Contest and Strategy

The Italian and Croatian partners are actively engaged to climate mitigation carrying out their Sustainable Energy Action Plan, reached within the Covenant of Mayors initiative and developing Sustainable Energy Communities (SEC) in the two regions as output of CITYSEC project. With this strategy the partners have identified the needed activities to contribute to GHG emission reduction by 2020.

Moreover, they are characterized by similar territorial and climate conditions: the internal lands are characterized by mountains and hills that degrade to coast; both regions have relevant extension of coastal area, where are settled the main urban and productive infrastructures.

Through Life SEC Adapt proposal the involved municipalities intend to answer to specific problems that are severely affecting their territories and that could be addressed to climate change effects.

Considering the characteristics of partners territories of Marche and Istria regions, the main expected climate change impacts address the following key sectors:

• coastal zones: extreme weather events (floods, storms, etc.) and sea level rise may contribute to accelerate the existing erosion processes eventually leading to the degradation or loss of coastal lands, ecosystems, infrastructures and economic assets
• water and hydro-geological system: higher stress on water resources which could lead to reduced water availability and quality; alterations of the hydro-geologic regime could increase the risk of landslides, flash mud/debris flows, rock falls and flash floods;
• infrastructure and economy: pressures to urban and rural infrastructures with possible inaccessibility or disruption of transport network, human settlements and socio-economic activity, in particular tourism sector.

The above key sectors are also a priority both for Italian territorial context, as reported by the CMCC Research paper “Overview of key climate change impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation action in Italy” (one of the insights of Italian “National Strategy Adaptation to Climate Change”), and Croatian territorial context as reported in the “Adaptation to Climate Change in Croatia. Country Brief” (January 2014, Ministry of Environmental and Nature Protection Republic of Croatia ).

Considering the needs by project partners to improve local and cross-border strategies in order to better prevent and manage the effects of climate change (as extreme weather events) at urban scale, the main activity planned is to develop a specific adaptation strategy integrated with other planning activities, first of all the SEAP.

Moreover, Ancona Municipality (Marche region – IT), Bullas Municipality (ES) and ADEP S.A. (Municipal Enterprise for Planning & Development of Patras S.A. GR) will guide project partners to bridge the gap in terms of lack of awareness about climate adaptation at local/regional level thanks to their experience on planning adaptation strategies within LIFE ACT project.