The „BalticClimate Toolkit“, a guideline for dealing with climate change is now available online free of charge, reported the Academy for Spatial Research and Planning (ARL) mid February 2012. Over the past three years, ARL as lead partner in the EU BalticClimate project has been intensively working on climate protection and climate adaptation strategies.

The „BalticClimate Toolkit“ is the product of the EU BalticClimate project. It provides local and regional stakeholders with a tool to prepare and implement significant measures to deal with climate change. The toolkit is easy to understand and can be accessed in twelve languages at the website www.toolkit.balticclimate.org.

The information contained primarily addresses policy makers, spatial planners and business people. The content can also be easily understood by stakeholders who are not experts on climate change. What is climate change? How does it manifest itself? What are its regional impacts? And what can an individual person do? The toolkit provides answers to these and many other questions and contains a glossary explaining the terms used. Scenarios of the potential consequences of climate change can be studied based on maps from the Baltic Sea. Most recent scientific findings are supplemented by 130 examples taken from the fields of transport and mobility, energy, construction and housing or agriculture. Illustrations show ways in which climate adaptation and climate mitigation are already being practiced in the Baltic Sea region: straw-bale houses in Lithuania, climate-adapted agriculture in West Mecklenburg (Germany), an eco-school in Estonia or biogas taxis in Sweden are just a few of the examples from partner countries. 

This toolkit was designed as a product of the EU „BalticClimate“ project. The recommendations, checklists and exercises are also applicable to other regions. The methodology handouts and checklists allow users to tackle climate change themselves and identify their risks and opportunities. Policy makers are given a concise overview of the climate problems involved. Spatial planners are given, for example, directives on how to make an inventory analysis of a region and assess vulnerability to climate change. The toolkit highlights activity areas for sustainable development from the aspects of climate change and spatial planning directives. The business world also benefits from the climate change scenarios for each Baltic-Sea country. A combined SWOT/life-cycle analysis (strengths-weaknesses-opportunities-threats analysis of the company combined with a product life cycle analysis) helps small and medium sized companies examine, step by step, the climate protection and adaptation aspects in their business area and identify their competitiveness. All recommendations are science-based and have already been tested in practice.

(ARL/ile)