Municipalities have a new tool to support how climate change adaptation is managed

HADAS-PACT is a comprehensive management tool for climate change adaptation within the framework of key local policies. It enables indicators to be transferred, as a management model, and in response to the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy.

Through a structured analytical sequence, the model provides a first approximation to the vulnerability and risk that each municipality faces in response to the main climate threats. It also assists the management of municipalities that already have a climate change adaptation plan or those that are currently planning one.

HADAS-PACT was successfully piloted in the autonomous community of Navarre by a group of people with technical and political responsibilities in their respective town halls, as well as by entities at higher municipal levels which promote climate change adaptation policies.

It was then compared with another two autonomous communities in order to analyse the transferability of the tool to other local contexts. On the one hand, the tool was tested with the Barcelona Provincial Council and the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB). These entities provide technical support to their municipalities to promote and manage Climate and Sustainable Energy Action Plans (PACES). On the other hand, it was tested with the Cantabria Government Environmental Research Centre (CIMA) and with the Local Sustainability Network of Cantabria, which both support Cantabrian municipalities to promote local sustainability policies.

This exercise has served to learn more about other contexts and ways of approaching climate change adaptation policies from the local level. It has also enabled the necessary adjustments to be made so that the tool can be useful for different types of municipalities.

In addition, HADAS-PACT focusses on ensuring municipalities adhere to the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy. The aim is to make it easier for them to manage and report the progress made with their plans, and to offer an overview of the breakthroughs made and the results obtained.

HADAS-PACT has been developed in collaboration between TECNALIA and Enea, with the support of the Biodiversity Foundation which belongs to the Ecological Transition Ministry. HADAS-PACT has taken the e-ADAPTA tool as its starting point, which was developed by the same team within the framework of the Basque Government’s Klimatek 2017-2018 call for innovation and demonstration projects for climate change adaptation in the Basque Country.