Community-based adaptation to climate change in Schleswig-Holstein: Challenges and opportunities

Communities will play a key role in climate adaptation as dealing with future impacts of climate change will require solutions tailored at the local level. Significant impacts of climate change in the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein include rising temperatures, changes in the precipitation regime and long-term sea-level rise. These present both challenges and opportunities for communities in Schleswig-Holstein. Many of those communities are currently starting to formulate adaptation strategies. Planning and implementation of specific adaptation measures and activities are likely to follow the development of adaptation strategies. Communities in the northern federal state will increasingly need to institutionalize climate adaptation and treat it as an integrated management task. This can meet other strategic objectives and lead to sustainable planning. Due to uncertainty about the consequences of climate change, we recommend that communities develop robust and flexible adaptation plans, for example, with no-regret measures. If adaptation capacities are limited, communities will also need to think about transformational adaptation. © 2019, Deutscher Verband für Angewandte Geographie (DVAG).