When the Paris Agreement on climate change was adopted in December 2015, it included a long-term goal for the adaptation to climate change – “enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change, with a view to contributing to sustainable development […]”. It recognised the direct link of climate change adaptation to sustainable development and further highlighted its importance. This added momentum to an increasing need for practical approaches for climate change adaptation, which can range from making transport infrastructure more resilient to storms and floods, to helping small businesses adapt to increasing water scarcity.
The demand and importance of integrating climate-resilient solutions into project development has also grown and become more visible for EBRD. Already since 2009, the Bank has collaborated with other European financing institutions on the issue under the umbrella of the European Financing Institutions Working Group on Adaptation to Climate Change (EUFIWACC). Following a jointly-organised consultant day in June 2015, where emerging experiences and future needs for expertise in the field of climate change adaptation were discussed, the Group agreed that in order to be able to further scale up activities in the area, there was a need for the development of practical and structured approaches. The Group agreed to capture the emerging experience of its experts to provide insights into how climate issues can be best integrated into project development and implementation.
“Making long-term investments more resilient to the impacts of climate change is a major challenge for investors” said Terry McCallion, Director for Energy Efficiency and Climate Change at the EBRD. “At the EBRD, we have developed approaches that integrate climate change adaptation into our investment operations. Working with partner organisations to share experience and knowledge will build momentum towards larger volumes of effective adaptation finance”. Since 2011, EBRD has invested more than €790 million of adaptation finance in over 120 projects.
Through several rounds of workshops and reviews that also included technical experts from an advisory group of consultancies, a note summarising the groups’ experience – titled “Integrating Climate Change Information and Adaptation in Project Development: Emerging Experience from Practitioners”– has been prepared in order to help practitioners assess climate change risks and vulnerabilities and integrate adaptation measures into project planning, design and implementation. The measures can include structural and non-structural components. The note’s overall aim is to help make projects and investments more resilient to the effects of climate change and to implement adaptation measures reinforcing the climate resilience of goods, people, economies and territories of the beneficiaries.
For the Group, the publication of the first version of the note is a milestone to build on and it sees the note as a continuous learning process that will evolve and benefit from future experience and developments in the field.
The EUFIWACC group comprises the French Development Agency (AFD), the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Climate Action (DG CLIMA), the European Investment Bank (EIB), KfW Development Bank (KFW), and the Nordic Investment Bank (NIB).
The note further benefited from the technical expertise of experts from the JASPERS partnership (Joint Assistance to Support Projects in European Regions) and the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS), as well as an advisory group of consultancies, consisting of the following firms: Acclimatise, Agrer, Atkins, Baastel, CES Consulting Engineers Salzgitter GmbH, Climpact-Metnext, CrissCross Consulting, D’Appolonia, Eco Ltd., ENVIRON, Factor CO2, GOPA mbH, Green Partners, Guiran Consulting, Kommunalkredit Public Consulting, Luxconsult S.A., Mott MacDonald, Perspectives, Pöyry, Royal Haskoning DHV, Safege, SIA srl, Sofreco, Suez Environnement Consulting, Sweco, TA Consult Partners Ltd., and WSP Parsons Brinkerhoff.