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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