We read from the European Commission website that climate change fares high on the EU’s agenda and the commission and its member states are to build climate-resilient infrastructures and working hard on its progress through sound monetary and non-monetary policy instruments.
To promote its climate adaptation efforts among the EU member states, the Commission’s Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy (DG REGIO) commissioned a study on climate change adaptation through creating an inventory or stock-taking of infrastructure projects of all member states and across the EU.
The stock-taking exercise includes an analysis of the current situation taking account of available resources to conduct quality climate adaptation projects under these 7 criteria:
- data availability,
- methodologies,
- tools,
- guidance,
- design standards,
- system, and
- institutional capacity in the following sectors: transport, broadband, urban development, energy, water and waste sectors.
The project gathered a number of case studies on how climate change adaptation and resilience is integrated into the infrastructure projects of member states.
These case studies show a variety of geographic locations and sectors presented in a standardised manner to allow easy distribution of information.
To tackle climate change, the European Commission is reducing its emission and encouraging high polluters to take strong actions, and encourage all member states to adopt a comprehensive adaptation strategy, provide funding for capacity building, step-up adaptation action in Europe, addresses knowledge gaps, mainstream and integrated adaptation actions into its policies, and ensure resilient infrastructure.
The European Structural and Investment Fund (ESIF), a major funding mechanism of the EU has integrated climate change adaptation in its approval process of major projects costing between €50 to €75 million, which has led to climate-proofing of such projects.
Additionally, the Common Provision Regulation which sets the overall funding framework, states that for major projects to be approved, the managing authority over that projects must show an analysis of the environmental impact, taking into account climate adaptation, mitigation, and disaster resilience even for a projected future event.
The DG Regio study has not only produced an inventory of all the resources and materials available to all member states to enable them to take climate adaptation actions but these resources will allow them to meet infrastructure funding requirements under the European Structural and Investment Funds programming for the period between 2104 to 2020, the report says.
The study is divided into two parts. The first part gives an overview of the report, the context of the study and available resource at the EU level, and presents the summary of the resources of each member state. And part two presents the case studies of good practices on the various sectors: transportation, urban development, energy, water, and waste.
The report provides a wealth of resources and information on climate adaptation that is useful for infrastructure project developers and asset managers.
The case studies on transport, urban developing and water sectors are replicable and provides an example of the integration of climate change adaptation in projects at varying stages.
Lastly, the report recognises opportunities to enhance climate adaptation practices into infrastructure going forward.
You may read the full European Commission report by CLICKING on the link below:
Reference:
De Rose, A., Anagnostopoulus, F., Tricot, A. et al. (2018). Climate change adaptation of major infrastructure projects. A stock-taking of available resources to assist the development of climate-resilient infrastructure. European Commission. Retrieved from https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docgener/studies/pdf/climate_change_major_projects/climate_change_adaptation_of_major_infrastructure_projects.pdf
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