Guidelines for Climate Change Adaptation at the local level in the Alps

Adapting requires developing good sectorial policies and working to maximize co-benefits for climate and other domains. These Guidelines, prepared by Italy during its Presidency of the Alpine Convention in 2013-2014, provide information to the different sub-national governance levels on impacts, vulnerabilities and resilience capacity in various relevant policy sectors as well as policy guidance on the identification, selection, implementation, governance of local adaptation options as well as monitoring and evaluation, highlighting the key factors of success.

Since the Alps are a fragile ecosystem, exposed to significant climate-induced risks and characterised by a deep diversity, they require shared policies where spatial planning plays a central role. The Alps qualified as an ideal territory for building a bottom up strategy for local adaptation, since mountains are known to set boundaries dividing countries, where different policies are applied. In the drafting phase local good practices have been collected from across the Alps, aiming to identify the value added that may derive from them for the whole region. This is why these Guidelines refer to the local level but look at global stakeholders, in mountain regions and beyond.