Climate change response in Europe: what’s the reality? Analysis of adaptation and mitigation plans from 200 urban areas in 11 countries

Reckien, Diana; Flacke, Johannes; Dawson, RJ; Heidrich, Oliver; Olazabal, Marta; Foley, Aoife; Hamann, Julie; Orru, Hans; Salvia, Monica; Hurtado, Sonia De Gregorio; Geneletti, Davide; Pietrapertosa, Filomena

doi:10.1007/s10584-013-0989-8

Cited by 325 publications

(178 citation statements)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

173

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…However, with a possible 350 million more people exposed to deadly heat by the middle of the century even if this target is met, our analysis shows the critical role for adaptation alongside mitigation to manage the potential societal impacts. In this aspect, urban centers, including the megacities used here to communicate projected heat stress, are recognized as key focal points for action on mitigating and adapting to climate change (35). Some city authorities are already taking steps to limit the effects of extreme heat.…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Communicating the deadly consequences of global warming for human heat stress

Matthews

Wilby

Murphy

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

247

221

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In December of 2015, the international community pledged to limit global warming to below 2°C above preindustrial (PI) to prevent dangerous climate change. However, to what extent, and for whom, is danger avoided if this ambitious target is realized? We address these questions by scrutinizing heat stress, because the frequency of extremely hot weather is expected to continue to rise in the approach to the 2°C limit. We use analogs and the extreme South Asian heat of 2015 as a focusing event to help interpret the increasing frequency of deadly heat under specified amounts of global warming. Using a large ensemble of climate models, our results confirm that global mean air temperature is nonlinearly related to heat stress, meaning that the same future warming as realized to date could trigger larger increases in societal impacts than historically experienced. This nonlinearity is higher for heat stress metrics that integrate the effect of rising humidity. We show that, even in a climate held to 2°C above PI, Karachi (Pakistan) and Kolkata (India) could expect conditions equivalent to their deadly 2015 heatwaves every year. With only 1.5°C of global warming, twice as many megacities (such as Lagos, Nigeria, and Shanghai, China) could become heat stressed, exposing more than 350 million more people to deadly heat by 2050 under a midrange population growth scenario. The results underscore that, even if the Paris targets are realized, there could still be a significant adaptation imperative for vulnerable urban populations.climate change | heat stress | megacities | extreme heat | CMIP5

show abstract

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Communicating the deadly consequences of global warming for human heat stress

Matthews

Wilby

Murphy

2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

247

221

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Integrating adaptation issues into urban fabrics is still a challenge and national strategies identify policies and planning instruments pivotal to its integration (Biesbroek et al, 2009;Reckien et al, 2014a). The recently published European Adaptation Strategy (European Commission, 2013) provides evidence that there was a scarcity of EU initiatives for local adaptation which resulted in the current sparseness of cities considering adaptation issues .…”

Section: Policies and Strategies: From National To Local Levelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

National climate policies across Europe and their impacts on cities strategies

Heidrich

Reckien

Olazabal

et al. 2016

Journal of Environmental Management

Self Cite

152

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

National climate policies across Europe and their impacts on cities strategies ABSTRACTGlobally, efforts are underway to reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change impacts at the local level. However, there is a poor understanding of the relationship between city strategies on climate change mitigation and adaptation and the relevant policies at national and European level. This paper describes a comparative study and evaluation of cross-national policy.It reports the findings of studying the climate change strategies or plans from 200 European cities from Austria, Belgium, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. The study highlights the shared responsibility of global, European, national, regional and city policies. An interpretation and illustration of the influences from international and national networks and policy makers in stimulating the development of local strategies and actions is proposed. It was found that there is no archetypical way of planning for climate change, and multiple interests and motivations are inevitable. Our research warrants the need for a multi-scalar approach to climate policy in the future, mainly ensuring sufficient capacity and resource to enable local authorities to plan and respond to their specific climate change agenda for maximising the management potentials for translating environmental challenges into opportunities

show abstract

“…Moreover they argued that motorways are significant parts of urban transport systems due to the extensive and rapid flow of goods and humans, adaptation strategies have to pay special attention to these infrastructure elements. This latter finding shows the strong relevancy of mitigation considerations and actions in effective and comprehensive adaptation actions (Walsh et al, 2011;Reckien et al, 2014;Chappin and van der Lei, 2014). Dulal et al (2011) emphasized the role of urban planning in transport-oriented mitigation strategies, since vehicle-use can be decreased, use of public transport can be increased, therefore air pollution and congestions can be prevented or at least reduced by integrating climate-related actions into the planning stage.…”

Section: Mitigation In Urban Transport Sectormentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Beside this importance of mitigation concerning transportation, it must be emphasized that mitigation and adaptation measures inextricably connected in aiming to create comprehensive and future-oriented urban climate plans. The main aim of adaptation strategies is decreasing urban vulnerability, whilst mitigation measures are seeking to reduce GHG emissions via different actions in given sectors (Reckien et al, 2014).…”

Section: Mitigation In Urban Transport Sectormentioning

confidence: 99%