Some insights in the current work of the Alpine Climate Board (ACB).
The Alpine Climate Board has a clear vision and target system in view: until 2050, we want to support the Alpine region to become climate neutral and climate resilient. The Climate Action Plan lays out the path to reach this vision, including a sequence of smaller and bigger steps and alliances across borders, functions and sectors. Getting the implementation steps “on the ground” is now our challenge, building new rope teams along the way.
In this mandate period, beginning with October 2022, we focus on cross-sectoral activities, capturing the “friction points” between the sectors. The ACB realised that many promising activities lie not only within the specific sectors but that especially the interfaces between the sectors provide room for innovative approaches. We agreed to take a closer look at cross-sectoral activities – to use synergies between the sectors and thus facilitate the work of the caretakers, to develop innovative activities for the ACB itself and to critically reflect on potential trade-offs and “blind spots” of our Alpine Climate Target System and Action Plan. We decided to work on three specific cross-sectoral hotspots:
1. Sustainable energy transformation in the Alps
2. Nature based solutions
3. Quality of life through climate action/lifestyles
What does this mean for the implementation of the Climate Action Plan? And what are the activities that make a difference for people living and working in the Alps?
1. In the field of energy, we, together with the Klimahausagentur, produce a short booklet/input paper on cross-sectoral energy governance, highlighting best practices in the fields of “energy-spatial planning”, “energy-mountain agriculture”, “energy-water”, “energy-tourism” and energy governance topics in general. If you are working in this field and have a good project or innovative activity in mind, please get in touch with us (lueckge@climonomics.de and/or katharina.zwettler@bmk.gv.at)!
Besides this, we, together with CIPRA AT, will organize a workshop in order to discuss conflicts of use and how to align different viewpoints into consensual agreements. We want to bring together stakeholders of different interest groups and discuss their views e.g. on the allocation of suitable sites for renewable energy projects. This Workshop is scheduled for December 2023 or January 2024 – we will inform you as soon as we fixed the date.
2. At the moment we are collecting ideas on potential activities for nature based solution from our ACB members. If you are interested in this field, we highly recommend to take a glimpse at the presentations by WWF and Umweltbundesamt Austria.
We will also work very specifically on the topic of permafrost! Together with our new ACB member Mathias Ulrich (Germany), we are organising a webinar, which is scheduled for Thursday, 28 September 2023, 10.00-12.00; you´ll find more information about the workshop here: https://alpineclimate2050.org/event/webinar-on-28-september-2023/
And last but not least, we are organizing a workshop in cooperation with the Alpine Biodiversity Board of the Alpine Convention, scheduled for 5 October 2023, 13.00-16.30, online. “Alpine Biodiversity through the Climate Lens: Nature-based Solutions, Biodiversity Data and Best Practices” is the title of this event that aims at exchanging ideas and knowledge regarding the impacts of climate change on biodiversity in the Alps. We will discuss the harmonisation of biodiversity data in the region, explore the relevance of climate data for biodiversity, foster networking opportunities, and identify synergies between the two Boards of the Alpine Convention.
3. Concerning the third topic, quality of life/lifestyles, we aim at further developing the ACB into a platform to share methods, tools and know-how and to support multipliers from across the Alps to implement specific steps from our Climate Action Plan. Also for this hotspot, we are very happy that we can already announce a specific activity: together with Claire Simon (Val Monti), we are organising a workshop session organised as training to better understand how to engage people into climate action, how to motivate specific activities and how to use positive narratives along the way. . The workshop is scheduled for Monday, 6 November 2023, 14.00-18.30, in Bolzano/Bozen, previous to the 77th meeting of the Permanent Committee. This workshop targets also you, multipliers of climate related activities. Please save the date! We will share more information very soon.
We will share more detailed information in the respective community groups. Watch out!
