The RESIST Project partners are meeting in Turku, Finland, on 28-29 June 2023 for the second consortium meeting of the project. The meeting will serve as an important platform for collaboration and knowledge exchange within the project.
Southwest Finland is hosting the meeting as one of the lead RESIST regions. Partners coming from 10 European countries will discover the area and explore the demonstration sites. Innovative solutions to climate change impacts will be implemented in the city of Turku and in the basin of the river Savijoki.
Turku, 26 June – The RESIST Project partners are meeting in Turku on Wednesday 28 and Thursday 29 June. Partners from 10 European countries will gather in EduCity on the Kupittaa campus of Turku University of Applied Sciences. The meeting will mark the first six months of the project, allowing partners to recap and plan the activities across Europe that will take place during the second half of 2023.
RESIST is a five-year European Union-funded project that emerged from the need to make regions more resilient to climate change. The effects of environmental changes are a reality affecting our societies in many ways. The project focuses on five key challenges linked to climate change impacts: floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires and soil erosion. Southwest Finland is especially exposed to climate change challenges related to water: floods, droughts, and soil erosion.
Watersheds in Southwest Finland lack natural water retention. Climate change has aggravated the situation with long-lasting droughts during growing periods and extensive floods that can cause serious impacts on water protection, agriculture, and forestry.
The rural areas of the region lack lakes, which can act as an essential natural element to mitigate floods and drought. The region’s cities, on the other hand, are also vulnerable to increasing sea and stormwater floods due to high levels of urbanization. Southwest Finland is also experiencing higher temperatures and heatwaves that can cause problems in the summer.
Southwest Finland has identified its main bottlenecks for the large-scale implementation of water retention solutions in rural and urban areas: lack of financing for nature-based solutions (NBS) investments, lack of understanding of the benefits of NBS for water retention and lack of know-how when investing in non-traditional grey infrastructure.
The project activities will tackle these bottlenecks. The demonstrations will be carried out in three pilot sites: two in the city of Turku and one in the basin of the river Savijoki. During the meeting, project partners will visit the demonstration sites in the city of Turku, along with the local partners of the project: the City of Turku, the Regional Council of Southwest Finland, Valonia, the Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), Turku University of Applied Sciences, and University of Turku.
The RESIST Project activities in Turku will focus on renovating and upgrading the stormwater infrastructure with a focus on NBS. The activities in the city will be held in two areas: the Rauvolanlahti residential area and Oriketo industrial area. In both cases, local citizens will be involved in the co- creation of the planning and implementation of the activities.
The demonstration site in rural Southwest Finland will focus on enhancing dialogue among landowners and nudging them towards more sustainable water management with the development of training on the planning and implementation of NBS. The activities at this site will also establish a drainage-basin- specific, multi-beneficial water retention plan and visualize the impacts through digital models. In both rural and urban sites, the activities will also be followed in parallel with applying for further funding to upscale the investment.
The European framework of RESIST Project
RESIST is adopting a new practical framework in which climate adaptation pathways will be tested in four leading regions of the EU: Southwest Finland, Central Denmark, Catalonia, and Central Portugal. These four regions have been selected for their high level of vulnerability to climate change and their experience in climate change adaptation (CCA). Each of the leading regions is paired with two equally vulnerable regions with less experience in CCA. Normandy (France), Eastern Macedonia and Thrace (Greece), Blekinge (Sweden), Zemgale (Latvia), Puglia (Italy), Baixo Alentejo (Portugal), Vesteralen (Norway), and Extremadura (Spain) are the eight twinning regions.
RESIST is part of a wider strategy at a European level: the EU Mission Adaptation to Climate Change. The mission focuses on supporting at least 150 European regions, cities, and local authorities by 2030 in their efforts to build resilience against the impacts of climate change. For now, RESIST will engage 12 European regions with different socioeconomic profiles. These regions will test adaptation solutions to five key climate challenges: floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and soil erosion.
European regions and cities have different climate vulnerabilities and levels of preparedness. RESIST acknowledges this and is built on the real challenges and needs of the 12 climate-vulnerable regions in Europe. The project follows the quintuple helix model, which involves civil society organisations (CSOs), private sector, policy makers, and the scientific community through a cross-sectoral and bottom-up approach.
Additional resources:
- RESIST Media Kit: https://resist-project.eu/media-kit/
- RESIST Regions: https://resist-project.eu/regions/
- Project video presentation: https://youtu.be/kle9BufhreA