Browsing by Subject "ratkaisut"

The impacts of climate change are going to be significant in Finland, thus the need to adapt is inevitable. Municipalities are the key to adaptation because the impacts of climate change are met locally. Several cities have developed their measures to climate impacts. However, multiple barriers may hinder the planning and implementation of adaptation measures in the cities. The purpose of this research is to identify and overcome the barriers in urban climate change adaptation in the City of Helsinki. The main data of this research was collected in a workshop and it consists of the blank form replies collected with 6-3-5 method and focus group discussions. 11 civil servants from the City of Helsinki who deal with adaptation issues in their daily work participated in the workshop. The participants identified the barriers and evaluated the most important ones in the workshop: lack of cost-benefit analyses, rivalry of the resources with other interests, lack of urgency regarding adaptation, lack of information, fragmentation of the organization and unclear roles and responsibilities. Identifying the barriers does not solely promote the resilience of the cities but it is an important step in the development of adaptation work. It is essential to seek possible solutions to overcome the identified barriers. Six solutions that can tackle simultaneously several barriers emerged from the data gathered in the workshop: costbenefit analyses, increasing training and information, concrete examples, increasing co-operation, clear modes of action and responsibilities and the support and commitment of the management. With these solutions, the City of Helsinki has the possibility to simultaneously overcome several barriers that were identified in this research. To conclude, the responsibility of climate change adaptation should be clarified in the new city organization and silos between different sectors should be addressed, if possible. It would be useful to utilise the multi-criteria decision analysis in prioritising and argumenting of the adaptation measures in the city. As additional conclusions, it seems that improved co-operation with the universities and research institutions, and legislation indicating clear roles and responsibilities in terms of adaptation might benefit the adaptation work in the City of Helsinki. As for the need for further research, the analytical framework developed and utilized in this research needs to be tested in other case studies also.