Selecting and analysing climate change adaptation measures at six research sites across Europe

Abstract

As Europe is faced with increasing droughts and extreme precipitation, countries are taking measures to adapt to these changes. It is challenging, however, to navigate through the wide range of possible measures, taking into account the efficacy, economic impact and social justice aspects of these measures, as well as the governance requirements for implementing them. This article presents the approach of selecting and analysing adaptation measures to increasing extreme weather events caused by ongoing climate change that was developed and applied in the H2020 project BINGO (Bringing Innovation to Ongoing Water Management). The purpose of this project is (a) to develop an integrated participatory approach for selecting and evaluating adaptation measures, (b) to apply and evaluate the approach across six case-study river basins across Europe, and (c) to support decision-making towards adaptation capturing the diversity, the different circumstances and challenges river basins face across Europe. It combines three analyses: governance, socio-economic and social justice The governance analysis focuses on the requirements associated with the measures and the extent to which these requirements are met at the research sites. The socio-economic impact focuses on the efficacy of the measures in reducing the risks and the broad range of tools available to compare the measures on their societal impact. Finally, a tentative social justice analysis focuses on the distributive impacts of the adaptation measures. In the summary of results, we give an overview of the outcome of the different analyses. In the conclusion, we briefly assess the main pros and cons of the different analyses that were conducted. The main conclusion is that although the research sites were very different in both the challenges and the institutional context, the approach presented here yielded decision-relevant outcomes.