Quality of urban climate adaptation plans over time
This scientific journal article examines the progress of adaptation planning in 327 European cities over the period 2005-2020. While the quality of the plans has improved, it still remains weak in many cities. Participation, monitoring and evaluation, and the coherence of the plans are the weakest points.
The authors create an index of adaptation plan quality, the ADAptation plan Quality Assessment index (ADAQA). In this analysis, “quality” of plans is defined as the strengths of the plan that are assumed to lead to effective implementation, while also reducing trade-offs with other societal goals.
The index is built taking six principles of plan quality:
fact base
goals
measures
implementation
monitoring & evaluation
societal participation
The authors also develop sub-indices with varying complexity and focus for each of the six principles (cf. figure below). The ADAQA index is then applied to track the urban adaptation plans from 2005 to 2020 for a sample of 327 large- and medium-sized cities from the Europe (EU 27 + UK). This study helps to shows the gaps in the current adaptation planning in European cities, while also evaluating how existing plans have improved over time.
Out of the 327 cities studied, 167 (51%) had an adaptation plan in place. The most number of cities with adaptation plans were found in the UK (30), Poland (22), France (22) and Germany (19). 53 out of 157 of them developed their plans under obligation from a national, regional or local requiring municipalities to develop an urban climate change adaptation plan – in Denmark, Ireland, the UK and France.
The average score of the cities on the most detailed index (ADAQA-3) was 34 out 100 – showing the relatively low overall quality.
Plan quality differed significantly between older and newer plans, with the newer ones scoring higher. Annual comparisons of scores also show that the plans generally improved over time, becoming more detailed and multi-faceted within certain topics, though not necessarily becoming broader in terms of topics addressed.
Plans perform best in detailing adaptation measures, and naming adaptation goals and listing implementation tools and processes. The weaker points are public participation in plan creating, and monitoring and evaluation – though showing improvement over time.
When it came to « consistency » between the identified climate risks and the measures the city plans ans monitors, the scores improved slightly over time but plans become less aligned in matching risks or impacts for vulnerable groups woth adaptation measures.
