Stad Oostende: SCAPE

Climate change does not respect border. It does not repect who you are - rich and poor, small and big. Sustainable development offers the best chance to adjust our course.

Ban Ki-moon, 8^th Secretary-General of the United Nations 

What if it's [Climate Change] all a big hoax and we've created a better world for nothing?

Naomi Klein, Author and social activist

SCAPE - Shaping Climate Adaptive PlacEs

SCAPE
SCAPE as an European funded project, encloses a broad partnership with 8 partners from Belgium, The Netherlands and United Kingdom. Climate adaptation in coastal cities is key within this project. Moreover, all partners will develop Landscape Led Design (LLD) solutions for water management to lift the resilience of coastal landscape to climate change in the 2 Seas area. 

Problem
Coastal landscapes are sensitive to water-related effects of climate change, specifically: flooding, extreme rainfall and drought. To tackle these effects and enhance the resilience of these landscapes, a better and profound understanding of water management is needed. SCAPE will address this challenge by developing and testing innovative water management solutions for coastal sites in Belgium, The Netherlands and United Kingdom.

Method
Through the process, SCAPE will work with the key stakeholders to increase the cost effectiveness of water management applications in 6 pilots. In these pilot sites innovative tools and solutions that among other effects reduce flooding, will be tested. In this context, the project will bring together water managers, planners and architects from across the partnership to jointly develop an approach that uses the landscape to cope with water management problems in rural, urban and fringe coastal areas.

In the conventional water management approach measures do not take landscape specific characteristics into account. SCAPE however, wants to build upon the principles of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) to implement a new approach in water management, the so-called Landscape Led Design or LLD.

Output
The main outputs of SCAPE are

• 1 LLD strategy for incorporation of landscape led design solutions in water management
• 1 LLD method that provides landscape led design guidelines for partners/target groups
• 6 pilot sites to validate the use of LLD in different landscapes: urban, fringe and rural