ClimUrban will consist of several activities that will lead to the integrative development of local adaptation policies and plans by the end of the project. An important aspect of the project is that good governance (including public participation and communication) and scientific expertise shall go hand in hand in developing and implementing adaptation measures at place. This shall be reached by employing geoscience-stakeholder communication tools (scenario workshops, multi-criteria analysis and uncertainty analysis for interdisciplinary cooperation) as well as methods from social science to involve the public (public workshops using different formats, consultations, round tables, future workshops). Last but not least, an “Integrated Management System (IMS)” for local response to climate change (developed in the LIFE+ funded project CHAMP), will be used to support when planning workshops and developing adaptation strategies for cities.
Two IMS workshops will be organised by the partner UBC in order to train cities to develop a full management cycle, the first one dealing with baseline review, target setting, participation and organisational set-up and the second one dealing with political involvement, implementation and monitoring, evaluation and reporting. Cities from outside the project consortium will be invited to follow the trainings.
The first set of activities shall ensure that the current situation and the expected impacts are clearly defined in all municipalities. This is already done in parts by some sectors (e.g. some municipalities have overview on flood-prone areas). The first activities include the cooperation with various stakeholders such as local and national authorities and research institutions to define the expected impacts from climate change for the participating partner municipalities and its surroundings. Possible scenarios of future impacts could be deducted in this first activity.
The most important activity of the project will be to develop local adaptation plans and accompanying action plans with proposals for measures with the partner municipalities. Such a plan needs to be developed step by step in cooperation with different players. Using different communication tools and workshops with the participation of stakeholders and experts can help to steer discussions and develop adaptation needs and options. The developed needs and proposals for options need to be condensed in a next step into the local adaptation plan through prioritizing goals, agreeing on adaptation levels and by taking financial aspects into account.
The scientific project partners will support the municipal partners in developing holistic approaches that support the planners in identifying best-fit and non-regret adaptation measures (including uncertainty analyses) that are tailor-made for local application. In a review and revision process the document shall be adopted by the respective local city councils. Other local planning documents need to be revised accordingly. Another activity of the main project is the involvement of local citizens through information days, brochures, their involvement in round tables, and special workshops. A website section on the municipal homepage will be set up to inform citizens (and other local stakeholders) about the projects, its progress and upcoming events. The 5-6 partner cities will have a kind of ambassador role in their countries where they will organise national dissemination and peer-to-peer events in which they will share lessons learnt in the project with other cities in their country.