B2-Environmental problem targeted

ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM TARGETED (max. 10.000 characters)^discuss

Climate change is the defining issue of our era. (UNEMG, UNEP/GRID-Arendal, 2008). The full weight of scientific evidence suggests that the climate is changing: the range of changes, the probability of the range future climate change, nor the global distribution of the impacts are less apparent.

Climate change poses threats and the urgency of taking action, immediately to limit the effects and, in the longer term, to adapt to the changes that are sure to come.

There is clear evidence, as presented in the 4th Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC3), that humankind is contributing to significant changes in the Earth climate system and that these changes are adversely affecting air, water and soils, biodiversity, natural and man-made ecosystems, humans, communities and economic activities (EC, Connecting climate knowledge for Europe, SEC(2011) 1254 final; EC, White Paper Adapting to climate change, COM(2009) 147 final).

Over the next decades, the area of Southern Europe and the Mediterranean area can cope with impacts of climate change particularly negative, which combine the effects due to anthropogenic pressures on natural resources, can transform these areas among the most vulnerable. (Castellari, 2012)

The LIFE IESS project addresses the problem of climate change in relation to the contribution from bottom up that small communities and small towns can give to its mitigation, promoting an improvement of adaptive capacity and overall resilience of the European territory starting from the local level.

The assumption behind the project is that the systemic resilience of local communities can reduce the negative impacts of changes in human and environmental systems.

The systemic resilience is built on an ability to mitigate (reduce the contribution to the change) and an adapt (adapting to change). All this expresses the concept of resilience.

Mitigation and adaptation actions are complementary and not alternative. In some cases, may overlap and have a synergistic effect. An example is given by water savings (adaptation action) that also translate into an energy saving (mitigation action). In a sense, the same energy saving, as well as energy diversification, represents adaptation as well as mitigation actions.

In IESS, the implementation of mitigation actions strengthens and produces a mitigation capacity (the more we reduce our contribution to the anthropogenic impact, the more we improve the ability to give less contributes) with a positive feedback. The higher is the mitigation capacity the higher we will be able to start new mitigation actions. The same applies to to adaptation: the development of adaptation strategies itself improves the ability to adapt and to develop new strategies.

Core exemplarity of LIFE IESS stems from the idea that a pro-active planning is a concrete implementation of mitigation actions and development of adaptation strategies. Do not wait for things to happen, but move ahead in the development of strategies and implement them, triggering a virtuous cycle.

Small local communities generally share similar environmental problems even when they are in different territorial contexts as may be those in Europe. They have, for example, environmental priorities related to mobility and commuting to urban centres or more related to energy efficiency of buildings which, because of the low spatial density, necessarily require complex interventions synergies between private and public interventions. Not to mention the maintenance of the territory into which, if the bottom-up coordination is intertwined with the planning level, we can obtain significant improvements in effectiveness.

For reasons of critical mass, the priority of adaptation to climate change is currently focused on large cities or on major infrastructure as the interrelationships between urban and rural places, and between small towns and large regional centres are also gaining relevance in regional policy at European level.

Smaller communities must therefore take a different approach linking policies with the active capacity of the individual to add European added value.

For the communities of people of small towns and rural areas to survive (to be sustained over the longer term) and to build their capacity to be resilient to external threats and changes a local policy focus and local action is required. (Turner, 2009).

The environmental problem considered by LIFE IESS, relatively “small” in quantitative term if only compared to the project's scale (20,000 inhabitants in the territory involved; approximately 120,000 TCO2/year equivalent emissions), becomes suddenly “huge” when compared or “multiplied” by the numbers of small communities in Europe. As there is no canonical definition of what is meant by small communities and small town, ECOVAST (European Council for the Village and Small Town) tried to give some answers by placing the small town in the size of urban places by 30,000 inhab. and small local communities / rural areas under the 10,000 inhab.

According to ECOVAST, throughout Europe, more than 80% of the towns are less than 50,000. There are nearly 243 million people living in places where the population is less than 10,000, which will include many much smaller rural towns as well as villages and the countryside. This amounts to three times the size of Germany, the biggest country in Europe – a substantial proportion of 42% of the whole population of Europe (the proportion being higher in the rest of Europe than in the 27 countries of the European Union) (Carter, 2010). The data are not different from those provided also by EEA 2006 ( INTELI, 2011) Furthermore, small towns are, therefore, essential for avoiding rural depopulation and urban drift, and are indispensable for the balanced regional development, cohesion and sustainability of the European territory. (DG REGIO, 2011)

These numbers make immediately attractive approaches and a methodologies such as those advanced by LIFE IESS, because they promise to bring quickly into action.

Climate change is expected to heavily affect the IESS project territory (Medio Brenta Area, in the Region of Veneto, IT) characterized by a marked vulnerability of multiple dimensions: environmental, social and economic.

Acting with urgency, it is possible to change this course and move towards the restoration of a balanced functioning of ecosystems.

The fragility of the social dimension - which will be discussed in B3 - is well represented by the demographic and economic structure and by the rapidity with which trends at larger scale (rise of unemployment, access to social welfare, business failures) mirror at local scale.

The fragility of the environment (as show the presence of SIC and ZPS / ZSC) is at the same time one of the highest risks and the most promising area of intervention for a sustainable social and economic planning. The three municipalities involved (Grantorto, Carmignano di Brenta, Fontaniva) are too small and too dispersed to individually implement strategies for adaptation and mitigation of climate change.

The goal is then to design and launch strategies and local action plans of a sufficient mass and scale - aggregating and integrating the resources of IESS partners - to fight climate change and mitigate its effects. The environmental dimension has also a great potential because it can help reduce or solve the problems of social and economic dimension in the short and long term.

For example, an accessible natural environment (walking, hiking and biking trails linked together) can radically change the use of the territory and change the environmental awareness while improving the quality of life and wellbeing of citizens (particularly children and elders).

In relation to greenhouse emissions, mobility management alternatives and smart transport are possible (eg car pooling run by municipalities), and are an environmentally positive response to cuts in public transports.

The conservation and improvement of public land plots binding their use to socially and environmentally sustainable agricultural uses help increasing the awareness about cultural produce and the growing loss of variety, that do not seem important only because taken for granted. (European Union has framed the issue in the strategy document of the EC "Our life insurance, our natural capital: an EU biodiversity strategy to 2020").

On a wider spatial and temporal horizon, the protection of aquifer recharge areas of the Brenta has effects on short (annual) and long term for the community that draws from that resource, for valuable fodder crops as well as for drinking water. This design has a long-term perspective (What kind of territory we offer to our children?), but also produces benefits immediately perceived by the population (health, well-being sociability, lower travel costs and alternative services that work).

An integrated view of this type hinges, for the environmental dimension, on the concepts of natural capital and ecosystem services, to deal with which a synergy between the territories is required.

Bibliography:

• Carter, Valerie, 2010 , in European Work with Small Towns Action for Market Towns Convention Chippenham: October 2010 UK Network, ECOVAST
• Castellari, Sergio, 2012, L’Europa verso l’adattamento ai cambiamenti climatici, Ecoscienza Numero 2 Anno 2012
• EC, Connecting climate knowledge for Europe, SEC(2011) 1254 final
• EC, DG REGIO, 2011 Cities of tomorrow Challenges, visions, ways forward
• EC, White Paper Adapting to climate change: Towards a European framework for action, COM(2009) 147 final.
• INTELI, 2011, Creative based strategies in small and medium-sized cities: guidelines for local authorities)
• Turner, Phil, 2009 ECOVAST Position Statement to accompany the New Wittstock Declaration
• UNEMG, UNEP/GRID-Arendal, 2008, Alex Kirby, Kick the habit, A UN guide to climate neutrality

STATE OF THE ART AND INNOVATIVE ASPECTS OF THE PROJECT (max. 10.000 characters)^discuss

From a political point of view, resilience to climate change can be interpreted as an anticipation capacity; in particular, for small municipalities, would imply to create the capability to respond by local integrated planning and bottom-up approach.

The bottom-up approach to climate change on which grounds the LIFE IESS Project is widely considered a valuable approach.

This attempt to reinforce a participating and anticipation capacity from bottom-up, leads to a different approach and remains connected to the surrounding reality. The active and participatory management also enables to channel more resources, and all those available in the area.

Since the early Nineties, starting from pioneering experiences of Agenda 21, the fundamental role of local authorities in setting and achieving sustainable development objectives and coping with environmental challenges is widely recognized. Being the level of governance closest to the people, and those using – effectively – an array of planning and management tools, not to mention monitoring and reporting capabilities, local authorities play a vital role in implementing measures leading to and promoting environmental policies, as well as in educating, mobilising and responding to the public.

Local authority actions play a vital role in responding to the challenges of enhancing the state of the environment not only in policy-making, but also in the provision of services and in the planning process (EEA, 2001)

More recently, during the discussion towards the 7th Environment Action Programme (7th EAP ), the Committee of the Regions stressed the necessity to enhance local role in formulating EU environmental policy and the fact that there are many examples in Europe's regions and cities where local levels have taken ambitious action when Member State was not acting.

COR stresses also the importance to involve local level and reinforce, through information and communication with the citizens, the implementation of the Aarhus Convention, establishing appropriate tools for participatory democracy and local ownership (COR, 2010) Some recent studies have shown that in order to increase resilience, to improve the deployment and leverage of limited adaptation funds and make them responsive to local challenges, “bottom-up approaches to greenhouse gas mitigation and climate adaptation are more effective and efficient"(ICLEI, 2011).

Literature shows how large-scale preventive measures are put in place more effectively with a top-down approach but that the acceptance of these actions on the territory and operations of smaller scale have done better and more efficiently and more quickly with bottom-up approaches.

At least emphasizes that top-down, global, reaching to (and sometimes homogenous) approaches to combating climate change must be blended with bottom-up, local, grass-roots schemes. (Sovacool - Brown, 2009) The challenge is to find ways to combine the strengths of addressing multiple scales, rather than having them work against each other. Local scales offer potentials for bottom-up actions that ensure participation, flexibility, and innovation. But can also be limited by a lack of information, scarce resources, and limited awareness of larger-scale driving forces (O’Brien, Pelling, Patwardhan, 2012).

The reason policy makers rarely ask questions about scale may be attributed to the fact that climate change is often seen as a global problem, seemingly encompassing all scales of society. Yet while the effects of climate change are certainly global, their underlying cause, at the smallest scale, is individual (Sovacool - Brown, 2009).

Of course there are supporters and opponents of the benefits of fighting climate change at the local scales. Those in favour of relying on the local scale of climate action believe it is best to promote efficient responses through innovation and diversity, flexibility, and accountability.

Local action, such LIFE IESS one, can provide opportunities for experimentation in designing policy, as the existence of many individuals acting at once promotes competition and innovation.

Local scales also promote more variability and flexibility. Centralized, supra-national or international regulatory systems are often unable to incorporate all of the temporal and spatial information necessary to design optimal policies; this ‘‘knowledge problem’’ needs local and regional responses from people familiar with their own conditions. Decentralized decision-making allows for a closer fit between policies and preferences.

Those in favour of relying on the national/supra-national scale of climate action believe that it best promotes uniformity and consistency along with economies of scale, and avoids spillover effects.

The response pathways for mitigation probably favour action at a global scale. Yet pathways for adaptation favour local scale, as the benefits stay largely within the community, and policy flexibility and variability are critical.

In most cases, the likelihood of effective adaptation is related to the capacity to adapt, which in turn is related to such variables as knowledge and awareness and good governance. Strategies for enhancing such capacities are likely to include the development and use of local expertise on climate change issue, information sharing about adaptation potentials and constraints among settlements and their components, and an emphasis on participatory decision-making, where local institutions, and community groups are drawn into discussions of possible responses. (Wilbanks, 2007).

LIFE IESS better matches local interests and preferences and goes in the direction of ICLEI suggestions stressing the importance of a local approach that suggests three ‘inversions’ of development assistance to aid the upgrading of climate resilience:

• Bottom-up planning processes to identify vulnerabilities and risks and to integrate risk reduction measures into related improvements of systems performance.
• Bottom-up technical and institutional capacity to design, manage and execute the ‘resilience upgrading’ projects, as well as preparing the different options for investment.
• Bottom-up procurement of investment through managed, competitive sources, mechanisms and processes.

On this last point, LIFE IESS gives a contribution to further innovation as it links the private maintenance investments to public planning and management.

Also at national level (Filpa, 2012) is suggested to adopt “targeted operation”, proposing concrete policies and feasible actions and favoring more “soft” (institutional and financial) adaptation than “hard” once.

From 2007 since today, in Italy Climate Change issues have received increased public attention as well as increased perception of practical of negative consequences of missing environmental protection goals and possible reverse undesirable effects on human beings and nature. National emissions of CO2, which accounted in 2007 for 86% of total greenhouse gas emissions in CO2- equivalent, showed an increase by 9.3% between 1990 and 2007 (Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea, 2009).

Adaptation measures have been already implemented in the context of environment protection, natural hazards prevention, sustainable management of natural resources and health protection, which could be also beneficial for adapting to climate change. These measures are generally aimed more at reducing vulnerability to current climate variability and extreme weather conditions (reactive adaptation), rather than at preparing to the potential adverse effects of the projected climate change (proactive adaptation).

Moreover, Italy has not yet developed a National Adaptation Strategy (NAS). As the bottom-up approach is declared between those that are the basis of the implementation of the Italian NAS - and some examples of good practices are also locally active (Agenda 21 and the Kyoto Club experiences) - it seems that there are still not sufficient application cases: “Local” involvement is limited to Regional level or to larger municipalities.

LIFE IESS is framed as a demonstration project and it will open new operational perspectives in this area.

Bibliography:

• COR – Committee of the Regions, 2010, Commission for the Environment, Climate Change and Energy, Draft outlook opinion on The role of local and regional authorities in future environmental policy Rapporteur: Mrs Paula BAKER (UK/ALDE), Member of Basingstoke and Deane Council, 28 June 2010
• EC, "La nostra assicurazione sulla vita, il nostro capitale naturale: strategia dell'UE sulla biodiversità fino al 2020", COM(2011) 244 final
• EEA, Environmental benchmarking for local authorities: From Concept to practice, Environmental Issue Report No20, 2001
• Filpa, Andrea (2012) – I piani di adattamento climatico in ambito urbano, Workshop “Stato delle conoscenze riguardo ai cambiamenti climatici in Italia”, Roma 27 febbraio 2012
• ICLEI, 2011, Financing the Resilient City: A demand driven approach to development, disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation – An ICLEI White Paper, ICLEI Global Report
• Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea, 2009, Fifth National Communication under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change - Italy
• O’Brien, Karen, Pelling, Mark , Patwardhan, Anand, 2012, Group II Contribution to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Toward a Sustainable and Resilient Future Chapter 8 in: Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (SREX)
• Sovacool, Benjamin K. - Brown , Marilyn A., 2009, Scaling the policy response to climate change, Policy and Society 27 (2009)
• Wilbanks, Thomas J. , 2007, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Chapter 3: Effects of Global Change on Human Settlements (IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, Working Group II, Chapter 7 )
• Wilbanks, T. J., 2007 Energy myth thirteen—Developing countries are not doing their part in responding to concerns about climate change. In B. K.Sovacool & M. A. Brown (Eds.), Energy and American society—Thirteen myths New York: Springer.

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