Boosting Adaptation to Climate Change

Due to the impact of industry on the environment it’s clear that both humidity and temperatures are rising. In line with the EU 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, the Pact of Amsterdam* defines Climate Adaptation as one of the 12 Priority themes to be addressed by the Urban Agenda for the EU.

This is an inclusive, new participatory instrument to reach a better Europe working from the ground. The Urban Agenda for the EU has given voice to cities/urban areas that can directly and freely dialogue with Member States and EU Commission as part of a new experimental process.

“due to the impact of industry on the environment it’s clear that both humidity and temperatures are rising”

The Climate Adaptation Partnership acts as a cross-sectoral cooperation instrument among the different governance levels. It started working in July 2017 to deliver in June this year the Draft Action Plan to facilitate the cities’ adaptation to climate change. The objectives of the Climate Adaptation Partnership are: “to anticipate the adverse effects of climate change and take appropriate actions to prevent or minimise the damage it can cause to Urban Areas”. The focus is on: vulnerability assessments, climate resilience and risk management, including the social dimensions of climate adaptation strategies”.

The members of the Partnership are:

• Member States: France, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria
• Local and Regional authorities: Genova — Coordinator (IT), Barcelona Diput. (ES), Glasgow (UK), Loulè (PT), Potenza (IT), Sfantu Gheorghe (RO),Trondheim (NO)
• Important European Commission Departments: Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO), Directorate-General for Climate Action (DG CLIMA), Directorate-General for Environment (DG ENV), Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD), Joint Research Centre (JRC)
• Relevant EU Organizations / Observers / Stakeholders: EUROCITIES, Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), European Investment Bank (EIB), URBACT, European Environment Agency (EEA), Covenant of Majors

It is widely recognised that vulnerability and the potential scale of damage due to climate change is especially high in urban areas, which host high density of populations (including highly vulnerable population groups), high concentration of valuable assets and economic investments as well as essential infrastructure networks and nodes (IPCC 2014, EEA 2013, COM 2013b, EEA 2017a). Europe’s high rate of urbanisation — 75% of all citizens living in urban areas (WorldBank 2018) and cities accounting for more than 50% of Europe’s GDP (MGI 2011) — calls for special attention to climate change impacts in cities and towns.

“the key climate change impacts European urban areas are facing are rising temperatures, growing precipitation and extreme precipitation events leading to pluvial and fluvial flooding, water scarcity”

The key climate change impacts European urban areas are facing are rising temperatures (leading to Urban Heat Island Effect), growing precipitation and extreme precipitation events leading to pluvial and fluvial flooding, water scarcity, as well as increased storm damage and threat of nearby forest fires (EEA 2016). These direct impacts cascade through the urban systems leading to a wide range of other impacts on the human health, social wellbeing, economy and overall quality of life of a city (EEA 2016).

The aforementioned impacts are strictly related and conditioned by the percentage of relative humidity. In general two main aspect related to humidity are challenging for global and local scale: first one is the distribution — raising on the ocean decreasing on land; the second is its circulation and the transport in atmosphere. It is recognised that moisture content into atmosphere could impact on the ground with related specific effects. In case of heat and humid wave effects in urban areas it could directly affect the perception on people, for instance of temperatures trend with consequent effects on quality of life. In order to preserve European cities as safe, attractive, liveable and inclusive spaces, innovation centres and economic powerhouses, action to address climate change consequences needs to be taken.

The recognition of the importance of taking action on adaptation to climate change in urban areas is explicitly embedded in the EU climate change policies. The EU strategy on adaptation to climate change from COM 2013 to COM 2018 pledges that the European Union ‘will support adaptation in cities, notably by launching a voluntary commitment to adopt local adaptation strategies and awarenessraising activities.’ To this date almost 1,100 urban municipalities from 25 Member States have signed up to COM 2018, thus covering around 60 million inhabitants. These municipalities have committed to conduct vulnerability and risk assessments, and to develop, implement and report on adaptation plans.

In addition, many other cities who have not joined the Covenant of Mayors (COM) have developed adaptation strategies or plans independently or are due to national legal commitments. Altogether this has led to 25.5% of EU Urban Audit cities having a climate adaptation strategy or plan by January 2017 (Reckien et al. 2018). Analysis looked at 885 European cities in the EU, covering 190,684,004 inhabitants and thereby 37.3% of the EU population. At least 48,624,481 people or about 9.5% of the EU population are currently being protected by an urban adaptation plan.

Cities in Denmark, France, Slovakia and the UK, where local climate plans are compulsory, are about five times more likely to have an adaptation plan than cities in other countries, reaching 56% of cities. This shows that binding measures at the national level significantly increase the percentage of local authorities in the EU with a local adaptation strategy, potentially because such regulation also comes with guidelines, and methodological and institutional support. There is further scope to encourage other EU Member States to adopt national regulation for local areas at the national level and combine these with methodological guidance and binding measures. However almost 75% of EU cities are without an adaptation plan; and the analysis omits smaller urban municipalities, which are likely to have even fewer approved adaptation strategies or plans due to their limited resources and know-how.

Identifying and classifying bottlenecks

Grounded in this information and in order to define the focus of the Urban Agenda Adaptation activities, the Climate Adaptation Partnership carried out an exercise of identifying and classifying the urban adaptation bottlenecks in Europe. Altogether 39 bottlenecks were identified, and two thirds of them (26 bottlenecks in total) are addressed by the proposed Actions in the Plan.

To generally cluster them we can consider the following:

• Lack of financial resources for planning and implementation of actions in medium long term strategies
• Lack of supportive national frameworks and policies
• General lack of skilled human resources
• Lack of experience in creating long-term administrative set-ups for adaptation
• Gaps in understanding climate impacts and costs in specific urban sectors
• Limited capacity to collect, access and interpret climate data — Gaps in know-how on developing urban monitoring systems
• Limited awareness of the available information, also due to language barriers

The Partnership’s main goal is to enable European local governments to assess climate change risks and the vulnerability of their urban system, both at social to infrastructural level, to “strategically” plan adaptation policies based on solid evidence and to fund and implement measures on the ground leading to increases urban resilience in Europe.

The wider argument

But how does the Partnership’s Draft Action Plan deal with a wider argument such as Climate Adaptation? Starting from the knowledge of the Global change on Climate System, downscaling progressively the analysis to the Biosphere and Environmental System until to focus on impacts on society at Local scale. Actions proposed in the Plan envisage then a progressive enabler path to increase cities and people capacities on adaptation to climate change, with more commitment and support from the national/regional government level in concerted way, considering also the successful achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, to which the Urban agenda for the EU is linked.

The Actions constituting the proposed Draft Action Plan address a significant number of the issues the Partnership focused on, trying to overcome identified key bottlenecks to successful urban climate change adaptation in Europe regarding:

• Provision, access and usability of key data, methodologies, tools and information essential for urban adaptation planning and implementation
• Accessibility, suitability and promotion of EU and other funding sources for urban adaptation, including for the development of local adaptation strategies/plans and the implementation of adaptation measures
• Awareness raising, capacity building and stakeholder engagement in support of good adaptation governance locally

The summary of the actions proposed (actually under evaluation) in the Action Plan comes under the three headings of the Pact of Amsterdam to foster better regulation, funding and knowledge in the field of adaptation to climate change in urban areas.

Better Regulation

Under the Better Regulation the Urban Agenda for the EU focuses on a more effective and coherent implementation of existing EU policies, legislation and instruments. The main intent is to gather urban needs for better climate adaptation actions, recommendations and policies improvements. The Action Plan will not initiate new regulation but will contribute to the design of future and revision of existing EU regulation pertinent to topic of urban adaptation. The baseline for the Better Regulation is that Climate Adaptation requires long-term strategies and this cover a different timeframe respect to political will and decisionmaking at different governance level.

Better Funding

The Pact of Amsterdam states that the Urban Agenda for the EU will contribute to identifying, supporting, integrating and improving traditional, innovative and user-friendly sources of funding for Urban Areas at the relevant institutional level, to suggest how Urban Areas could benefit of funding policies consistent with their real needs on climate adaptation. The overarching aim of this Action Plan pillar is to improve funding opportunities for urban adaptation based on lessons learned.

Better Knowledge

Better Knowledge is primarily focused on improving data accessibility and exchange to suggest both traditional and not conventional communication models on climate adaptation among institutional bodies, communities and stakeholders. Reliable data are key factor for evidence-based urban adaptation planning and implementation. Knowledge of the climate change vulnerabilities of urban areas needs to be further developed and brought to users and decision-makers in local authorities. Initiatives taken in this context will be in accordance with the relevant EU legislation on data protection, as well as the reuse of public sector information and the promotion of big, linked and open data. Five actions have been proposed.

The article was drafted in common by all the members of the Partnership on Climate Adaptation.