Download - GRaBS

change problems, and adaptation measures which
seem to work in different places across the
continent. (As planners all know, there’s nothing
like a site visit for helping understanding.)
● We have shared and benefited from others’
experiences of the difficult task of engaging the
general public in the climate change agenda.
● We have enhanced our network of professional
and academic contacts at home and abroad, with
whom we have developed an administrative
methodology, through High-Level Policy
Statements, Adaptation Action Plans, and the
diagnostic tool, in work led by the University of
Manchester.
‘For me personally, the single
most important insight from
the project has been the
realisation that adaptation to
climate change is
fundamentally a question
about its social impact, which
in itself is reason enough to
encourage a follow-up’
Stepping aside from our own agenda, a striking
feature of the GRaBS project – which I believe is
common to the INTERREG IVC programme in
general – is the focus on outputs. Most planners in
the UK will be more familiar with national and local
performance indicators than with INTERREG
requirements, but the underlying concept seems to
be the same in both cases, albeit that INTERREG
IVC is wrapped around with the usual, sometimes
impenetrable EU language. GRaBS therefore faces
the same risk – that what we measure is the
measurable, and we succeed only when we can
show we have achieved the measurable targets.
This is not to underplay the importance of
achieving (and over-achieving) the GRaBS project
targets; the performance across a range of
languages and cultures has been immense. At
times, the delivery of the outputs has looked to be
very challenging, but one of the most satisfying
elements of the project has been the way in which
the GRaBS partners have worked collaboratively
with each other and delivered when it mattered.
However, the challenge now is how to move
beyond the essentially tick-box requirements of the
INTERREG secretariat and embed those outputs
into an initiative that is, well, sustainable. One may
question whether this is necessary, but, for me
personally, the single most important insight from
the project has been the realisation that adaptation
to climate change is fundamentally a question about
its social impact, which in itself is reason enough to
encourage a follow-up. Assessing the risks
associated with climate change should not be an
impossible technical challenge, but these risks are
unevenly distributed across the population at large.
Unless we are successful in both our mitigation and
adaptation programmes, the impact of climate
change will fall disproportionately on the most
vulnerable groups in society – for example elderly
people and urban poor who cannot escape from
excessive heat in summer.
GRaBS is, in the jargon, a ‘Regional Initiative
Project’ conducted under the ‘Environment and Risk
Prevention’ priority. In these projects, partners work
together to exchange experience in a policy field of
their interest. By contrast, in ‘Capitalisation Projects’
partners build on already identified good practice to
transfer such practice into mainstream programmes
of EU Structural Funds. It may be that a follow-up
Capitalisation Project is not feasible in the case of
GRaBS, but something like that needs to be taken
forward, which means that funding needs to be
secured.
The project should be progressed in two ways,
the first of which is further development of the
already impressive University of Manchester
diagnostic tool. I suspect that this would need to be
primarily an exercise for our academic colleagues,
albeit with potential financial payback in due course
if it can be spun off commercially as an aid to
decision-making.
The second strand needs to be concerned with
embedding Adaptation Action Plans into national
planning guidance and frameworks. This will not be
straightforward, especially since the most common
threats to the success of the project were the
generally low priority given in practice to climate
change issues by local politicians, and a lack of
awareness, even outright scepticism, among the
population at large. However, the fact that GRaBS
partners were successful in delivering their share of
the project in the variety of circumstances,
administrative cultures and resources that they
faced should be a cause for optimism.
In the UK we already have complex and changing
planning and environmental legislation which our
underfunded local planning authorities have to deal
with. It is therefore probably unrealistic to expect, or
even to want, to add to that burden with Adaptation
Action Plans at local level in the immediate future.
However, GRaBS has shown that their development
can help the profile of and response to climate
change issues, and so a way forward needs to be
found.
● John Deegan is a Trustee of the TCPA. The views expressed
here are personal..
Town & Country Planning June 2011 : GRaBS Project – INTERREG IVC; ERDF-funded 263