible approaches for conflict prevention and mitigation in an international perspective and additionally examined the particular role of SEA as one of the instruments to cope with conflicts related to climate change. The results express the strong need to look at emerging conflicts in cross-sectoral and sectoral adaptation early enough and a strategic perspective. Based on the content analysis of the Austrian and German adaptation and mitigation documents, expert interviews as well as the international literature review, a rather low consideration of these emerging topics as well as approaches to cope with them became evident. In response to these deficiencies, the paper introduces a first framework to identify and tackle emerging and exacerbated conflicts related to climate change. This novel framework is internationally applicable. In the final step of the framework approaches to prevent and minimize conflicts are the key topic. Among these approaches, SEA could take a leading role in case mandatory planning instruments cover the topics related to potential or existing exacerbated fields of conflicts. Overall a mix of formal and informal instruments and a more cross-sectoral perspective seems necessary. To this aim, the paper introduces four main guiding principles to consider and minimize up-coming conflicting topics. • Consideration of cc related conflicts is very diverse in adaptation documents. • A more strategic view of emerging conflicts is of particular importance. • This paper presents a novel framework to identify and tackle conflicts. • SEA can partly address these conflicting topics depending on its role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]