KlimaKonform
Platform for climate-conform action at local and district level in low mountain regions
Project duration: May 2020 – April 2023
Low mountain regions are typical for large parts of Germany. At the same time, the challenges posed by the increasing intensity and frequency of extreme events such as flash floods, droughts and storms are particularly high. The regions are dominated by small and medium-sized, partly financially weak, municipalities, whose technical and administrative capacities are extremely limited and whose added value is generated mainly by agriculture and forestry, small commercial enterprises and partly by tourism.
These municipalities face considerable challenges with regard to climate adaptation. One reason for this is that the challenges posed by climate change are intensified under the natural conditions of the low mountain ranges. On the other hand, the municipalities hardly have access to locally relevant knowledge about the effects of climate change. This is due to a lack of technical expertise and limited human and financial resources. Against this background, these municipalities are unable to develop sustainable adaptation strategies in order to fulfil obligatory municipal services of general interest, such as public water supply and sewage disposal, flood risk management or urban land use planning and landscape planning. The overall situation of these municipalities can be massively worsened as a result of climate change.
The project KlimaKonform therefore aims to develop an integrative and action-oriented approach for determining and assessing the capacities for climate change adaptation for low mountain regions in cooperation with districts and selected municipalities.
Realisation of project goals by:
- Determination of needs of stakeholders from politics, administration, economy and society on the municipal and intermunicipal level with regard to knowledge on climate adaptation
- Development of a methodology for the integrative and addressee differentiated assessment of the consequences of climate change, for the determination of local adaptation capacities and for the derivation of addressee differentiated adaptation measures for low mountain regions in co-design
- Design of a multidisciplinary and cross-area approach to assessing the risks and opportunities of climate change as well as adaptation capacities and measures
- Implementation of this approach in a common platform that can be directly used by municipalities and on which the necessary technical data, models and information are integrated.
The characteristics of the model region – three districts in the catchment area of the Weiße Elster – are typical for large parts of Germany. Therefore, the approach, the methods and tools can be adapted to other conditions, and the findings, products and experiences from the project will be easily transferable to other low mountain regions in Germany.
Cooperation partners:
- Saxon State Agency for Environment, Agriculture and Geology
- Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Chair of Economic Geography
- Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, Department of Urban and Environmental Sociology
- Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development, Research areas "Economic aspects of ecological urban and regional development" and "Environmental risks in urban and regional development
Lead partner:
TU Dresden, Chair of Meteorology
Working group at the Chair of Meteorology, TU Dresden:
Prof. Christian Bernhofer (project leader), Majana Heidenreich (project management), Dr. Barbara Köstner, Dr. Valeri Goldberg, Dr. Rico Kronenberg, Ivan Vorobevskii (scientific project staff)
Funding:
The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (FKZ 01LR 2005A - funding measure "Regional Information on Climate Action" (RegIKlim), section a) model regions.
