Second Progress Report on the German Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change (DAS)
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Second Progress Report on the German Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change (DAS) CONTENTS A. The German Adaptation Strategy (DAS): objectives, principles and processes ............................... 4 A.1. The DAS: principles and objectives ................................................................................................................. 4 A.2. The DAS reporting cycle ................................................................................................................................. 5 A.3. The DAS, APA and Progress Report in review ................................................................................................. 8 A.4. European Union and international integration ............................................................................................ 11 B. Current findings and results ........................................................................................................ 13 B.1. Monitoring: climatic changes, impacts and adaptation responses ............................................................. 13 B.2. Vulnerability assessment ............................................................................................................................. 18 B.3. APA II implementation and APA III preparation process .............................................................................. 33 B.4. Adaptation measures by other actors .......................................................................................................... 35 B.5. Evaluation of the DAS strategy process ....................................................................................................... 44 C. Conclusions of the Interministerial Working Group on Adaptation to Climate Change ................ 48 C.1. Vision and goals of the DAS process ............................................................................................................ 48 C.2. The enabling environment ........................................................................................................................... 49 C.3. Selecting measures ...................................................................................................................................... 52 C.4. Communication and participation ............................................................................................................... 53 D. Political priorities ........................................................................................................................ 55 Annex 1 Annex 2 2 FIGURES Figure 1: The DAS reporting system. Source: Federal Environment Agency (UBA), authors’ own presentation. ........................................................................................................................................... 7 Figure 2: A chronology of the adaptation strategy, action plan and progress report. Source: Federal Environment Agency (UBA), authors’ own presentation. ................................................. 9 Figure 3: Schematic representation of the damage potential of selected climate impacts for the present, by 2030 and by 2030 with building precautions. Source: based on Bubeck et al. (2019) ... 23 Figure 4: Left: the number of hot days (maximum temperature ≥ 30°C) in 2018, right: the anomaly of the number of hot days in Germany by comparison with the reference period of 1961-1990. Source: DWD 2020 .......................................................................................................... 27 Figure 5: Results chain – the effects of climate change on German foreign trade. Source: Peter, Guyer and Füssler (2018). ................................................................................................................. 29 Figure 6: Implemented or planned climate change adaptation measures mentioned most frequently. Source: UBA (2019). ........................................................................................................ 40 Figure 7: Logic model for DAS process evaluation. Source: Kind et al. (2019, p. 12) .................................... 45 3 A. The German Adaptation Strategy (DAS): objectives, principles and processes Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. The effects of climate change can already be felt in Germany and will intensify in future. Between 1881 and 2019, the average air temperature in Germany rose by 1.6˚ Celsius. Climate change has serious adverse impacts on the health and prosperity of people living in Germany. Heatwaves, flooding and heavy rainfall events, etc. cause premature deaths, as well as damage to agriculture and forestry, buildings and infrastructure, and industry and the economy; climate change can also trigger dynamic adaptation processes in ecosystems, such as the displacement of plant and animal species. Timely and far-sighted adaptation to the impacts of climate change is becoming increasingly important in order to minimise these risks and damage and avoid higher remedial and adapta- tion costs in future. In response to the challenges posed by climate change, the federal government has adopted the German Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change (DAS). The aim is to ensure that the existing objectives in the various sectoral policy fields can be achieved under the new conditions created by climate change. The German Adaptation Strategy provides a policy framework for Germany’s adaptation to climate change and facilitates a cross-sectoral approach by the federal government. In Germany, climate change adaptation is an ongoing long-term task and is addressed within an institutional and methodological framework agreed at political level. Scientific research programmes and processes for participation and consultation have been set up, along with a continuous reporting system. Adaptation to climate change is based on the precautionary principle: the aim is to prevent or minimise damage to people and the environment and build the capacities of state and non-state actors alike to han- dle the impacts of climate change. The coronavirus pandemic, which we have been experiencing globally since early 2020, is an example of the effects of ambitious precautionary policies. The same urgency and necessity prevail in relation to climate change adaptation as well. • The coronavirus pandemic and climate change demonstrate, with increasing clarity, the intercon- nectedness and vulnerability of all spheres of life and the economy in Germany. • It is therefore becoming increasingly important, now and in future, to build resilience to climate impacts and other crises through preparedness over the long term and crisis management in the short term. This enhanced resilience will also contribute to achieving other important objectives that society has set itself, such as global and national sustainable development goals, greenhouse gas neutrality and the halting of biodiversity loss through enhanced protection of nature and the environment. For that reason, it is important to rely on nature-based solutions wherever possible, primarily because they offer great benefits from a precautionary perspective, but also because they safeguard basic, robust health and provisioning services, thus maintaining the functionality of the system as a whole even when individual elements are temporarily unavailable. A.1. The DAS: principles and objectives The long-term objective of the German Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change (DAS) is to reduce the vulnerability of natural, social and economic systems to the impacts of climate change and to improve the adaptive capacity of these systems and take advantage of any opportunities at the same time. In order to identify action options, 15 fields of action are considered; these are (in alphabetic order): agriculture; bio- 4 logical diversity; the building sector; energy industry; financial services industry and insurance; fishery; for- estry and forest management; human health; soil; tourism; trade and industry; transport and transport infrastructure; water regime; flood management and coastal protection; and cross-sectional topics: spatial, regional and physical development planning, and civil protection and emergency preparedness. The work is supported and approved at federal government level under the auspices of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) within the Interministerial Working Group on Adaptation to Climate Change (IMAA). The IMAA is made up of representatives from nearly all the federal ministries, who coordinate activities and continuously set new goals to establish the conditions for climate change adaptation in Germany. The structures for cooperation have proved their worth. In ad- dition, the Conference of Environment Ministers of the Federation and the Länder (UMK) has established the Standing Committee on Adaptation to Climate Change Impacts (StA AFK) as part of the Federation- Länder Working Group on Climate, Energy, Mobility and Sustainability (BLAG KliNa). The Standing Commit- tee1 is the main coordination mechanism for cooperation with the Länder and is the forum through which strategies and measures adopted by the Land administrations feed into work on the DAS. The following principles, set forth in the DAS, were devised to provide guidance for the further development of the adaptation process and federal government action: • openness and cooperation; • approach based on knowledge, flexibility and the precautionary principle; • subsidiarity, self-provision,