Abstract
Municipalities are important actors in the field of local climate change adaptation. Stakeholders need scientifically sound information tailored to their needs to make local assessment of climate change effects. To provide tailored data to support municipal decision-making, climate scientists must know the state of municipal climate change adaptation, and the climate parameters relevant to decisions about such adaptation. The results of an empirical study in municipalities in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg in Southwestern Germany showed that adaptation is a relatively new topic, but one of increasing importance. Therefore, past weather events that caused problems in a municipality can be a starting point in adaptation considerations. Deduction of tailored climate parameters has shown that, for decisions on the implementation of specific adaptation measures, it also is necessary to have information on specific parameters not yet evaluated in climate model simulations. We recommend intensifying the professional exchange between climate scientists and stakeholders in collaborative projects with the dual goals of making practical adaptation experience and knowledge accessible to climate science, and providing municipalities with tailored information about climate change and its effects.
Highlights
Climate change adaptation on the local level is of increasing relevance because of the regional variation in the effects of global climate change [1,2,3,4]
To deduce tailored climate parameters that municipalities need for decision-making in planning and implementation of climate change adaptation, we conducted a survey based on a standardized questionnaire and additional interviews with experts
Our study showed that approximately two thirds of the municipalities engage in activities related to climate change adaptation and one third has an adaptation plan
Summary
Climate change adaptation on the local level is of increasing relevance because of the regional variation in the effects of global climate change [1,2,3,4]. In the multi-scale, multi-sectoral, and multi-level challenge of adapting to climate change, many often intertwined political, economic, institutional, and technical or scientific obstacles involving different political levels have been identified and discussed that prevent or delay the development of local adaptation plans and strategies and the implementation of measures [7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15] While many of these obstacles are not climate-specific and may emerge in other fields as well, Biesbroek et al [11] identify
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