Short report about the half-year progress of the LIFE-MICACC project

The “Municipalities as integrators and coordinators in adaptation to climate change” LIFE16 CCA/HU/000115 (LIFE_MICACC) project has begun at 1^st of September 2017 with the leadership of the Ministry of Interior of Hungary and with the participation of nine Partners.

The overall goal of the project is to improve climate resilience of vulnerable municipalities in Hungary by reducing their risks stemming from climate change with the help of Natural Water Retention Measures (NWRM).

The project is implemented in a various partnership. The Coordinator Beneficiary is the Ministry of Interior. The Coordination Office for Municipalities is responsible for the project implementation which is subordinated to the Deputy Secretary for Municipalities in the Ministry. The Associated Beneficiaries are the municipalities of Bátya, Püspökszilágy, Rákócziújfalu, Ruzsa and Tiszatarján, the Association of Climate-Friendly Municipalities (AOCFM), General Directorate of Water Management (GDWM), PANNON Pro Innovation Services Ltd. and the World Wide Fund for Nature Hungary Foundation (WWF).

The project will last until the end of August 2021. During the project period we would like to reach the following goals

• improve climate resilience of vulnerable municipalities,
• water retention approach,
• local capacity development,
• testing the settlement scale natural water retention measures,
• knowledge sharing with other municipalities (national and foreign),
• innovative and user-friendly tools,
• Development of municipality networks.

The preparation of the NWRM pilot projects and the planning of the prototypes are currently underway. The planning works expected to be finished until the end of this year. The implementation of the prototypes planned to be started in 2019. With the test phase experiences we will create an Adaptation Guide which will provide a kind of help for the other municipalities facing with the same climatic challenges.

On our website we would like to share continuously the project results, documents (for ex. Adaptation Guide) and news related to the project. It is very important to share the results we reached through the project implementation therefore two major dissemination events will be organised for the climate adaptation-interested municipalities in this year.