Creating a Climate for Change workshop: adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change

Event date: 10 December 2014

Background Programme Speakers Registration Practical info Presentations External url

Background

Currently global climate change threatens biodiversity in Europe and the objectives of the Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. In April 2013 the EU adopted a strategy on adaptation to climate change to make Europe more climate resilient and to achieve that aim in the most cost-effective and practical way possible.

This strategy includes sharing information and best practice to address knowledge gaps and develop measures to tackle climate change impacts in Natura 2000 sites.

Also in 2013, the European Commission published a set of guidelines, written by Alterra and Eurosite, on ‘Climate Change and Natura 2000’. These guidelines provide a valuable starting point for tackling climate change, but we are not there yet: it is time to further spread the word and put positive ideas into action!

Wetlands have a prominent role to play in the mitigation of the effects of global climate change, for example as carbon sequestration areas or as buffer areas for flooding. However, wetlands are also vulnerable due to their sensitivity to changes in climate, rainfall patterns or rain volume and the hydric regime.

Adaptation to global climate change is a pan-European issue because the effects of climate change are not confined to a particular area and because most of our wetlands are in more than one country or the basins that feed them traverse several countries.

For this reason, Eurosite and our workshop host Aten decided to organise this workshop to share knowledge about adaptation to and mitigation of the effects of climate change on wetlands.

Workshop goals:

Provide a framework for discussions between a selection of key actors working on the conservation of wetlands at European level;
Compare the different nature conservation practices being applied to manage wetlands and climate change and to identify common strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats;
Showcase the results of LIFE projects to key actors in wetland conservation;
Promote the ‘Guidelines on Climate Change and Natura 2000’ published by the EC.