Act project - Adapting To Climate Change in Time
Adaptation is, together with mitigation, one of the two concurrent actions that must be undertaken to face the problem of climate change. As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has stated: mitigation aims at avoiding the unmanageable impacts, while adaptation aims at managing the unavoidable impacts. It aims at increasing the resilience of natural and human systems to current and future impacts of climate change.
Starting from this idea, the project LIFE+ Adapting to climate change in time (ACT) aspires to demonstrate that through an inclusive and participated process, shared by all the local actors involved, is possible to develop a "local adaptation plan" which will support the forecast and mitigation of environmental, social and economic impacts of climate change on the most vulnerable sectors of the European cities in the Mediterranean basin.
The project has specifically these objectives (by decreasing order of importance):
- To develop a standardized process to draw and implement local adaptation strategies, easily applicable to a wide range of local authorities to forecast the impacts of climate change on a local scale and to define corresponding actions.
- To involve (by increasing their awareness) local actors (local industries, citizens, health system, civil protection, etc.) in the development of local adaptation strategy.
- To develop and disseminates guidelines that can encourage other European communities (in particular in the Mediterranean basin) to adopt the same process and to develop their own local adaptation strategies.
The project partners are the Municipality of Ancona, that is the project coordinator, and four partners: the municipality of Bullas, the municipality of Patras, the Forum of Adriatic and Ionian cities (Faic) and ISPRA (Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research).
Local impact assessments will be developed by each city taking into account economic, social and environmental aspects. At the end of this action a road map for local adaptation strategies will be created to guide local authorities in developing a local adaptation strategy. In fact, in the mean time, all the information on existent model and climate forecasting scenarios and on international experiences in local adaptation plans will be reviewed and analysed. On these actions each municipality will establish its own local adaptation board (including the main stakeholders involved) and will develop the actual local adaptation plan. The three cities involved will officially approve their own local adaptation plan. During this action project results will be evaluated through a peer review that aims at developing guidelines that can be implemented by other municipalities willing to develop local adaptation plans. This last action aims at disseminate and communicate the methodological guidelines developed within the project to a wide range of stakeholders.
So this project focuses on adaptation which is becoming more and more important to tackle climate change due to the consequences of increasing temperatures that are already visible in several ecosystems and urban areas all over Europe, particularly in the Mediterranean region.
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With the contribution of the LIFE financial instrument of the European Community