Green Team

Municipalities are responsible for the design and maintenance of their public space, and for helping Europe become climate resilient by 2050. However, they are often unable to combine the two. For instance, after they open streets for sewer works, they close them back up again the same way, losing a perfect opportunity to implement climate adaptation measures like softening, infiltration or greening.

This way quick wins are neglected, and a lot of money and opportunities are lost to create green-blue public spaces that are better prepared to handle the effects of climate change, such as floods, droughts and heat. Moreover, green-blue public spaces increase public health, wellbeing, and overall liveability.

Local and regional authorities are in need for structural support when it comes to designing and implementing green-blue opportunities. Therefore, the Green Team project will equip these authorities with a methodology to integrate climate adaptation into the DNA of their organisations. Supported by the Interreg North Sea Europe programme, eleven partners from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany will work together to help municipalities to become climate-proof from within.

Cooperation partner:

Hoogheemraadschap van Schieland en de Krimpenerwaard
Stichting Adaptatie Atelier
Vereniging Voor Openbaar Groen
IFLA Europe
Energieeffizienzagentur Landkreis Emsland e.V.

The lighthouses are:

Putte (Belgian municipality)
Middelburg (Dutch municipality)
Papenburg (German municipality)
Emsland (German regional authority)

Methodological approach:

The project follows the method of integrated roadmapping, which identifies the relevant actors in the respective region on the basis of a specific sequence of process steps and enables these actors to develop strategies and goals as well as measures for climate adaptation.

Integrated Roadmapping:

https://sfs.sowi.tu-dortmund.de/forschung/projekte/evolving-regions/

https://evolvingregions.com/

Evolving Roadmapping: Guide for designing climate adaptation processes

Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.17877/DE290R-23700

Project goals:

Green Teams

Firstly, we will develop a joint strategy to set up Green Teams within local and regional authorities. These teams consist of civil servants and politicians that are experts on different thematic fields, like road construction, water and community participation. The Green Teams facilitate cross-departmental collaboration and therefore foster an organisation-wide approach to climate adaptation.

Green-blue investment plannings

This project will also break into the multi-year investment plannings of local and regional authorities. In these, municipalities largely determine their day-to-day functioning. We will develop a roadmap and action plans that guide local authorities to include green-blue opportunities in planned infrastructure works or other public space projects. We focus on the whole process: from project development, design and tender specifications to construction and maintenance after delivery.

Moreover, a range of stakeholders will be included: designers, developers, maintainers and end-users of public spaces. Our goal? Create awareness of the (linking) opportunities to work on climate-resilient public spaces that are in line with the public investment plannings.

Learning network and lighthouses
We work together with an impressive range of experts from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Our partners include regional authorities, local authorities, a knowledge institute and four NGOs. Additionally, we will create a cross-sectional learning network about climate adaptation at the local level.

What’s more, we will co-create, validate and implement the Green Team methodology and the local and regional level. We will work together with four ‘lighthouses’: our pioneers are the first to set up Green Teams and function as an example for other organisations.