PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
The project’s two target areas, the Marche region of Italy and Jadranska Hrvastska in Croatia, are located in the Adriatic-Ionian macroregion and are characterised by similar territorial and climatic conditions. Over the past few decades, the two regions have been heavily affected by climate change trends, mainly decreased precipitation and increased temperatures. These trends are expected to continue, along with more frequent extreme weather events (heat waves, droughts and heavy rainfalls) and an even lower annual precipitation and river flow.
Additionally, Mediterranean countries have been shown to be less able to adapt to these changes in terms of economic, technical and institutional skills, as well as socio-economic conditions. The combination of the two factors – higher climate change impact and lower adaptive capacity – makes the Mediterranean region, and within it the Adriatic-Ionian macroregion, one of the most vulnerable areas in Europe, subject to risks of landslides and inland flooding as well as rising sea levels and coastal erosion.
OBJECTIVES
The main objective of the Life SEC Adapt project was to increase the climate resilience of local authorities in Italy and Croatia and to help them prevent and adapt to climate change impacts. This aim would be achieved by mainstreaming and integrating climate objectives into their local policies and practices via the Mayors Adapt initiative. The end goal was to adopt and upgrade the model of Sustainable Energy Communities (SEC) in order to improve climate governance, making it a best practice model for the development of a climate change adaptation processes in local authorities under the coordination of regional authorities and development agencies.
Specifically, the project aimed to:
- Increase awareness of local and regional decision-makers in 17 municipalities in Italy and Croatia of the importance and urgency of adopting climate change adaptation strategies. This would be achieved by implementing a capacity-building process involving the exchange of best practices and lessons learnt by more experienced municipalities from Greece, Spain and Italy;
- Reduce the knowledge gap of local and regional administrators on local climate vulnerabilities and risks. This would help them to develop effective climate change adaptation strategies and plans to prevent and react to extreme climate events in the short term and reduce social, economic and environmental impacts in the long term;
- Encourage the 17 engaged municipalities to sign and adopt climate change adaptation strategies and plans under the framework of the Mayors Adapt initiative by updating existing sustainable energy actions plans (SEAPs);
- Set up and test an energy and climate monitoring system (SEC Adapt monitoring tool). This would enable the verification of the state of implementation of the selected mitigation and adaptation actions in order to redefine the objectives of the climate strategies of the municipalities involved. It would also support the monitoring required within the Mayors Adapt and Covenant of Mayors initiatives; and
- Facilitate the adoption of climate adaptation and mitigation policies and actions at cross-border level, drawing up a joint policy recommendation paper for a more coherent implementation of the climate and energy strategies in the macroregion.
RESULTS
The LIFE SEC ADAPT project achieved its objective of contributing to a territorially coherent implementation of the EU Climate Adaptation Strategy in a very large area (Adriatic-Ionian Region) directly involving 17 municipalities. The municipalities involved have all developed Sustainable Energy and Climate Actions Plans (SECAPs), which have been all approved by the respective councils and then submitted to the Covenant of Mayors (CoM) office.
The technical activities have been implemented in line with the project document and approved modifications. They were properly managed and achieved the specific objectives. More specifically:
1. To produce a harmonised methodology for the risk assessment and implementation of adaptation plans: the project team carried out several capacity building sessions with the staff of the municipalities involved in the project in order to define a common procedure to assess the risk and vulnerability of the territory and developed strategies and measures to increase the territorial resilience.
2. To implement and approve 17 harmonised SECAPs and submit them to the CoM office: the plans developed by each municipality define strategies and measures that will be implemented by 2030 in order to increase the climate resilience and shift towards a low-carbon economy in the two areas targeted by the project (Marche and Istria Region).
3. To develop a software system to monitor the effectiveness of the plans: the team, after having defined a set of indicators to measure the impacts - in terms of mitigation and adaptation - of the measures foreseen by the approved SECAPs, has created an online software tool that monitors the trends of the indicators according to the data entered by the municipalities involved.
4. To facilitate the adoption of climate adaptation and mitigation policies and actions at cross-border level: the project team produced a policy recommendation paper where the lessons learnt, in terms of capacity building and action planning process, are summarised to help other policy makers in the implementation of similar processes.
5. To actively disseminate the project results and outputs for the stakeholders and general public: the project team produced effective communication means to disseminate the project outcomes that will be further used after the project conclusion to make the project results sustainable.
6. To support the implementation of the Croatian National Adaptation Plan proposing a bottom-up approach which benefitted from the results produced by LIFE SEC Adapt.
Further information on the project can be found in the project's layman report (see "Read more" section).
