PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Climate change is causing great environmental challenges, which require compelling and urgent actions. Southern Europe and the Mediterranean are recognised as particularly vulnerable to global warming, with several interconnected sectors threatened. Due to its peninsular conformation and complex orography, linked to a rich but unequal economic development and uncontrolled urbanisation, Italy is one of the most vulnerable countries in Europe. Adaptation to climate change and building State and societal resilience to climate variability is a shared, progressively more coordinated, and goal-oriented concern of European and national policies. The EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change has fostered the development of National Adaptation Strategies (NAS) and National Adaptation Plans (NAP) and boosted knowledge sharing and mainstreaming of climate adaptation in other policy areas. The Italian NAS, adopted in 2014, analysed the most relevant climate change impacts on 12 socio-economic and natural sectors, and suggested a set of adaptation measures to cope with such impacts. Throughout 2016 and 2017, with a last version dated June 2018, the NAP was elaborated as a follow-up to this process, but has not yet been formally adopted by the Government. Thus, currently the only approved national document in place is the NAS, which provides only broad proposed areas of interventions, without specific actions, indicators and roles to implement it. There is clearly a need to remove obstacles, promote capacity building and engage stakeholders in bottom-up measures to support the implementation of the proposed actions in the designated areas of intervention.
OBJECTIVES
LIFE CLIMAX PO seeks to foster the implementation of the Italian NAS in the Po River Basin District, boosting adaptation to climate change through a climate-smart management of water resources and by implementing measures tailored to local characteristics and climatic peculiarities at the district scale.
Specific project objectives are:
- Governance of climate adaptation at Po River Basin District level: improving the climate risk and adaptation governance in water resource management, and ensuring public funding and technical coordination and coherence.
- Shared climate knowledge: improving the understanding of climate risks and creating a platform for harmonised climate knowledge and services.
- Capacity building and awareness: accelerating climate adaptation through education, training and awareness-raising for policymakers, technical experts, public administrations and civil society organisations.
- Improved water security and climate resilience: enhancing water retention and storage capacity management, promoting nature-based solutions and connectivity of green and blue infrastructures, promoting water saving and soil conservation in farming practices.
- Institutionalisation of climate adaption at Po River Basin District level: making climate adaptation a permanent part of the River Basin District governance model, by developing guidelines, common tools and methodologies for shared knowledge.
RESULTS
Expected results:
- Mapping and review of planning and legislative tools coherent with the NAS.
- Regional and District Stakeholder Boards involving local authorities, technicians, environmental and socio-economic associations.
- Multilevel Governance Deal bringing together all the national, regional and local decision makers.
- Dedicated Adaptation Observatory that contributes to the monitoring and evaluation of the implementation of adaptation in the river basin.
- Climate information and knowledge platform fostering adaptation across water-intensive sectors.
- A climate risk index at sub-basin level.
- Capacity building programme on technical and financial aspects related to adaptation.
- Demonstrative adaptation projects, designed to address significant and urgent climate-related risks and impacts foreseen by the NAS, including improved integrated water management, improvement of water quality, improved water retention and sediment management plans, improved riparian vegetation management through nature-based solutions and biodiversity conservation, reduced hydraulic risks and hydrogeological vulnerability, improved monitoring and warning system for coastal extreme water events, improved competences among farmers and better water use in agriculture.
- A specialised task force dedicated to the coordination of complementary funding and mobilisation of additional funding, creating a coherent flow of resources to implement adaptation measures.
- Policy recommendations at EU, national and regional level.
