“Upper Adda” River Contract

GoApply - Multidimensional Governance of Climate Change Adaptation in Policy Making and Practice WP2 Advancing the mainstreaming of climate adaptation policies and measures Case study reports on the mainstreaming of climate adaptation Case Study Report: Italy “Upper Adda” River Contract Fondazione Lombardia per l’Ambiente (Lombardy Foundation for the Environment) Final Report Milano, October 2018 This project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg Alpine Space programme 1. Brief Summary of the Case Study River Contracts are territorial governance schemes, originated usually from a spontaneous (though regulated by law) initiative of diverse actors, both private and public. The actors should constitute a representative range of the community living and working in the territory of a specific river basin. In the present report, we analyse specifically the case of Upper Adda Valley River Contract (UARC or RC, in short). Like most of River Contracts, the Upper Adda RC has general goals of environmental protection and territorial sustainable development (see next sections for details), thus making it a most appropriate mean for climate adaptation at local scale. Also, it involves several local (municipalities) and intermediate (mountain communities) public administrations, as well as the Regional administration and the provincial one1, making it an interesting case in terms of multilevel governance. The process of UARC began in December 2014. Since the beginning the framework documents mentioned climate adaptation as a necessity and a priority. Approval of the first Action Plan is due December 2018 and the content is undisclosed at the time of writing this report. Several measures to be included in the plan are likely to be classifiable as “adaptation”. Nevertheless, there is no formal “adaptation plan” and no climate scenario data have been directly considered during the design of the Plan, nor during the RC process as a whole. a. Key elements Success factors: Evidence of impacts pushes the topic as a priority (5, 6) Engagement of several local administrations, also at various levels (2, 3, 5) Good level of awareness and capacity in environmental protection and spatial planning (6, 5) Consolidated saliency of the topic in key documents (2, 5, 6) Consolidated governance scheme (River Contract) (3, 2) Consolidated participated process (EASW process, Mountain Community) (5, 6) Barriers: Lack of dedicated resources (7) Lack of specific expertise on climate change and climate adaptation (5) Lack of obligation (especially for private actors) in the enforcement of the measures (3, 6) Fragmentation and complexity of the roles and competences involved (4, 2) 1 Italy has an administrative structure based on three levels: State (NUTS0), Regions (NUTS2; e.g. Lombardia), Provinces (NUTS3; e.g. Province of Lecco, Metropolitan City of Milan). 2 Barrier categories (Biesbroek et al. 2011) 1 Conflicting Timescales 2 Substantive, Strategic and Institutional Uncertainty 3 Institutional Crowdedness and Institutional Voids 4 Fragmentation 5 Lack of Awareness and Communication 6 Motives and Willingness to Act 7 Resources b. Lessons learnt In the present case, the saliency of adaptation to climate change as a topic appears to be relatively high. Further enquiring, though, reveal that “adaptation” is considered, in this case, simply as an additional environmental concern, adding up to more “traditional” stressors (e.g. pollution, over-exploitation, natural hazards), but it’s not seen as an articulated issue that requires dedicated attention, policies, resources, etc. Possibly, the transition from “concern about climate change” to the application of climate adaptation as a discipline or an established methodological approach is hampered by the chronic lack of resources, which at this local level does not allow to even consider setting up dedicated hard structures or policies. It can be inferred that a non-formalized approach to climate adaptation can get through the barriers of institutional inertia and resistance of political commitment easier than the enforcement of an top-down formal adaptation strategy, yet the approach runs the risk of incurring in a lack of overall vision, with undesired chance of “maladaptation”, inconsistency between sectors and possibly lack of commitment for dedicated additional funding. The recognition of climate change as a reason of concern, or even the recognition of impacts from climate change do not ensure per se the integration of a coherent adaptation logic in current sectoral policies: a comprehensive climate adaptation policy requires a more complete methodological approach. In fact, motivation and willingness to adapt coming only from the awareness of individuals involved in the policy-making processes may lead to a form of adaptation that has been referred to as “accidental”, “non- formalized”, “piggybacking”. This form of adaptation, although it is still able to lead to constructive effects and should be probably be considered positively, presents higher risk of incoherency; surely, in such case coherency of the actions versus an overall adaptation logic cannot be enforced through the mechanism of compliance to a strategy. A complex multilevel governance scheme, involving a regional administration, intermediate ones and municipalities can enforce in turn different levels of monitoring and evaluation instruments; yet, it multiplies the bureaucracy and the fatigue in the policy-making process and produces institutional crowdedness. A robust territorial awareness (in the present case, the Valtellina major disaster in 1987 had probably a strong influence on it) increases the motivation, the willingness and the pressure of the public over the political level. In turn, the case has clearly shown a weakness of the reference documents, such as the National Adaptation Strategy, as well as the Regional one, indicating either a lack of commitment or an inability in fostering the documents and the policies that they represent toward the different administrative levels and the larger public. c. Recommendation for transferability 3 The setup of a River Contract requires that the local laws and regulations allow the development of spontaneous agreements between actors in a community, with the goals of territorial governance. Nevertheless, River Contracts are a consolidated experience all over Europe since long time (late ‘90s). Also, the process is better developed with the presence of a main agent or coordinator, generally trusted and with capacity of dealing with a variety of subjects on a territory, who could act as catalyser and a facilitator (in the UARC case, the Mountain Community of Valtellina – Sondrio). 2. Section I – Characterization of the Case Study and its context A characterization of the territory. Adda is 313 km long river, from its source to the outlet in the Po river. The river is divided in two sections, one from the source and to the inlet into the Lake of Como; the second one from the same lake down to the Po river. Adda is the main river of the Province of Sondrio and the Valtellina territory and one of the main in Lombardy. The entire course of the river falls into the region of Lombardy: it is the longest (and second as for volumes) tributary of the Po river. The portion of river interested by the River Contract is the one contained within the Province of Sondrio, above the Lake of Como. The extension of the river basin is about 7.927 km2 (94% in Italy, 6% in Switzerland). The territory comprises several Protected Areas (Parco Nazionale dello Stelvio, Parco Regionale delle Orobie Valtellinesi, 7 Natural Reserves, 3 Local Inter- municipal Parks (PLIS); plus, additional 41.700 hectares of Natura 2000 sites. There are 77 municipalities in the Province of Sondrio, the territory of which matches almost completely that of the Upper Adda river basin. Main towns and cities are Sondrio (over 21.000 inhabitants), Morbegno (over 12.000), Tirano (over 9.000), Chiavenna, Livigno, Bormio. The economy of the territory is mainly driven by tourism, especially winter skiing tourism. Very relevant activities are the numerous hydroelectric powerplants and the related system of dams, the industry of extraction from the riverbed. Finally, agriculture has also a very important role in the area, hosting a high- quality wine district. Main elements of pressure in the area are the critical level of exploitation of the river and its catchment: extraction industry, power generation and a diffused presence of small factories and workshops along the river are the key elements. Moreover, climate change appears to have strong impacts on permafrost thawing and on the gravitational hazard in the surrounding mountain areas. In July 1987, Valtellina was struck by a major disastrous event of enormous magnitude. After very heavy precipitations, landslides and floods combined killed 53 people, thousands more needed to be evacuated and several town, roads and bridges had been destroyed. The events are still to this day very much impressed in the memory of local communities. The aftermath of the event changed drastically the way of living the territory, of planning it and of managing the river. A special law developed and approved after the event, called in fact “Valtellina law” brought great investments and funds on the territory, to ameliorate its safety, with a considerable improvement in the safety level. Governance Framework 4 A River contract is, on a general level, a spontaneous initiative

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