Chapter 9
Legal Aspects of Climate Change Adaptation
Moritz Gies, Juliane Albrecht, and Jadwiga Sienkiewicz
9.1 Introduction
As climate change and anthropogenic activities are putting European habitats and
their management under pressure, measures are needed to reduce impacts and to
prepare for and react to future developments of protected areas. These measures are
subject to legal regulations, especially those of nature protection and water law, but
also of spatial planning and the law of economic land and natural resources use.
Adaptation for nature protection areas can cause conflicts with other legal interests
of a public or private rights origin. Thus a stricter regime of nature protection
adapted to higher habitat sensitivity can interfere with, e.g. a growing need for
public infrastructures or private agricultural land use, which themselves could be
intensified under changing climate conditions.
These legal issues of climate change adaptation are ideally dealt with in a
comprehensive political and legislative process spanning from the international
and European level down to national strategies and regional planning, in order to
adapt the law as necessary to ensure a higher adaptive capacity of the legal
framework for nature protection areas and water resource management. In this
chapter, the policy making in the European Union for climate change adaptation
and biodiversity protection and the possibilities and constraints of the legal framework for nature protection and water management are analysed in order to highlight
the chances and shortcomings of adaptation in the political and legal field.
M. Gies • J. Albrecht (*)
Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development,
Weberplatz 1, 01217 Dresden, Germany
e-mail: m.gies@ioer.de; j.albrecht@ioer.de
J. Sienkiewicz
Department of Nature and Landscape Conservation, Institute of Environmental
Protection – National Research Institute, ul.Krucza 5/11d, 00-548 Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: jadwiga.sienkiewicz@ios.edu.pl
S. Rannow and M. Neubert (eds.), Managing Protected Areas in Central
and Eastern Europe Under Climate Change, Advances in Global Change Research 58,
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-7960-0_9, © The Author(s) 2014
135
Legal Aspects of Climate Change Adaptation
Moritz Gies, Juliane Albrecht, and Jadwiga Sienkiewicz
9.1 Introduction
As climate change and anthropogenic activities are putting European habitats and
their management under pressure, measures are needed to reduce impacts and to
prepare for and react to future developments of protected areas. These measures are
subject to legal regulations, especially those of nature protection and water law, but
also of spatial planning and the law of economic land and natural resources use.
Adaptation for nature protection areas can cause conflicts with other legal interests
of a public or private rights origin. Thus a stricter regime of nature protection
adapted to higher habitat sensitivity can interfere with, e.g. a growing need for
public infrastructures or private agricultural land use, which themselves could be
intensified under changing climate conditions.
These legal issues of climate change adaptation are ideally dealt with in a
comprehensive political and legislative process spanning from the international
and European level down to national strategies and regional planning, in order to
adapt the law as necessary to ensure a higher adaptive capacity of the legal
framework for nature protection areas and water resource management. In this
chapter, the policy making in the European Union for climate change adaptation
and biodiversity protection and the possibilities and constraints of the legal framework for nature protection and water management are analysed in order to highlight
the chances and shortcomings of adaptation in the political and legal field.
M. Gies • J. Albrecht (*)
Leibniz Institute of Ecological Urban and Regional Development,
Weberplatz 1, 01217 Dresden, Germany
e-mail: m.gies@ioer.de; j.albrecht@ioer.de
J. Sienkiewicz
Department of Nature and Landscape Conservation, Institute of Environmental
Protection – National Research Institute, ul.Krucza 5/11d, 00-548 Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: jadwiga.sienkiewicz@ios.edu.pl
S. Rannow and M. Neubert (eds.), Managing Protected Areas in Central
and Eastern Europe Under Climate Change, Advances in Global Change Research 58,
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-7960-0_9, © The Author(s) 2014
135