From June 18 to June 21, the 5th International Climate Change Adaptation Conference, Adaptation Futures 2018 (AF2018), will take place in Cape Town, South Africa. Being the world’s premier conference on climate change adaptation, Bax & Company will attend to connect, learn and inspire on this important topic.

During the conference Bax & Company’s managing partner and director of the Climate & Environment cluster, Sebastiaan van Herk, will contribute to several sessions as a chair or speaker to discuss topics like financing flood risk management, City2City learning and Blue-Green infrastructure.

Building capacity to bridge the investment gap in flood risk management

The global dialogue on financing climate adaptation is maturing. However, there are still many challenges ahead to increase the capacity to absorb the required investments. The question arises how to bridge this investment gap? What are the needs of whom and who should take the lead in this? These questions will be addressed during the round table session Building capacity to bridge the investment gap in flood risk management (S190, Wednesday 20th June, 16.30u).

Bax & Company’s Sebastiaan van Herk will convene the following speakers during this session:

• C. Zevenbergen
• L. Dundon
• J. Barnes
• H. Gehrels
• K. Pillay

City to City learning for Blue-Green Infrastructure

During the session Transnational City-to-City Learning to accelerate urban adaptation Dr. Sebastiaan van Herk will speak about City to City learning for Blue-Green Infrastructure; theory and practice from Europe.

Cities around the world are facing unprecedented challenges as they deal with climate change, rapid urbanization, increasing disaster risks, volatile economies and environmental pressures. In order to accelerate progress towards climate resilience, collaboration, cooperation and coordination between cities is vital. Cities have the capacity to learn from each other’s knowledge and experience by engaging in City2City learning (C2C).

C2C learning is not necessarily new, though. Cities have been collaborating for years, however, many previous initiatives have greatly lacked a structured approach. There is current research on cities operating under a structured process for efficient shared learning and eventual implementation of new knowledge. C2C is applicable to several domains, enabling shared learning and development to tackle a multitude of issues around the world.

This presentation will give examples of C2C learning in the European perspective, propose one practical framework to guide and evaluate C2C learning, and propose theoretical frameworks for effective peer learning. The examples come from the EU-funded project BEGIN and are based on our analysis of resilience city networks for the Dutch Government and UN-ISDR. This project engages in C2C learning workshops across 10 cities on how to successfully implement and maintain Blue Green Infrastructures and deploy Social Innovation.

We’d like to invite you to join this session S188 on Monday 18th June at 15.00u.

Global Centre of Excellence on Climate Adaptation

Besides these two sessions, Bax & Company will also facilitate the sessions of the Global Centre of Excellence on Climate Adaptation (GCECA). GCECA accelerates climate adaptation by recognising, building and promoting excellence among all relevant stakeholder groups around the world. Bax & Company consultants support the development of the Centre, which is now entering an exciting phase.