Evidence lost in transition: Climate-information continuity failures in South Korea’s local adaptation planning and implementation

Local Climate Change Adaptation under the Lenses of Public Health: A Case Study from Porto, Portugal

While European regions face a range of different climate hazards, little is known about how these differences affect local climate adaptation planning. We present an analytical framework for evaluating local climate adaptation plans (LCAPs) and apply it to 327 cities in 28 countries across different European regions. To do this, we use statistical methods to identify regional clusters based on overall plan quality, impacts, vulnerable population groups, and sectors addressed by LCAPs. By comparing both geographic and statistical clusters, we found (1) significant spatial heterogeneity across European cities but (2) higher average plan quality scores and more consistent strategies across cities in Central and Eastern Europe. Notably, we found no regional differences regarding (a) the climate impacts and vulnerable communities identified in plans: (b) the most commonly addressed impacts, which were urban temperature and changing precipitation patterns; and (c) the residents that cities identified as most vulnerable, namely older people, women, infants, and the sick. Our study provides a spatial analysis of European LCAPs to uncover regional policy perspectives on local climate adaptation issues. Such approaches can effectively inform broader EU, national and regional strategies that aim to support local adaptation planning in a context of multi-level governance.

We are excited to introduce a newly established initiative within the network Nordic Framework for Climate Services (NFCS), focusing on national climate services in the Nordic-Baltic countries.   NFCS operates under NORDMET and has in the last few years cooperated within two activities related to new climate normals and heavy rainfall. With the completion of these activities, The Norwegian Meteorological institute (MET Norway) suggested revitalizing a previous activity focusing on climate services. In December 2022, the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) organized a workshop to establish a network and explore potential avenues for collaboration. The following countries were represented at the workshop and presented their respective national climate service: Norway, Latvia, Estonia, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Lithuania and Denmark. Climate change affects all countries and regions. Nordic countries (five) and Baltic countries (three) are located in the northern region of Europe, where the processes and impacts of climate change are quite similar.  Adequate provision of climate services can not only improve and strengthen knowledge about climate change, but also reduce the negative impacts of climate change. Communication, cooperation, exchange of knowledge and good practices among countries in the region can contribute to better knowledge about climate change and climate change impacts across the region.  While the level of development of climate services varies across these countries, common concerns were also identified. Amongst common activities and concerns we can mention Updating the knowledge base for national and local climate adaptation following the Sixth Assessment Report from IPCC New sectors focusing on climate adaptation such as finance, insurance and health Increasing need for sector specific climate indices Data management and resources, code sharing and version control Challenges related to outreach and communication.  At EMS we will present and compare national climate services of these eight countries and highlight opportunities for future collaboration under very limited resources.

Climate services provide tailored information to support climate adaptation at the local level. However, the highly specific local needs of each setting also means that they are difficult to generalise and transport from one setting to another. In this presentation we describe a collaboration between Denmark and Ghana to establish climate services in Ghana. The template for this Ghanaian climate service is Klimaatlas, the Danish National Climate Atlas, a well-established tool used by actors throughout Denmark as one of the primary tools underpinning local climate adaptation planning. Klimaatlas presents projections from the EURO-CORDEX regional climate model ensemble, bias-corrected against local observations, in the form of an interactive web-interface and tailored reports. Our initial efforts show that some parts of the Klimaatlas approach to developing a climate service can be reused directly in Ghana, particularly around user engagement and some aspects of the presentation of information: other parts however need to be rethought from scratch.  In particular, the large data volumes associated with CORDEX ensembles present a major bottleneck for applications in Ghana, where both bandwidth and storage are limited. Ensuring the robustness and durability of the service will also be critical to its success and have received particular attention. Furthermore, while there is a wealth of observational data, much of it cannot be used for bias correction in its current form. We will describe our efforts to solve these problems and the lessons learned, and present recommendations for how the climate service community can aid the development of climate services in developing countries.

Subaltern forms of knowledge are required to boost local adaptation

Cities with a Mediterranean-type climate (Med-cities) are particularly susceptible to health risks from climate change since they are located in biogeographical hot-spots that experience some of the strongest effects of the changing climate. The study aims to highlight health impacts of climate change in Med-cities, analyze local climate adaptation plans and make adaptation policy recommendations for the Med-city level. We identified five Med-cities with a climate change adaptation plan: Adelaide, Barcelona, Cape Town, Los Angeles and Santiago. Beyond their similar Med-climate features (although Santiago’s are slightly different), the cities have different socio-economic characteristics in various aspects. We analyzed each plan according to how it addresses climate change-related drivers of health impacts among city dwellers. For each driver, we identified the types of policy adaptation tools that address it in the urban climate adaptation plans. The surveyed cities address most of the fundamental climate change-related drivers of risks to human health, including rising temperatures, flooding and drought, but the policy measures to reduce negative impacts vary across cities. We suggest recommendations for Med-cities in various aspects, depending on their local needs and vulnerability challenges: assessment of health risks, extreme events management and long-term adaptation, among others.

Adaptation planning offers a promising approach for identifying and devising solutions to address local climate change impacts. Yet there is little empirical understanding of the content and quality of these plans. We use content analysis to evaluate 44 local adaptation plans in the United States and multivariate regression to examine how plan quality varies across communities. We find that plans draw on multiple data sources to analyse future climate impacts and include a breadth of strategies. Most plans, however, fail to prioritize impacts and strategies or provide detailed implementation processes, raising concerns about whether adaptation plans will translate into on-the-ground reductions in vulnerability. Our analysis also finds that plans authored by the planning department and those that engaged elected officials in the planning process were of higher quality. The results provide important insights for practitioners, policymakers and scientists wanting to improve local climate adaptation planning and action. Adaptation plans are an increasingly important part of US communities’ responses to climate change, but little is known about their content. Analysis of 44 plans shows that most fail to prioritize impacts or provide detailed implementation processes.

Policies developed at national levels can be unresponsive to local needs. Often they do not provide the rural poor with access to the assets and services they need to allow them to innovate and adapt to the ways that increased climate variability and change exacerbate challenges to basic securities – food, water, energy, and well-being. In development deficit circumstances, common pool resources are important for climate adaptation purposes. In order for climate adaptation actions to deliver resilience, local perspectives and knowledge need to be recognised and given due priority in formal planning systems. Basing formal adaptive development planning on local strategies can support and strengthen measures that people have been tested and know to work. Local climate adaptation through collective action can address current increases in climate variability, future incremental changes, and the need to transform existing systems to deal with qualitative shifts in climate. These types of adaptation can work in cumulative ways. The results of local adaptation collective action that have benefits of low rivalry between users while being highly inclusive can be considered “local public goods”. Evidence is beginning to emerge that when local governance systems facilitate high levels of participation in planning collective action for climate adaptation, and direct access to resources for implementing local plans, “local public goods” can be created and common pool resources better managed.

While coproduction of knowledge is growing in popularity in social sciences, and especially climate change research, we still need to better understand how to coproduce climate knowledge. In this paper, we explore how collaborative climate hackathons coproduce local adaptation knowledge, and what this method reveals about local climate governance. The data derives from two collaborative climate hackathons, called Klimathons, that attracted 73 and 98 participants in Bergen, Norway. The participants were practitioners and decision-makers from local, regional, and national institutions as well as researchers from natural and social climate sciences. The collaborative group work revolved around the challenges and solutions of local adaptation planning and uncovered how a diversity of key actors understand the local adaptation work in Norway. These interventions revealed that there are significant disagreements and divergent understanding of relevant laws, regulations and responsibility between practitioners working within the same governance system. Though the cross-sectorial interaction does not dissolve these divergences, they allow actors to renegotiate boundaries between divergent knowledge communities. The Klimathons helped us navigate the complexity of local climate adaptation by shifting the focus to how different actors make sense of and work on adaptation and showing the intertwining and interdependence of potential drivers for adaptation.

Can recycled water policy in China adapt to local conditions: A policy implementation perspective

The regional level as boundary organization? An analysis of climate change adaptation governance in Norway

Local climate change adaptation plans in the US and France: Comparison and lessons learned in 2007-2017

Local government response to the impacts of climate change: An evaluation of local climate adaptation plans

CR Climate Research Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials CR 47:41-45 (2011) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/cr00959 Contribution to the CR Special: 'Climate services for sustainable development' Building sustainable regional climate information systems Rodney Martínez Güingla* Centro Internacional para la Investigación del Fenómeno de El Niño (CIIFEN), Escobedo 1204 y 9 de Octubre, PO Box 09014237, Guayaquil, Ecuador *Email: r.martinez@ciifen-int.org ABSTRACT: Regionally oriented services will be key elements within the proposed Global Framework of Climate Services, the main outcome of World Climate Conference-3. Regional services may be substantially different from both global and national climate services. This paper elaborates on some of the conditions necessary to develop and deliver sustainable regional climate information systems and services. The proposed approach is mostly based on 7 yr of experience of the International Research Center on El Niño (CIIFEN) in the western coast of South America (WCSA). Those wishing to design, conduct, and sustain regional activities should first accept climate information as a regional public good. Following this premise, regional climate information systems should (1) improve capabilities within institutions through collective action, (2) share knowledge and experiences on nation-specific benefits, (3) contribute to the reduction of asymmetries among countries, (4) demonstrate that a regional climate service can be enhanced as a result of improving national components, and (5) agree upon regional coordination mechanisms. The WCSA region has been able to implement a regional climate database, a regional group on climate modeling, climate-agriculture risk mapping, and statistical and dynamical seasonal-forecast systems. The development and uptake of climate services has been enhanced within government institutions, community organizations, the private sector, local authorities, and the media. The experience of CIIFEN can be useful to those starting up regional climate information systems. KEY WORDS: Regions · Climate · Services · Regional climate centers · Regional climate information systems · Regional public good · Western coast of South America Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Martínez Güingla R (2011) Building sustainable regional climate information systems. Clim Res 47:41-45. https://doi.org/10.3354/cr00959 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in CR Vol. 47, No. 1-2. Online publication date: March 31, 2011 Print ISSN: 0936-577X; Online ISSN: 1616-1572 Copyright © 2011 Inter-Research.

How are cities planning to respond to climate change? Assessment of local climate plans from 885 cities in the EU-28