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The impacts of global warming, environmental pollution and corrective protective policies for climate change have been discussed by scholars for more than half a century. This study elaborates enabling factors for municipalities that have an active role in emission reduction and adaptation in metropolitan cities in Turkey. Annual Action Reports and Strategic Plans of corresponding Turkish metropolitan municipalities in the second period of Kyoto Protocol were examined with document analysis to capture their local climate protection capacities. Secondary data were also gathered mainly from public institutions inventory and reports to determine major external factors on municipal climate initiatives. Ordinary Least Square regression method was used to analyse the extent of enabling factors including socio-economic, emission and vulnerability conditions that have an impact on local climate governance initiatives in metropolitan cities. The findings of the study indicate that emission level and socio-economics capacity of the metropolitan cities in Turkey have a high aspiration for greenhouse gases reduction actions, while vulnerability level of the climate change has no significant effect on municipal decision-makers and practitioners on local climate protection governance.

Territorial planning is therefore of great importance when putting forward relevant proposals and coordinating activities that affect the environment, the cultural-historic values of a territory, territorial development and the creation of a landscape in accordance with the principles of permanently sustainable development. The implementation of risk management, with an emphasis on the objective assessment of identified risks, combined with the use of quantitative methods of mathematical statistics – analysis of variance and the characteristics of the variability of risk assessment – in the process of preparing and creating a land plan for incorporation into strategic area management documents, can substantially increase the security of a territory as a whole. Through the generalization of the results of a case study, appropriate preventive measures are put forward in the conclusion for incorporation into the land planning documentation of a municipality.