Anthropogenic climate change is already considered the greatest environmental and social challenge humanity faces in the 21st century, constituting a threat to human well-being and the health of ecosystems and animals.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the international body tasked with assessing scientific knowledge related to climate change, human influence on the warming of the atmosphere, ocean, and land is unequivocal. Specifically, the planet’s warming, reflected in rising average temperatures, is primarily due to the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere as a result of human activity, primarily through the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and gas). It is estimated that over 40% of the emissions that have caused the current warming have occurred since the 1990s, resulting in the global surface temperature being 1.09°C higher in the period 2011-2020 than in 1850-1900 (pre-industrial era). Of this global increase of 1.09°C, the IPCC attributes 1.07°C to human action, with the contribution from natural causes such as solar cycles or volcanoes being only 0.1°C.
Climate change not only entails a global increase in average temperatures but also an increase in the frequency and/or intensity of extreme meteorological events. These external events are diverse: heatwaves, torrential rainfall, droughts, or tropical cyclones, with great potential to cause negative socio-economic impacts, especially in vulnerable populations and/or regions. Among the possible negative impacts of climate change in the short term, we can mention increased human mortality and morbidity correlated to extreme events (e.g., heatwaves), flooding in coastal areas, competition for water resources, loss of biodiversity, increased risk of wildfires, etc. Although some changes and impacts are already inevitable, the urgent implementation of adaptation and mitigation strategies against climate change is crucial to reduce both damages and their magnitude.
While mitigation measures aim to reduce net emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere (causing anthropogenic climate change), adaptation strategies aim to reduce risks derived from climate change. Some examples of mitigation measures include transitioning to renewable energy sources, increasing energy efficiency, adopting regenerative agriculture practices, and protecting and restoring forests and ecosystems to prevent erosion and desertification, promoting the capture of atmospheric carbon in soils. Adaptation strategies include building safer and more sustainable buildings and infrastructure, diversifying crops to adapt to new climatic conditions, reforesting forests, and restoring damaged ecosystems, researching and developing innovative solutions for the prevention and management of natural disasters, among others. Despite being different strategies, it is crucial to consider that adaptation and mitigation are complementary since, without mitigation, adequate adaptation will be more complex.
In this context, DISTENDER frames a project funded by the EU in which KVC participates, aiming to develop viable strategies for mitigation and adaptation to climate change, considering their possible synergies and interferences, to ensure the development of effective strategies. In DISTENDER, these strategies are defined considering a participatory approach that includes academia, public administration, industry, and citizenship. The project involves 5 case studies at the European level (country, city, region) for which a set of strategies will be defined.
- Austria: It is located in the Alpine region, where temperatures have already increased by approximately 2°C since 1880. Additionally, it has a risk of flooding partly due to glacier melting. This case study is the only one in the project at the national level.
- Northeast Netherlands: It is an agricultural region where land has been artificially reclaimed from the sea and is experiencing increasing extreme weather events such as torrential rainfall.
- Extremadura dehesas (Spain) and montados (Portugal): These are agrosilvopastoral systems that hold great biodiversity, also offering multiple services such as livestock farming, hunting, fishing, tourism, or cork extraction, which see their productivity threatened by drought and high temperatures, which in turn increase the risk of wildfires and soil erosion.
- Guimarães (Portugal): It is a case study at the local level, affected by fires in the areas bordering the municipality, droughts, and floods due to torrential rainfall and river floods.
- Turin (Italy): It is the capital of the Piedmont region and the second case study at the local level. Here, climate change intensifies extreme heatwaves, the spread of insect pests, and soil productivity loss, as well as increasing the risk of floods due to the melting of alpine glaciers.
Additionally, the project will develop a decision support tool to transfer the knowledge generated in DISTENDER to the public administration and thus promote informed decision-making on climate change. In this sense, the IPCC indicates that “vulnerabilities and climate risks are often reduced through carefully designed and applied laws, policies, participatory processes, and interventions that address specific context-specific inequalities.” However, there are few approaches and practices capable of connecting the dots between climate science and participatory processes due to, among other factors, the lack of adequate information among the social groups involved or the inadequate planning of participatory practices. DISTENDER represents a response to these challenges.
As a society, our next challenge lies in being able to act decisively as required by a global problem of this magnitude, prioritizing the implementation of ambitious adaptation and mitigation strategies that promote equity, as well as climate and social justice through resilient development. Ignoring these factors in the transition to a more sustainable system can result in inadequate adaptation, aggravating poverty, reinforcing inequalities, and excluding vulnerable communities, which are, on the other hand, the ones most affected by the effects of climate change.