LIFE NAdapta: a region-wide climate risk and vulnerability assessment to ensure climate adaptation for Navarre
The Autonomous Community of Navarre, a member of the Under2Coalition, Regions4, and committed to the Regions Race to Zero initiative, has been a CDP discloser since 2018 and has shown great commitment to climate risk and vulnerability assessment over the years.
One project that has greatly helped Navarre to assess climate risk and vulnerability is LIFE NAdapta, funded by the European Union's LIFE Program for Environment and Climate Action.
The LIFE16 IPC/ES/000001 - LIFE-IP NAdapta-CC project is an integrated strategy for adaptation to climate change in Navarre. It is part of Navarre's contribution to the international efforts against climate change that are being pursued at regional level through its Climate Change Roadmap of Navarre - KLINA.
The project has helped Navarre anticipate climate change and develop timely adaptation measures to limit negative effects and, as far as possible, turn challenges into solutions.
As part of the LIFE Nadapta project, a report on the climatic areas of Navarre was drawn up, including the analysis of historical data to establish a baseline of the past climate in Navarre and the analysis of future projections. Based on the famous RCP 8.5 baseline scenario (Representative Concentration Pathway with highest emissions scenario), temperature, rainfall and humidity were analyzed and all Navarrese municipality's threats of each period (2021-2050 and 2051-2080) for each climate threat (heat wave, flooding, temperature fluctuation, drought, etc.) were ranked.
At the municipal level, a municipal vulnerability and risk analysis was conducted on the basis of a selection of impact chains, i.e. cause-and-effect relationships that simplify and narrow down the adaptation problem.
Monitoring is an important part of this project, which defines six areas for adaptation measures; data were collected on agriculture and livestock, water, health, forests and infrastructure and a dashboard of indicators was created to monitor the effects of climate change in Navarre.
Co-benefits realized through the project are the improvement of soil quality through the implementation of innovative soil management techniques, the improvement of adaptive water management to reduce the impact of floods and droughts and the preparedness of wastewater treatment plants for environmental emergencies, the improvement of population health through monitoring the effects of climate change, the improvement of climate resilience of forests through sustainable forest management and the improvement of infrastructure through the promotion of energy regeneration in urban and rural environments. As result of this project, the percentage of total jurisdiction with increased resilience amounts to 90-100%.