Proposed solutions must operate under a changing climate. Throughout their entire lifetime, these solutions will both impact and be impacted by the environment through various feedback loops. Climate risks need to be reduced to acceptable levels through enduring changes that are environmentally sound, economically viable, and socially acceptable.
In this context, ensuring performance with a long-term perspective involves evaluating functionality in relation to projected climatic conditions. Traditionally, such analyses have been based on a stationary climate perspective, not accounting for climate change, which increases the complexity of these analyses and limits long-term resilience.
Climate proofing refers to a process of integrating climate change considerations into mitigation and/or adaptation strategies and programmes [3]. The primary objective is to ensure that climate-related risks and opportunities are incorporated into design, operation and management of any project (or other specified natural or human asset or activity with a clearly delineated scope and objective), enhancing its performance over its entire lifetime under changing climatic conditions [4].
The process is usually divided into two pillars: mitigation and adaptation. Climate mitigation aims to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to lessen the severity of climate change or its impact (the cause), while climate adaptation focuses on managing and reducing the negative effects of climate change (the impact). This approach helps prevent vulnerability to potential long-term climate impacts while ensuring alignment with climate neutrality goal set for 2050.
At the level of environmental impact assessments (EIAs), the European Union has required the consideration of climate risks and adaptation since 2014.
The adaptation approach begins by evaluating climate risks, followed by developing appropriate adaptation measures to reduce and mitigate them over the entire lifetime of the project. Adaptation options include grey measures (technological and engineering solutions), green measures (nature-based solutions relying on natural ecosystems) and soft measures (policy, legal, social, management and financial measures) [1] [2].
While implementing climate-proofing measures is recognised as a costly and complex endeavor [4], it is generally considered worthwhile. Although estimates of costs and benefits should to be approached with caution due to context-specific variability and differences in methodologies, the “Global Commission on Adaptation” has identified benefit-cost ratios ranging from 2:1 to 10:1, and in some cases, even higher [5]. This enphasises the significance of investing in climate-proofing as an effective strategy for building resilience in the face of a changing climate.
Target audience:
- Project promoters, infrastructure planners/designers: buildings, nature-based infrastructures, network infrastructures, waste management systems, other physical assets.
- Urban planners.
- Public authorities.
- Implementing partners, investors, stakeholders.
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