LIFE AERFIT

LIFE CLINOMICS aims to increase climate change resilience of selected territories and economies within the Province of Barcelona. Proposed actions are in line with the Spanish climate change strategy. The project will also contribute to EU policy on biodiversity, natural catastrophes, agriculture, fisheries, infrastructure, tourism and forests.

To promote knowledge and awareness about climate change adaptation, the project will involve local administrations and people working in the agriculture, silviculture, fishery and/or tourism sectors. The main objective is to build the resilience of Mediterranean local authorities through interventions in the counties of Montseny, Alt Penedès and Terres del Ebro within the Province of Barcelona. Specific objectives are:

To draft climate change adaptation action plans and strategies, and to create the appropriate conditions so that material and financial implementation is carried out in the short term, with the added strength of social participation;

To give local authorities tools that allow them to affordably launch climate change adaptation processes;

To develop a climate change adaptation planning model that can be replicated in the Mediterranean area and southern Europe and which could be useful in other European countries;

To establish criteria to attract private investment and launch local investment processes with private-public partnerships, as part of a drive to modernise local economies to adapt to climate change, increase their competitiveness, improve the market position of businesses and create new jobs;

To improve the competitiveness of farming, forestry, fishing and tourism businesses through investment in climate change adaptation;

To demonstrate, through the implementation of six pilot actions, possibly adaptation measures, their costs and their benefits;

To create knowledge, capacity and information about the impacts of climate change in the participating counties and economic sectors, as well as about the actions that reduce or eliminate these impacts;

To raise awareness among citizens, stakeholders and local authorities on the impacts of climate change and to promote their active participation in both private and public adaptation actions;

To inform businesses of the long-term financial consequences of not adapting to climate change (e.g. insurance costs); and

To extend participation in the Covenant of Mayors scheme among the municipalities of Catalonia.

The project expects to achieve the following results:

Draft climate change impact studies for Montseny, Alt Penedès and Terres del Ebro;

Draft an analysis of the economy of each of the three counties, including chapters on enterprise, farming, forestry, fisheries and the workforce;

Create a territorial platform for each county and three sectoral platforms (enterprise/agriculture/public and private sector employees) in order to face climate change impacts in a participatory way;

Feed the work of the territorial and sectoral platforms into the drafting of an intervention strategy and action plan for each of the three counties;

Implement 2 pilot climate change adaptation measures in each of the three counties;

Hold 10 training courses (900 attendees) for specific groups of workers (farmers, entrepreneurs, public and private sector employees) and specific sectors of the economy (tourism, agriculture, forestry);

Build the capacity of 75 European stakeholders from the Mediterranean area so they can replicate the project model;

Communicate the effects of climate change and the importance of adaptation to 50% of farmers, business people and public and private sector workers in the 3 participating counties; and

Attend 24 events to disseminate the work of the project and organise 12 sector-specific sess