GoApply Final Conference feat. Climate change adaptation governance DesignLab

The Alpine Space is severely affected by climate change. Adaptation to unavoidable climatic changes is needed to prevent unmanageable impacts and to safeguard climate-resilient and balanced territorial development. Climate adaptation strategies and action plans are in place in some Alpine countries, but implementation is inhibited by multiple obstacles in steering adaptation policies across sectors, levels and actors. Governance has a key role in the transition from strategies to practice, but capacities for multilevel and cross-sector governance are lacking. Adequate governance designs and effective cooperation pathways are mostly still missing or not operational. The GoApply project in the frame of the INTERREG B Alpine Space Programme thus tackles joint key challenges of adaptation governance: vertical implementation across territorial levels; horizontal mainstreaming into sector policies; and more active involvement of local, regional and non-governmental actors.

The final conference of the GoApply project takes place on 24th April 2019 as a public one-day event at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna. The conference is held back-to-back with the Austrian Climate Day 2019 (25th – 26th April 2019), thus generating mutual benefits. The GoApply conference disseminates project results and employs activating formats to stimulate debate, facilite exchange and promote improved governance of climate change adaptation in the Alpine Countries. Emphasis is put on interactive approaches and practice transfer. The event addresses adaptation policy/decision makers and coordinators, practitioners and researchers from the Alpine Space.

The Austrian Federal Ministry of Sustainability and Tourism (BMNT) and the Environment Agency Austria organize the conference. They contracted PLANVAL to set up an attractive format for the event, combining innovative and interactive elements with classical knowledge transfer slots. The outstanding feature is the Climate change adaptation governance DesignLab, a Design Thinking session striving for new solutions to observed governance challenges. During the conference, PLANVAL acts as moderator and facilitator.

More information about the GoApply project can be found here.