Selecting and analysing climate change adaptation measures at six research sites across Europe
In: Natural hazards and earth system sciences: NHESS, Band 21, Heft 7, S. 2145-2161
ISSN: 1684-9981
Abstract. As Europe is faced with increasing droughts and extreme precipitation,
countries are taking measures to adapt to these changes. It is challenging,
however, to navigate through the wide range of possible measures, taking into
account the efficacy, economic impact and social justice aspects of these
measures, as well as the governance requirements for implementing them. This
article presents the approach of selecting and analysing adaptation measures
to increasing extreme weather events caused by ongoing climate change that was
developed and applied in the H2020 project BINGO (Bringing Innovation to
Ongoing Water Management). The purpose of this project is (a) to develop an
integrated participatory approach for selecting and evaluating adaptation
measures, (b) to apply and evaluate the approach across six case-study river
basins across Europe, and (c) to support decision-making towards adaptation
capturing the diversity, the different circumstances and challenges river
basins face across Europe. It combines three analyses: governance,
socio-economic and social justice The governance analysis focuses on the
requirements associated with the measures and the extent to which these
requirements are met at the research sites. The socio-economic impact focuses
on the efficacy of the measures in reducing the risks and the broad range of
tools available to compare the measures on their societal impact. Finally, a
tentative social justice analysis focuses on the distributive impacts of the
adaptation measures. In the summary of results, we give an overview of the
outcome of the different analyses. In the conclusion, we briefly assess the
main pros and cons of the different analyses that were conducted. The main
conclusion is that although the research sites were very different in both the
challenges and the institutional context, the approach presented here yielded
decision-relevant outcomes.