Climate adaptation - Science vs. Practice?!

On May 31st the Baltic Sea States Sub-regional Cooperation (BSSSC) and the Baltex Secretariat invited practitioners, scientists and decision makers at the regional political level in the Baltic Sea Region a platform to present and discuss concrete examples of regional or local adaptation to climate change.

The biggest challenge of the conference was to find a common language and discussion basis for the diverse audience: scientists and practitioners and decision-makers from regional and local authorities.
Several researchers presented current projects working with the issue of climate adpataion in the region; from projects on adaptation strategies, involvement of stakeholders or capacity buidling to the issue of transferring scientific knowledge to decision-makers.

In the end, the most interesting and inspiring input came from the cities and regions themselves; especially Swedish and Danis cities and regions took the chance to show off what they have been working on and implementing in terms of climate adaptation and those experiences were very inspiring!

The need for a better understanding, better cooperation and better communication between science and practice is definitely existing. the conference was a good point on the way, but there still is a bit to go.

All presentations and the Hamburg declaration can be found from the Baltex-website