Ecologic Institute's Susanne Altvater participated in a workshop during the European Climate Change Adaptation conference (ECCA) 2013 about improved transnational cooperation with regard to climate change adaptation. Her presentation about the currently developed "Baltic Sea Region Strategy for Cooperation on Climate Change Adaptation at different levels" is available for download.
The EU strategy for climate adaptation has been adopted in April 2013. It has to interact with national and macro-regional adaptation strategies for full effectiveness. With regard to national strategies, all EU countries are at some level developing and implementing national policy. The first macro-regional climate change adaptation strategy will be launched by the BALTADAPT project in autumn 2013. This strategy and the interrelated action plan are foreseen to be incorporated as a horizontal action within the EU Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region (EUSBSR) which is the first comprehensive macro-regional EU strategy, covering several EU policies.
The main aim of the BALTADAPT project is to involve political decision makers and other stakeholders on different levels in the process in order to lay ground for political endorsement. The workshop was therefore organized by BALTADAPT for this purpose.
The workshop assessed opportunities and constraints related to the interaction of strategies and action plans on the national, regional and EU-level and their role for implementation of actions. The main focus was on the specific role of regional strategies – questioning how such strategies can facilitate adaptation to climate change from the perspective of local implementation, development of national strategies, as well as facilitating implementation of the EU strategy.
It was initiated by three speakers, followed by a moderated world-café session aiming to identify if and how strategies on different levels should interplay to ensure adaptation to climate change.
The presentation by Susanne Altvater provided an outline of the BALTADAPT macro-regional strategy aiming to ensure that the strategy adds value to local actions. Ideas of the strategy and its action plan were given for a connected region with informed actors on all levels responding to climate change.