Integrating climate change adaptation into SEA: an assessment for Sardinia, Italy

Climate Change (CC) is recognized as an urgent concern, which implies negative effects on the environment, such as sea level rise, coastal erosion, flooding, droughts, and desertification. It involves not only the environmental, but also the economic, and social sphere. The impacts of CC are addressed through two complementary strategies: mitigation and adaptation. The first one operates on the reasons of CC aiming at preventing or reducing greenhouse gases emissions, while the second one focuses on the damage they can cause, aiming at minimizing it or to take advantage of opportunities that may occur.
Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) represents a systematic and participatory decision-making support process, aiming at integrating environmental considerations in the elaboration of plans and programs. While SEA regards explicitly mitigation strategies, so far it still refers marginally to CC adaptation measures to be carried on when implementing spatial planning tools at the regional and local scale. The integration of SEA processes with concepts inspired to adaptation to CCs represents a powerful tool for mainstreaming the corresponding policies and strategies.
In this study, we scrutinize SEA and spatial planning tools issued in Sardinia (Italy), with reference to their attitude to incorporate possible climate adaptation concerns. We are interested in proposing and applying a framework based on internationally acknowledged criteria that need to be met to properly implement climate change adaptation measures and actions in current spatial planning and SEA practices.