The Northern Netherlands is like many delta’s prone to a wide range of climate change effects. Given the region its long history with floods and adaptation, there are numerous initiatives to be found that tried to battle these effects. As part of the Climate Adaptation Week Groningen, an inventory was made of these initiatives. The most inspiring ones were coined ‘best practices’, and analysed in order to learn lessons. A distinction was made between 4 regional landscape types. The first consists of the coastline itself, where the effects of the rising sea level begin to show. The second covers the farmlands near the coastlines, where challenges such as salinisation and the loss of biodiversity prevail. A third landscape covers the historically compact cities, which have to deal with rising temperatures and heavy rainfall in increasingly limited spaces. The fourth and final landscape comprises the wetlands surrounding the cities, where the natural capacity to retain and store rainwater is undermined by its agriculture usage. Most of these challenges form a risk for maintaining a liveable region. The best practices that were collected show a diverse set of innovations and experiments, both on small and large scales. Three main characteristics could be distinguished that illustrate trends in climate adaptation practices. First, many best practices were aimed at restoring and embracing the natural capacity of the different landscapes, giving more and more room for the building with nature concept as part of building resilience. Second, climate adaptation is seldomly focussed on as the sole function of a spatial intervention, and is almost always part of integrated plans in which biodiversity, agriculture, recreation or other themes are prolonged with it. A third and last characteristic shows that many projects embed a strong focus on the historical context of places as a source of inspiration and cultural identity. The best practices show how different ways of adapting are emerging and can inspire planners across the world.
Sustainable Open Solutions Climate Waterfront is an interdisciplinary project that aims to explore waterfronts in Europe facing extreme situations under the threat of climate change, eg. heat, too much absent rain and sea level rise with all its consequences. The central goal is to exchange adaptive strategies for sustainable solutions for infrastructure and urban planning. The multidisciplinary perspective in cooperation with all possible partners, stakeholders and citizens, leads to a better understanding of the challenges and adaptation strategies.The participating parties are six coastal cities: Lisbon, Rome, Thessaloniki, Gdansk, Stockholm and the Amsterdam region. All these cities, except ‘Amsterdam’, are represented by a university. The Amsterdam area is represented by a multidisciplinary, educated but not necessarily academically employed delegation.
ClimateCafé is a multi-, trans-, interdisciplinary and international event of several days in which young professionals, stakeholders and scientist come together to collect data and design (potential) solutions for climate change adaptation in rural or urban areas. ClimateCafé mainly aims to enhance resilience and reduce vulnerability of communities by sharing knowledge, raising awareness and building capacity. ClimateCafé addresses global issues, such as climate change and sustainable development, on a local scale. In a ClimateCafé, context specific challenges, related to climate change and sustainable development, are proposed by local stakeholders and often relate to a specific problem area. Over the past decade, more than 28 ClimateCafés have been organised around the globe, including the Netherlands-Rotterdam, Sweden-Malmö, the Philippines-Manila, and Peru-Pirua. Since the first edition in Thailand (2012), ClimateCafé evolved in content and adopted a ‘learning by doing’ paradigm. Our results indicate ClimateCafé fosters integrated thinking across disciplines, cultures and knowledge sectors while reducing uncertainties affiliated with climate change adaptation. This is demonstrated by participants of previous ClimateCafés having various backgrounds including: law, civil engineering, water management, art, urban planning and environmental engineering. Furthermore, co-production is composed through workshops facilitated by stakeholders of the, so called, quadruple helix including academia, government, civic society and industry. Workshops make use of scientifically embedded methods, always related to the contextual challenge. For example, urban heat stress is measured by sensors on a bike and collecting urban green with online platform ClimateScan, community perceptions are collected through interviews, water quality is measured with the use of drones and perceptions and responsibilities of institutional actors are identified by interviews and field visits. Additionally, data is processed and design workshops facilitate integrated design of potential solutions which is disseminated through participants presenting their findings at conferences. Although ClimateCafé is resource intensive, requires active participation of stakeholders and currently mainly attracts students of affiliated universities, we argue this multi-, inter-, transdisciplinary and international knowledge exchange methodology fosters the innovation that is dearly needed to address global sustainability challenges and climate change adaptation.
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