Stefano Moncada

Key sustainability issues in European sensitive areas — a participatory approach

This chapter describes the integration of stakeholder perspectives into the analysis of policy impacts within SENSOR. In particular, the chapter reports on a phase of ‘extensive’ research in selected ‘Sensitive Areas Case Studies’ (SACS), resulting in an overview of stakeholder perspectives on key sustainability issues. An understanding of these issues is presented as a critical reference point for subsequent research phases focusing on the impact assessment of land use policies. The discussion engages with one of the project’s central preoccupations, namely, that the production of thorough-going policy impact assessments which describe changes in social, economic and environmental systems across European regions is limited by current modelling capacity and data availability. In response, SENSOR proposes to extend the analytical scope of the automated tools through participatory research in selected ‘case study’ regions. The results of this research will be made available to the end user through the SIAT user interface. Results of the early, extensive phases of participatory research are presented and some implications for the ongoing design and analytical extension of the tools are discussed.

Key sustainability issues and the spatial classification of sensitive regions in Europe

Cross-cutting environmental, social and economic changes may have harsh impacts on sensitive regions. To address sustainability issues by governmental policy measures properly, the geographical delineation of sensitive regions is essential. With reference to the European impact assessment guidelines from 2005, sensitive regions were identified by using environmental, social and economic data and by applying cluster analysis, United Nation Environmental Policy priorities and expert knowledge. On a regionalised ‘Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics’ (NUTS) level and for pre-defined sensitive region types (post-industrial zones, mountains, coasts and islands) 31 % of the European area was identified as sensitive. However, the delineation mainly referred to social and economic issues since the regional data bases on environmental indicators are limited and do not allow the separation of medium-term vital classes of sensitive regions. Overall, the sensitive regions showed indicator values differing from the EU- 25 average.

Climate change and health vulnerability in informal urban settlements in the Ethiopian Rift Valley

Climate change in Ethiopia is occurring against a backdrop of rapid population growth and urbanization, entrenched poverty and a heavy burden of disease, and there is little information on specific health risks with which to approach adaptation planning and strengthen adaptive capacity. Using detailed household surveys (400 households, 1660 individuals, 100% participation) and focus groups in two informal urban communities in the Southern city of Shashemene, we identified locally relevant hazards and found that climate change is likely to intensify existing problems associated with poverty. We also showed that despite their proximity (situated only 1 km apart) the two communities differ in key characteristics that may affect climate change vulnerability and require nuanced approaches to adaptation. Detailed, community-level research is therefore necessary, especially where other sources of data are lacking, to ensure that adaptation activities in the worlds poorest communities address relevant risks.