OPERAs team members Sophie Schetke, Heera Lee, Sven Lautenbach and co-workers from the university of Bonn have analyzed the role that ecosystem services play in German climate protection strategies. Climate protection laws at state level, communal climate protection concepts and the climate protection amendment of the German Building Code have been analyzed. The authors revealed that ecosystem services played a significant role in climate protection strategies. This highlights the - often overlooked - importance of other planning domains in addition to landscape planning that have been in the focus so far. Abiotic services for climate change mitigation, such as the provisioning of solar energy or wind energy, played an important role especially at the level of the federal states. At the local to regional level also adaptation measures by regulating ecosystem services were of importance. Results are published as a part of a special issue on legal aspects of ecosystem services in the journal Ecosystem Services - DOI: