CAMINO

Background and Aim

Aim
CAMINO aimed to: 

• Reconcile economic growth and climate adaptation in the North Sea Region through identification of innovative governance structures and business cases that support mainstreaming climate adaptation in local investment projects and product/service development
• Bring together results of MARE, SKINT, SAWA (all NSR), FRC (NWE) and BaltCica (BSR) and enrich existing public-private partnerships to support and accelerate the implementation of over 10 innovative cases in urban and business development. In collaboration with (inter)national policy makers and think tanks, the approaches and instruments underlying these cases were synthesised into a Future Perspectives vision for local authorities to drive forward both investment and adaptation.

Background:
Interreg IVB North Sea Region Programme has in its Priority 2 supported many projects that develop partnerships, tools and strategies for local adaptation to flood risk. Local authorities in MARE, SAWA, SKINT developed such plans successfully. When moving to implementation, however, many independently ran into similar barriers. Largely due to austerity measures, single-purpose climate adaptation projects were halted. Examples are Sheffield 's Flood Alleviation programme, Dordrecht's dike reinforcement or Noorderkwartier's sewerage decoupling plan.

This put at risk ambitions to improve the region's adaptation to climate change. Nearly all local authorities across the North Sea Region will face this problem in years to come.

These circumstances however lead CAMINO partners to look for new, innovative ways to deliver their projects. Emerging initiatives included novel governance arrangements that allowed sharing of infrastructure investments and the benefits, or open up procurement to novel technologies, or simply explicitly link climate adaptation projects with a business development objective. Matching new partnerships were formed, both public-public and public-private.

For example, Sheffield approached local businesses to co-finance flood alleviation measures for their industry estates. Dordrecht used new cost-benefit analysis tools to propose 4 authorities to consider joint investment in a dike, and it created areas where private developers can demonstrate innovative, attractive climate adaptive buildings or flood-proof road types. Noorderkwartier now engages Do-It-Yourself businesses to market residential water tanks instead of investing in costly drainage capacity.

Such initiatives were exactly the strategies and projects aimed for by Europe 2020 and national innovation programmes. These emerging approaches therefore provided Future Perspectives on how the North Sea Region local authorities could drive forward public and private investments that realise the dual objectives of triggering economic growth and climate adaptation.

CAMINO brought together outcomes from precursor projects necessary to advance projects: tools and processes from SKINT, expertise on managing networked knowledge and policy development from MARE, dissemination from SAWA and involvement of policy makers from FRC.

CAMINO partners from Dordrecht (NL), Hamburg (DE), Bergen (NO), Rotherham (UK), and the Flemish Environment Agency (BE) worked together with knowledge partners UNESCO-IHE (EU) and TUHH (DE), and over 50 regional partners. They built upon this expertise, identifying Governance arrangements, enriching partnerships with industry and high-level policy makers, and advancing over 10 pilots from precursor projects.

These outcomes were synthesized into Future Perspectives on Climate Adaptation Mainstreaming, which can support local authorities, national policy makers and think tanks across the North Sea Region and Europe.