Climate Toolbox Surselva

Toolbox for regional adaptation to climate change

Grisons, Switzerland

2014 - 2016

Client

Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), the Office for the Environment and Nature of the Canton of Grisons and the Surselva region.

Beneficiaries

Decision-makers in Surselva with a connection to regional development and climate change.

Key Partners

CIPRA Switzerland
Mountain Wilderness Switzerland
Surselva region

Mountain regions are among the most sensitive areas to climate change. However, as research findings are often very scattered and of little practical relevance, regional development agencies in mountain regions are often unaware of the opportunities to adapt to climate change. To offer a solution, we have joined forces with CIPRA, Mountain Wilderness Switzerland and the Surselva region to develop a Climate Change Toolbox focusing on mountain areas.

The Climate Toolbox Surselva is an instrument that supports regional decision-makers in developing strategies to mitigate risks and exploit opportunities of climate change. The toolbox systematically includes the region’s economic, ecological, and social foundations in the discussion to demonstrate the advantages of proactive, cross-sectoral, and sustainable adaptation to climate change from a holistic perspective.

We, as seecon, conceived and developed this toolbox, for which we carried out the following activities:

Explore and discover

Integrating the sound experience of CIPRA and Mountain Wilderness in the field of climate change and sustainable development in the Alps, we have developed a set of existing and anticipated risks related to climate change in mountain areas.

Co-create and design

Based on the risk analysis, we developed a toolbox that combines the identified risk areas with a catalogue of innovative and sustainable instruments and best practices for climate change adaptation.

Empower

In October 2015, we piloted the toolbox for the Surselva region. In this workshop, the effects of climate change on the regional business model were discussed together with the regional actors, risks and opportunities were evaluated and, in the end, the necessary measures were determined. The region thus developed its very own strategic action plan for adapting to climate change in a broad-based process.