Climate Resilience
Decarbonisation across the Southern Region TheRegional DecarbonisationPlanwill provide a regional focus for each of the sectors covered by the Climate Action Plan and National Mitigation Plan . The Plan should seek to develop sustainable economic pathways and a Just Transition so that the impacts of policies to achieve decarbonisation do not disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in our communities.
The National Adaptation Framework , sets out an overall approach for developing climate resilience. Climate adaptation aims to reduce the vulnerability of our environment, society and economy to the risks posed by climate change. It focuses on short-term and long-term responses to climate change by taking a cross-cutting themed approach for all key sectors of Government, society and the economy:
RPO 90
• •
Natural and Cultural Capital;
Critical infrastructure;
Regional Decarbonisation It is an objective to develop a Regional Decarbonisation Plan to provide a framework for action on decarbonisation across all sectors. The Regional Decarbonisation Plan shall include existing and future targets for each sector and shall be prepared with key stakeholders, including the Climate Action Regional Offices, and shall identify the scope and role of the Plan, the requirements for SEA, AA and the timescale for its preparation. Implementation mechanisms and monitoring structures for the Plan should also be established.
• Water resources and Flood Risk Management; • Public Health. TheRegionalAssemblyhasakeyrole toadopt a joint regional approach to adaptation planning in partnership with CARO and the local authorities (who have adopted Climate Adaptation Strategies), where there are opportunities to share knowledge, experience, resources and to benefit from working together in a co-ordinated way. At regional and local level, we need to focus on the ability of the system in all its component parts to anticipate, accommodate and recover from the effects of hazardous events, including the integration of emergency planning into climate change adaptation.
Electricity To achieve national and EU targets will require investment inmeasures to develop alternative renewable energies with greater interconnection to energy resources, increased capacity in biomass/ biofuels and reconfiguration of power generation facilities from use of fossil fuels to low carbon solutions. The built environment will require measures to support householders and business, changes to building regulations, smart metering in buildings, and new initiatives to support low carbon heating, including district heating. The transition to compact growth and more sustainable land use will underpin decarbonisation of the built environment. The Transport Sector All initiatives for meeting the national obligations to decarbonise the transport sector under the National Mitigation Plan will be included in the Regional Decarbonisation Plan. Sustainable transport and land use policies contained in the RSES also support a reduction of current level of car uses and dependence. The Transport Sector will require significant modal shift from private carbon fuel using vehicles to sustainable transport. This will require a similar shift to more sustainable means of freight and logistics transport, including rail. The success of the Region in decarbonising transport will require the implementation of other core policy objectives of RSES, particularly the settlement strategy delivering compact growth and compact settlements, to make sustainable travel more viable. Decarbonising transport will also focus on alternative and low emission fuels for vehicles for freight, a modal shift of freight to rail transport and the increased electrification of freight transport.
Building Resilience to Climate Change will include measures to support flood risk management.
Project Ireland 2040 also includes fiscal measures in the area of carbon pricing to drive a reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels and taxation measures to support investment in energy efficiency, renewable energy and other measures to reduce GHG emissions.
RPO 89
Building Resilience to Climate Change a. It is an objective to support measures to build resilience to climate change throughout the Region to address impact reduction, adaptive capacity, awareness raising, providing for nature-based solutions and emergency planning; b. Local Authorities and other public agencies shall continue to work with the Office of Public Works to implement the Flood Risk Management Plans and address existing and potential future flood risks arising from coastal, fluvial, pluvial, groundwater and potential sources of flood risk.
Southern Regional Assembly | RSES
133
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker