Saarland Regional Report - C-Change

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Climate change will lead to lasting spatial impacts. We are hence obliged to increasingly apply preventive mitigation measures, whilst turning our attention to adapting to those consequences of advancing climate change which are already foreseeable today. An increasing number of hot and dry periods, heavy rains and floods corroborate the need for action, also in Saarland. The EU-project C-Change provided the Saarland partners with an opportunity for reviewing current planning and development programmes on a state, regional and municipal level in order to improve the integration of climate mitigation and adaptation measures (Action 20). Besides these planning approaches, a climate path (Action 14 and Investment 5) has been realised aiming at sensitizing people to climate change and its repercussions. Saarland regional partner is the Spatial Planning Department within the Saarland Ministry for Interior and Sport. Other project partners are the Saarbrücken Authority for Green Spaces, Forestry and Agriculture and the Saarland Department for Sustainable Development within the Saarland Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection. The project is managed by agl | Hartz • Saad • Wendl. Saarland Climate proof Spatial Planning 1. Project Description In the Saarland, current plans and development programmes on a state-wide, regional and urban level are being examined in terms of how they can contribute to mitigation and adaptation strategies. Within the framework of the C-Change project the Saarland State Development Plan, the action programme for the “Northern Landscape of Industrial Culture” as well as the Saarbrücken Open Space Development Programme stood in the centre of consideration: • The Saarland State Development Plan coordinates the various space utilisation demands of modern society. It is presently being redrafted in order to address current challenges entailed by changes in the economic structure and demographics, as well as the energyrelated reorientation. With the C-Change project the spatial planning avails itself of the opportunity for elaborating conceptual proposals for handling climate change from a spatial planning perspective as part of this re-draft. • For the Northern Landscape of Industrial Culture (NLIC) – a part of the Saar agglomeration characterised by the decline of the steel industry and coal mining and by a heavily shrinking population – an intermunicipal action programme has been elaborated jointly with the local stakeholders. This pilot project "Landscape and Climate Change" demonstrates by way of example, which concrete measures can be implemented on a sub-regional or local level for mitigation and adaptation. 1
• The state capital Saarbrücken is one of nine model cities taking part in the German Experimental Housing and Urban Development programme on urban strategies tackling the impacts of climate change - www.stadtund-klimawandel.de - ExWoSt. Starting from the Saarbrücken Open Space Development Programme (OSDP), the climatic relevance of open spaces is being examined with the aim of demonstrating how open spaces can help cities improve their adaptation to the consequences of climate change. The fundamentals and strategies for this have been developed as part of the C-Change project. Building on this, a broad involvement process has been started in order to sensitise the population for this subject and jointly explore definitive action options. All regional projects have been presented to a broader audience and local stakeholders at the Regional Park Forum. It took place on the 28th March 2012 in Saarbrücken and was dedicated to the topic of climate change. 2. Key Outputs, Activities and Achievements The C-Change project provided an excellent opportunity to elaborate conceptual proposals for adequately addressing adaptation strategies in the redraft of the formal and binding Saarland State Development Plan. Several workshops and bilateral coordination meetings with the various sector departments on state level ensured that sectoral as well as regionally specific requirements found intensive consideration. The main results were compiled within the final reports: • The first step was made by evaluating regional climate models to track climate change and its impact. This leads to a broader understanding of the complex and spatially relevant climate change consequences on regional level. The results indicate that summertime heat stress in the Saarland will show an above average increase in comparison with Germany as a whole. Declining summer precipitations in combination with rising summer temperatures may furthermore lead to more frequent and/or longer dry periods. As heavy precipitations are on the increase nationwide, the frequency of flooding events and risk of soil erosion may also increase in connection with rising precipitation volumes in winter. • The second step focused on the analyses of the vulnerability of land uses and structures regarding thermal stress, dry periods and flood risks. The results show that urban areas and the soil, in particular, show a high vulnerability, but also agriculture and the nature conservation areas. It became clear that the cold air supply of the densely settled areas is of key importance. For this reason C-Change also included an analysis of climate-active areas and cold air outflow routes throughout the Saarland, which will need to be further concretised in both the state development planning and the local planning. • Exploring adaptation capacities is a major step when it comes to concrete planning and realisation of measures. Adaptation potentials regarding the heat stress in urban environments are for example provided by the development of a system of interconnected urban green spaces, an optimisation of air exchange processes between the city centre and surrounding areas, and in the linkage of nearby recreational spaces with a bioclimatic and air hygiene welfare function. Adaptation potentials regarding an increased number of flooding events are most of all provided in the fields of land use and building precautions and risk management, and by an active promotion of risk awareness. • Considering the binding character of the Saarland State Development Plan, it has been necessary to provide suggestions for integrating the topic of climate change and adaptation into the formal state planning, and in particular for designing and further developing the formal planning tools of state development planning. The investigation proved e.g. the importance to determinate green corridors especially throughout the Saar agglomeration. The results will be directly included in the planning processing to follow. Sensitivity of municipalities regarding heat stress (source: HHP / JRU 2011) 2
Page 1: C-CHANGE REGIONAL REPORT 2009 - 201
Page 5 and 6: The district forum on the urban hea
Page 7 and 8: Climate Change Urban Landscape Labs
Page 9: The Organisational Learning C-Chang

Saarland Regional Report - C-Change

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?