Intensive and inspiring days of sharing knowledge about climate change and nature-based solutions for our partner Metropolitan Area Gdańsk-Gdynia-Sopot

Intensive and inspiring days of sharing knowledge about climate change and nature-based solutions for our partner Metropolitan Area Gdańsk-Gdynia-Sopot

“Transformative Climate Media for Urban Futures”<br />
Report on the international and interdisciplinary symposium<br />

Training for teachers  pic.: MAGGS

The educational project “Climate in the Schools of Metropolis” implemented by Metropolitan Area Gdańsk-Gdynia-Sopot – LOCALISED partner – is entering a new stage. Training for nature, biology and geography teachers from 40 schools participating in the project has been completed.

Let’s play green. Environmental education from an early age.

During the training, ecological infrastructure solutions that use the potential of plants, soil and rainwater were discussed. They make it possible to become resistant to the effects of climate change, and ultimately to mitigate and stop them. Nature-based solutions discussed in the project include: rain gardens in the ground and box, retention basins, green walls, compost bins. As part of the project, this infrastructure will be built in 40 metropolitan schools.

Workshop participants also got acquainted with examples of investments and educational projects in the field of water retention and biodiversity protection implemented in Norway. They were presented by the foreign partner International Development Norway.

The project “Climate in the Schools of Metropolis”, which we are implementing with several dozen local governments, focuses on climate science. Thanks to Norwegian funds, we are building green walls, retention basins, rain gardens in schools, and thanks to joint training, teachers will conduct lessons in our schools based on this new infrastructure – says Michał Glaser, CEO of the Board of Metropolitan Area Gdańsk-Gdynia-Sopot.

Timetable for teachers

During the training, ready-made scenarios of lessons were presented, which will be used by teachers. They are intended for grades 4 and 5 of primary school and grades 1 and 2 of secondary school, but due to the flexible and creative formula, they can also be used in other grades as needed.

We familiarize teachers with the subject of small retention: rain gardens in a box, rain gardens in the ground, retention basins, as well as green walls and compost bins. We really want it to be such a practical dimension of knowledge. We really want it to be such a practical dimension of knowledge, so as to inspire, and then so that teachers inspire their students and encourage them to implement – says Maja Skibińska, landscape architect from Pracownia Szelest, co-author of lesson plans.

In order to diversify the lessons, a package of didactic materials has been prepared. The attachments to the scenarios include multimedia presentations, educational boards, worksheets, charts, quizzes, games, inspirations and other teaching aids.

The developed materials will help teachers creatively teach children and youth how to counteract the effects of climate change.

Examples of green-blue infrastructure

In the second part of the training, outdoor visits took place, during which teachers saw examples of green walls or rain gardens in Gdańsk, which are implemented by the substantive partner of the project Gdańskie Wody.

“Transformative Climate Media for Urban Futures”<br />
Report on the international and interdisciplinary symposium<br />

Examples of rain gardens and green walls in Gdańsk pic.:MAGGS

As part of the project, blue and green infrastructure will be built on school grounds. The investments, in addition to the design, earthwork and construction works, will include the construction of installations enabling the proper direction of rainwater, but also the planting of plants appropriately selected for a given type of infrastructure. Each school will additionally receive gardening tools and plants to carry out plantings as part of educational activities.

The project “Climate in the schools of the Metropolis” is implemented as part of the Environment, Energy and Climate Change programme. The funding comes from the European Economic Area Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 and the state budget.

The project “Climate in the schools of the Metropolis” will end at the beginning of 2024. MAGGS implements it in cooperation with the content partner Gdańskie Wody and the foreign partner International Development Norway.

Explore the recent paper on Urban Adaptation plans in Europe of LOCALISED partner University of Twente

Explore the recent paper on Urban Adaptation plans in Europe of LOCALISED partner University of Twente

“Transformative Climate Media for Urban Futures”<br />
Report on the international and interdisciplinary symposium<br />

Fig. 1: Map of European cities with urban climate adaptation plans and their quality score. Colours refer to the age of the plan, i.e. the year of publication, with roughly equal cities in each age group (dividing the total of 167 cities with adaptation plan(s) by three). Yellow depicts plans that are published before mid-2015. Blue depicts plans that are published between mid-2015 and mid-2018. Green refers to plans that are published after mid-2018. Cities in our sample of 327 without an adaptation plan/ plans are shown by small grey dots. Shaded countries have national legislation that requires cities to develop urban climate adaptation plans (France, the UK, Ireland, and Denmark)

Urban adaptation plans in Europe are getting better over time: but we are not focussing on people most in need

A group of scientists evaluated urban adaptation plans in 167 European cities to understand if there is an evolution on plan quality over time. It was found that, from 2005 to 2020, overall adaptation plan quality has improved. When looking into different components of plan quality, we have found that cities’ adaptation planning mostly improved in setting adaptation goals, in suggesting thorough and varied adaptation measures, and in detailing out their implementation. On the other hand, there has been only a slight improvement on monitoring plan implementation and on including civil society in plan making. Likewise, newer plans are slightly better at proposing measures that match the previously identified climate risks. However, the involvement of vulnerable people and the monitoring of adaptation measures by those people affected is still rare. There is a clear positive trend in urban adaptation plans in Europe, but still a long way to go towards more inclusive and robust adaptation planning towards climate risk reduction.

 Global temperature increases confirm that climate change is already happening. We therefore need to adapt to its impacts. Adaptation formed a key part of the 2015 Paris Agreement, which stressed the need to review progress on adaptation, including through regular “Global Stocktakes”. However, given that the effectiveness of many adaptation measures only really becomes apparent after some time, often only after a severe weather event such as a heatwave or storm has hit, it is notoriously difficult to assess this progress. Indeed, to date there is no agreement on the current state of adaptation, what ‘progress’ means, and how it could be assessed.

One approach involves examining the contents of adaptation plans, to analyse the extent to which they identify climate risks and propose measures to reduce the scale of potential impacts. In our new study, published in npj Nature Urban Sustainability, we develop and apply three different indices to assess the quality of these plans, and apply them to 167 cities across Europe.

We found that these cities have improved in their abilities to plan for adaptation. These improvements may come about through processes of collective learning, knowledge transfer, capacity building, transnational networks and other types of science-policy collaborations. However, most local governments are still not considering the needs of vulnerable people, nor involving them in policy formulation and monitoring—something that we regard as necessary for a good adaptation plan, in order to make sure adaptation works for people most in need of it.

Why is it important to evaluate the quality of local climate adaptation plans?

Climate threats are particularly pronounced in cities many of which are highly vulnerable to heatwaves, flash flooding, coastal erosion and storms. Therefore, we might expect that many city governments have set out how they seek to address these threats in official plans. These plans cannot tell the whole story in terms of actual progress in the collective reduction (or redistribution) of climate risks, because they do not tend to monitor implementation or the effectiveness of previous policies. However, they can provide information about the quality and relevance of adaptation processes and actions, and help to assess the likelihood that cities’ advance adaptation goals by reducing risks and increasing resilience equitably. As one previous study put it, ‘the best method to ensuring robust adaptation is to ensure rigorous adaptation planning processes’.

As such, developing and applying a set of indicators to measure and track the quality of urban adaptation plans can help us to learn collectively about how to deal with climate threats better. Our indicators have been incorporated into a free online tool to help city practitioners assess the quality of their own plans, and benchmark their progress against others.

 Defining urban adaptation planning quality

We assessed adaptation plan quality according to six principles that are already well-established in previous studies: 1.) fact base of impacts and risks in the local area; 2.) adaptation goals; 3.) adaptation measures; 4.) details on the implementation of adaptation measures; 5.) monitoring & evaluation of adaptation measures; and 6.) societal participation in plan creation. In addition, we introduced a relatively new aspect concerning the “consistency” of the plans. Consistency means that impacts/ risks, goals, measures, monitoring, and participation are aligned with each other. For example, if a city identifies that it is vulnerable to heatwaves, which put older people are particular risk, then a good plan designs and implements specific heat-related measures that target older people, and puts mechanisms in place to assess whether their vulnerability to heat risks reduces after implementation. We argue that consistency is a very important aspect of plan quality.

Based on a combination of these six principles and various consistency measures, we developed a new index  (named ADAQA) to assess plan quality, and applied it to urban adaptation plans in a sample of 327 European cities, published between 2005 and 2020.

Distribution of plan quality in European cities

Of the whole sample, about 50% , i.e. 167 cities, had an adaptation plan (Fig. 1). Most plans are found in the United Kingdom (UK) (30 plans), Poland and France (22 plans each), and Germany (19 plans). A total of 53 of these 167 cities (32%) developed it under a national, regional, or local law that requires municipalities (sometimes above a certain threshold of population size) to develop an urban climate adaptation plan. This was the case for cities in Denmark, Ireland, the UK and France.

The cities of Sofia (BG), Galway (IE), and Dublin (IE) scored highest (Fig. 2) in the adaptation plan index. Notably, the Irish government requires cities to produce adaptation plans that included certain features (e.g. an assessment of climate risks to the urban area), and this contributed towards their high scores. Galway achieves the highest score and performs particularly well against Principles 1 (fact base: impacts), 4 (implementation), and 6 (participation), and also in terms of taking account of vulnerable sectors in its plan. The city set clear priorities for different actions, identified responsible parties, set out a timeline for implementation, and developed a detailed budget. Furthermore, it involved a wide range of stakeholders in the plan-making process.

Evolution of plan quality over time

We divided our cities into three temporal groups, depending on when their most recent plan was published. We found that plan quality significantly improved over time across these temporal groups (Fig. 1), and also on annual basis (see Fig. 2). Assuming linearity, plan quality increased by about 1.3 points per year from 2005 to 2020.

However, there are clear differences in terms of the various principles of plan quality (Fig. 3). On average, cities improved most in terms of goal setting, suggesting detailed and different measures, and setting out the implementation approach. The plans improved only slightly with regard to monitoring, e.g. the progress of implementing the measures, and including civil society in plan making, i.e. participation.

Urban adaptation plans in Europe are getting better over time 2

Fig. 2: Scores of the plan quality index ADAQA-3 per city over time. The scores are displayed per city and year in which the adaptation plan was published, plus averages of each year and linear trend line, 2005 to 2020. Each dot represents the plan/ plans in one city. The dot colours indicate the temporal group the adaptation plan belongs to, i.e. yellow: older (before mid-2015), blue: medium-old (mid-2015 to mid-2018) and green: recent plans (after mid-2018), with an almost equal number of plans in each group. We call out the first three cities with the highest adaptation plan quality score in each temporal group. The exact scores of each city for ADAQA-1/2/3 are provided as Supplementary Tab. 1 in our published paper

Consistency of plans over time

As mentioned, one of the central characteristics of our index is its focus on consistency between identified climate risks and the measures that the city plans and monitors. We find that the consistency improved slightly over time (Fig. 4), particularly with regards to aligning impacts/ risks with adaptation goals (not shown), and vulnerable sectors/ industries with adaptation measures (consistency 2 in Fig.4). The impacts/ risks for vulnerable groups and how these groups were involved in plan development (consistency 5), as well as how adaptation measures for vulnerable groups were monitoring over time (consistency 4), were also better aligned in later plans.

Very few plans engage vulnerable people in developing plans and monitoring measures, although their involvement in these processes has increased slightly over time. In other words, vulnerable groups (such as infants, older people and those on low incomes) are rarely involved in participation processes and the vast majority of plans make no mention of monitoring and evaluation to address their specific needs. Moreover, urban adaptation plans got worse over time in planning for measures that particularly address these vulnerable groups (consistency 3). That means, more recent plans involve less measures that particularly address identified vulnerable groups.

Urban adaptation plans in Europe are getting better over time 2

Fig. 3a-f: Scores of the adaptation plan quality principles (principles I. to VI.) in ADAQA-3 per city over time. Each dot represents the plan/ plans in one city. The dot colours indicate the temporal group the adaptation plan belongs to, i.e. yellow: older (prior mid-2015), blue: medium-old (mid-2015 to mid-2018) and green: recent plans (after mid-2018), with an almost equal number of plans in each group.

Overall, therefore, although the quality of urban adaptation plans in Europe has improved since 2005, many cities are still lagging behind or are yet to even produce a plan. Furthermore, most of the existing plans do not sufficiently take account of the specific needs of those people who are particularly vulnerable to climate impacts. We hope that our study and the free online tool can help practitioners and policymakers reflect on what they can include in future plans, and thereby contribute towards improved resilience in cities across Europe and elsewhere.

Urban adaptation plans in Europe are getting better over time 2

Figure 6: Scores of the consistency measures (consistency 2 to 5) in ADAQA per temporal group. The bar colours indicate the temporal group in which the adaptation plan was published, i.e. yellow: older (prior mid-2015), blue: medium-old (mid-2015 to mid-2018) and green: recent plans (after mid-2018), with equal plans in each group.

Reckien, D. et al. (2023) Assessing the quality of urban climate adaptation plans over time, npj Nature Urban Sustainability, doi:10.1038/s42949-023-00085-1

“Transformative Climate Media for Urban Futures” – Report on the international and interdisciplinary symposium

“Transformative Climate Media for Urban Futures” – Report on the international and interdisciplinary symposium

“Transformative Climate Media for Urban Futures”<br />
Report on the international and interdisciplinary symposium<br />

From 24-25 January 2023, Tobias Gralke and Bernd Hezel from the LOCALISED project partner Climate Media Factory co-hosted the international and interdisciplinary symposium “Transformative Climate Media for Urban Futures” at the Brandenburg Center for Media Studies in Potsdam, Germany. Since LOCALISED precisely operates at the intersection of media development and urban sustainability, the symposium offered lots of important theoretical and practical insights for the next project stages.

The symposium’s programme included 16 contributors from a wide range of professional backgrounds and locations such as Australia, the United States, Peru, Colombia, the Netherlands, Greece, and Germany. Along the three conceptual dimensions of Imagination, Interaction, and Impact, the contributions referred to the symposium’s guiding question: how can audiovisual media and digital spaces help cities and regions reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to the new realities of climate change – in other words, make sustainable local futures imaginable, negotiable, and desirable?

The organisers have published a blog post with more detailed insights into the discussion, and they invite everyone interested to get in touch about the symposium’s topic and scope. Given the global urban challenges that lie ahead in the context of climate change, it will be more than necessary to continue to intensify the coordinated exchange between practitioners, researchers, and urban societies. LOCALISED thus thanks all contributors for making the symposium a successful step to the next level of our joint efforts!

by Climate Media Factory

Photo: Catharina Dörr, Climate Media Factory

The City of Barcelona, partner of LOCALISED, is the first-ever European Capital of Democracy

The City of Barcelona, partner of LOCALISED, is the first-ever European Capital of Democracy

Support mechanism to foster the implementation of Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs) in the Mediterranean

On January the 18th it was announced that The City of Barcelona – LOCALISED partner – is the holder of the first-ever title of European Capital of Democracy (ECoD). The city will host events on citizen participation and democracy, starting from September 2023 and continuing for one year until August 2024.

The jury of the award was made up of 2,500 citizens from all Council of Europe member states. It took the final decision between three shortlisted cities: Brussels, Braga and Barcelona.

Besides instrumental innovations, such as the Decidim platform or the participative budget, the Catalan capital presented different projects related to the urban policies and transformations required to fight and adapt to climate change. One of these was the participatory process related to design the spaces known as the ‘superblocks’. Another was the Citizen Climate Assembly, whose proposals on energy, mobility and consumption were solemnly presented in the very same week.

The capitalship contest is promoted by the Innovation in Politics Institute, and has the support of the Council of Europe, the European Commission and more than 20 other European actors who seek to deepen democracy, such as the Democratic Society and the German Marshall Foundation.

IMAGE: The Mayor of Barcelona with the 100 members of the 1st Climate Asssembly and municipal staff. (2023, January). Ajuntament De Barcelona. https://www.barcelona.cat/infobarcelona/en/tema/environment-and-sustainability/proposals-from-members-of-the-public-to-tackle-the-climate-emergency_1245763.html

The partner Climate Media Factory is co-organising the international symposium “TRANSFORMATIVE CLIMATE MEDIA FOR URBAN FUTURES”

The partner Climate Media Factory is co-organising the international symposium “TRANSFORMATIVE CLIMATE MEDIA FOR URBAN FUTURES”

Support mechanism to foster the implementation of Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs) in the Mediterranean

On 24-25 January the international symposium “TRANSFORMATIVE CLIMATE MEDIA FOR URBAN FUTURES” will take place in Potsdam (Germany). The event is co-organised by Climate Media Factory – LOCALISED partner – and Filmuniversität Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF, hosted by Brandenburgisches Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften (Hermann-Elflein-Straße 18, 14467 Potsdam).

👉 How can #audiovisual media and digital spaces help #cities and #regions reduce their #greenhousegasemissions and adapt to the new realities of #climatechange – in other words, make #sustainable local #futures imaginable, negotiable, and desirable?

This symposium takes an operative perspective on audiovisual media that are used in transformative processes like urban planning, citizen participation, disaster management, and others. The term transformative climate media encompasses a wide range of media forms and genres that help create shared visions of sustainable local futures and facilitate discussions about how to get there: from scientific visualisations and animated explainers over decision-making tools, games, and XR simulations to documentaries and fictional films. We want to particularly discuss their potential to evoke interactions, create collective images and ideas, and facilitate negotiations about socio-ecological futures. Thus, the focus lies less on knowledge transfer and more on aspects such as meaning-making, narrativity, aesthetics, co-design, urban media and knowledge beyond the ‘smart city’ paradigm.

The symposium aims to initiate a lasting exchange between various actors interested in urban climate media and to establish a transdisciplinary research field of the highest practical relevance. While there has long been a broad academic debate about different strategies of climate communication and their impact on specific target groups and individuals, more systemic approaches and impact strategies as well as the operative use of media forms in transformative processes have often been neglected. And while climate communication research mostly focuses on unidirectional aspects (e.g. framing, target group targeting and corresponding media effects), only a few studies and projects so far emphasise the potential of (not only urban) climate media to motivate interactions, to evoke collective images and imaginations or to foster negotiation processes about societal futures.

The focus on cities is for two reasons: first, cities are already responsible for about 80% of global energy consumption and over 70%of CO2 emissions – and at the same time they’re highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Second, cities are focal points, seismographs, and sites of negotiation and contest around social futures, which makes them impactful beyond their borders in a political, cultural and metabolic sense.

The program is spread over two half days and consists of presentations by invited speakers, project presentations invited via an open call, as well as structured discussion rounds and informal opportunities for exchange. Please note: The event will take place in person and will not be streamed online.