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Johan Lindgren

Johan Lindgren

Senior lecturer

Johan Lindgren

Risk and vulnerability analysis : A feasible process for local climate adaptation in Sweden?

Author

  • Karin Mossberg Sonnek
  • Bengt Johansson
  • Johan Lindgren

Summary, in English

Climate change is an important new challenge for local authorities. This study analyses the potential for using the Swedish mandatory process for risk and vulnerability analysis (RVA) as a vehicle to improve local climate adaptation work. An advantage with RVA is its comprehensive approach in dealing with all relevant threats and all vital functions of society. In order to test the applicability of incorporating climate adaptation into RVA, we studied practical experiences from three Swedish municipalities. In all municipalities, a pre-study to identify relevant climate-induced events was performed. In one municipality, this was followed by a more detailed analysis of the potential impacts of these events on the functions of the various administrations and companies within the local authority. Problems identified in successful integration of climate change into the municipal RVA process were lack of sufficient knowledge to identify the impacts of climate change on the level of the respective specialist or district administration and lack of resources to perform the analysis. There were also some difficulties in including a long-term perspective relevant for climate adaptation into RVA, which usually focuses on current threats. A positive outcome was that work on extreme climate events in RVA provided a traceable method to identify events with a potentially great impact on the function of local society and results that could be fed into other ongoing processes, such as spatial planning and housing plans.

Publishing year

2013

Language

English

Pages

781-800

Publication/Series

Local Environment

Volume

18

Issue

7

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Carfax Publishing

Topic

  • Environmental Management

Keywords

  • climate adaptation
  • policy integration
  • risk and vulnerability analysis
  • Swedish municipalities

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1354-9839