About

 

The topic “Water and Adaptation to Climate Change from a natural and social science perspective in coastal Mediterranean areas” highlights the role and importance of water for human life, nature and the economy, and the societal challenges emerging from climate change to protect our water resources and ecosystem services. In the last decade, many assessments of the impacts of global and climate change in the coastal zones have been undertaken. However, such assessments have rarely been connected to decision making on adaption strategies, often because of the uncertainties associated to climate change impacts. However, generic methods to inform decision making (e.g. the robust decision making) exist, but they have rarely been set up at regional and local scale. In addition, adaptation being

trans-sectorial, there is a need to better demonstrate how such measures can be taken within

the existing regulation on development, risk prevention and land use planning. In this context, the ADAP-MED questions: Is current decision making “adapted to internalize adaptation” into policy making?

 

To address this question, ADAPT-MED will first collect and build a knowledge database for a well-selected regional research sites, namely: The territory around the Ria de Aveiro coastal lagoon in Portugal, The region “Provences-Alpes-Côte d’Azur” in France and the Easter coast of Crete (Greece). All these coastal regions have been affected by increased urbanisation in the last century, and will be diversely affected by the adverse effects of climate change on water resources, aquatic ecosystems and urban infrastructure. We will investigate how adaptation is currently being practice in these regions and how this relates to other regulatory mechanisms on land use planning and risk prevention. We will examine what adaptation measures would be desirable and how they can be mainstreamed/integrated within current policy, decision making and regulatory mechanisms. Finally, we will examine

how changes in understanding, perception and values can result in changes in climate change

adaptation decisions.

 

The ADAP-MED strives to contribute to the European and national efforts in favour to adaptation of coastal zones to the effects of climate and global change, by creating a breakthrough on adaptation decision making practices, in particular by better taking account of vulnerability assessments and their uncertainties.  Stakeholders will be associated to the project right at the beginning, taking advantage of the current responsibilities of the partners in providing them support for coastal management and risk prevention. They will be involved through national and regional workshops. Wider dissemination will be done through policy briefs, scientific publications and newsletters.