Adaptation has become an important part of regional and local planning and, there is an increasing need to develop tools for regional and local level actors with which they can take climate change into account in their activities. Uncertainties related to climate change and its impacts can be difficult to manage at the regional or local level where decisions have to be made on a daily basis.
In order to meet this need, Aalto University’s Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (YTK) and Union of Baltic Cities (UBC) organised a workshop that focused on tools for adapting to climate change in late January. Aalto University’s Lasse Peltonen and Johannes Klein from the Geological Survey of Finland briefly highlighted the regional challenges of adaptation. As main part of the programme, four tools were presented by actors that have used these tools as part of their own work.
Firstly, Susanna Kankaanpää talked about the ways in which the LCLIP- tool had been modified to suit the needs of Helsinki Regional Environmental Services Authority (HSY)and the City of Helsinki in the development of their adaptation strategy. Hannu Koponen from the Regional Council of Central Finland and the BalticClimate-project presented tools that have been used for small business in mapping out opportunities and threats arising from climate change. Simo Haanpää from the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies presented the Ilmasto-opas.fi portal that aims to bring up-to-date, reliable climate information to the sub-national level. Finally, Jari Viinanen from the City of Helsinki discussed the challenges of conducting a cost-benefit analysis in estimating the costs of adaptation.
After the talks, the participants engaged in group work and discussed the use of the LCLIP interviews and issues that need to be taken into account in doing that. For the last hour, the participants had the choice of either focusing on business opportunities tool or testing the Ilmasto-opas.fi portal.
Presentations (all in Finnish):
Introduction to the workshop by Lasse Peltonen
Short introduction of BaltCICA by Johannes Klein
The LCLIP tool in Helsinki by Susanna Kankaanpää
Climate tools for small businesses by Hannu Koponen
Climateguide.fi by Simo Haanpää
Cost-benefit analysis for adaptation in Helsinki by Jari Viinanen
For more information: Researcher Sirkku Juhola, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, Aalto University. sirkku.juhola@aalto.fi