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grabbing the<br />

opportunity<br />

John Deegan, who acted as lead TCPA Trustee on the <strong>GRaBS</strong><br />

project, looks at the benefits delivered by the project – and at<br />

how the outputs might be taken forward<br />

Left<br />

Mentoring visits<br />

and study tours<br />

were key<br />

components of<br />

the <strong>GRaBS</strong> project<br />

It would be quite difficult to take issue with the<br />

rationale underpinning the <strong>GRaBS</strong> project. Although<br />

members of the relevant scientific and professional<br />

communities nearly all regarded climate change as<br />

inevitable well before <strong>GRaBS</strong> was conceived, the<br />

need to adapt our environment to accommodate<br />

climate change had had much less attention than<br />

the mitigation agenda. The particular impacts of<br />

climate change on urban areas – the heat island<br />

effects; the risks to large centres of population from<br />

rising sea levels and river flooding – also needed<br />

highlighting, and the management of green space<br />

and water, whether for adaptation or mitigation,<br />

seemed important at the city level.<br />

How <strong>GRaBS</strong> can assist in furthering general<br />

understanding of these matters seems to be the<br />

key question that we should be asking now that<br />

the project is reaching its conclusion. However,<br />

because there have been so many other<br />

operational questions which have up to now<br />

demanded attention from partners, it hasn’t yet<br />

been answered.<br />

The TCPA has not been immune from these<br />

practical matters. The most obvious issue from the<br />

Association’s operational perspective has been<br />

whether or not the significant commitment of<br />

scarce resources to a lead partner role is warranted,<br />

especially at a time when we are having to tighten<br />

our belts so much because of other financial<br />

pressures on the organisation. Actually, this is an<br />

easy one to answer because our role in <strong>GRaBS</strong> is<br />

being fairly rewarded, and the financial risks are<br />

small.<br />

More significant to our particular agenda is the<br />

question of how our engagement can advance the<br />

TCPA ‘mission’ in relation to the promotion of our<br />

core aims – securing homes, empowering<br />

communities and delivering a sustainable future<br />

through planning. I think <strong>GRaBS</strong> has helped in a<br />

number of ways:<br />

● It has enabled the TCPA to grow its role as a<br />

champion for adaptation: our knowledge and<br />

understanding is now much greater. We have<br />

seen with our own eyes a range of climate<br />

262 Town & Country Planning June 2011 : <strong>GRaBS</strong> Project – INTERREG IVC; ERDF-funded

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