Expertise on the systematization of the principles of regional planning for climate impact assessment – Guideline for regional climate impact assessment | Umweltbundesamt

Background and Goals

For several years the adaptation of cities and regions to the unavoidable consequences of climate change has been an important area of research and work in spatial planning. Extreme events are making headlines in the media around the world and the warnings of the insurance industry about increasing damage potential, especially in densely populated areas and highlight the explosive nature of the topic. Even though the effects of climate will not lead to fundamental and sustainable changes in our world until the second half of this century, the pressure to take precaution is growing. In regards to the persistence of urban structures as well as the longevity of the often costly infrastructures, today’s cities and regions have to be prepared for resilient development.

Climate change has a different impact on different areas due to differentiated climatic changes on larger and smaller scale and on the spatially and sectorally varied sensitivities of space and society as well as the differences in the adaptive capacity, i.e. the possibilities to react to climatic changes provisionally. Accordingly, cities and regions have to deal with their individual shocks with regard to the anticipated consequences of climate change.

In order to meet these spatial challenges, there is a need for credible foundations that allow political-planning action in the area of ​​climate adaptation to focus on the needed strategies and measures (BMVBS 2007, Federal Government 2008, MKRO 2009, European Commission 2009). The spatial impacts of climate change are also subject to considerable uncertainty. Dealing with these uncertainties raises many questions, not least according to methods that cannot be weighted up for determining climate change as a basis for binding planning statements on climate adaptation. This also connects the thoroughly controversial discussion on the usability of climate projections as the basis of legally binding statements in regional planning.

The status quo shows that within numerous publications on climate change impacts and climate adaptation there is neither a single concept nor a single conceptual canon for assessing the climate impact in spatial planning (BMVBS 2011b, Franck / Overbeck 2012). Therefore with this methodological manual, the federal regional planning offers a user-friendly, technical support to determine the regional climate change impact on planning practice, which also takes account of the different regional conditions.

The methodological manual is based on findings gained at federal, state and regional level in numerous research activities and pilot projects. In 2009, for example, the Model Spatial Planning (MORO) "Spatial Development Strategies for Climate Change", or KlimaMORO shortly, began with the development of regional climate adaptation strategies and pilot projects. First evaluations are published in the BMVBS online publication 21 "Vulnerability Analysis in Practice. Content and methodological starting points for the determination of regional concerns ". The pamphlet on Climate Impact Assessment is the overall expertise of KlimaMORO - Phase II, in which seven pilot projects focus on specific questions.

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