The Autonomous Region of Madeira's regional policies for climate transition and resilience
The Autonomous Region of Madeira allocates nearly 40% of its annual budget to environmental and climate change issues. This is the result of an integrated approach of its regional policies and instruments that must ultimately pursue the goals of climate transition and resilience.
The Regional Adaptation Strategy named CLIMA-Madeira addresses indeed the influence of climate on various priority sectors - Agriculture and Forests, Biodiversity, Energy, Water Resources, Hydrogeomorphology, Human Health and Tourism - defining an integrated approach and enunciating guiding measures that allow the region to adapt to climate change, reducing vulnerability to its impacts. The climate risks and vulnerabilities assessment that is comprised in the Strategy has informed the preparation of the respective sectorial action plans of the island, including socio-economic policies, allowing a better management of the just transition.
The Strategy is currently under revision. New regionalized climate models have been produced, with the projection of new climate scenarios for two-time horizons, 2020-2050 and 2050-2100 based on the Socio‐economic scenarios (SSPs) that support the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which are now being used to conduct a sectoral analysis of risks and vulnerabilities in relation to the new scenarios produced.
In addition to teams of researchers, various regional and local administrative bodies and associations interested in the cross-cutting nature of the topic were heavily involved in the drafting of this analysis and actively contributed to the definition and prioritisation of the proposed adaptation measures. At CDP we believe that Collaboration between actors in the various levels of governance is fundamental to effective climate action.
The monitoring and implementation of the Strategy is supported by the so-called Adaptation Community, whose main actions are to support the implementation, integrating it into policies and decision-making processes of the Autonomous Region of Madeira, monitoring its indicators over time and ensuring that the path of adaptation meets the objectives and principles of the Strategy. This community is composed of several public and private entities from the most diverse sectors that meet periodically, and in the last meeting in November 2022 the focus was on the review process that the strategy is undergoing.
"The Government of the Autonomous Region of Madeira is committed to climate action. As an insular and ultraperipheral territory, we are more vulnerable to climate change. We have exceptional characteristics that give us unique natural resources, as well as greater risks. In addition, our Island with 250,000 inhabitants, is visited by 2.5M tourists every year. We do our job in mitigation, but adaptation is our focus." Susana Prada Regional Secretary of Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change.
An excellent example of a combined adaptation and mitigation measure to climate change in the region is the reversible hydroelectric power plant of Calheta III, which through a reversible system takes advantage of the production of electric energy and the capture, storage and pumping of water, simultaneously reinforcing the mitigation capacity to receive energy from intermittent renewable sources in the small isolated electric system of Madeira Island, and the adaptation process by creating a high altitude water reserve of about 1.000.000 m3, to be used also in population and agriculture supply.
The project encourages the diversification of energy sources and the use of clean and locally available alternatives to fossil fuels, which leads to an increase in energy from renewable sources and a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. The added value of localisation of clean energy is the reduction of external dependence on fossil fuels while also stabilising the island's economy and providing a resource so as to decrease transition risks and providing an important water resource for the population.
Imagem 1 - Pico da Urze's dam that feeds thethe Calheta III hydroelectric power station. Credits: Virgílio Gomes
CDP 2022: https://data.cdp.net/
Estratégia CLIMA-Madeira: https://observatorioclima.madeira.gov.pt/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/estr_clima_web_yeyxxt.pdf