Contributing to adaptation to climate change in Spain’s highly densely populated coastal areas is the objective of the project that the ENT Foundation has launched with the support of the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, through its 2015 call for grants.

The initiative seeks to assess the socio-economic and environmental costs and benefits of implementing various measures for adaptation to climate change in the study areas. The activities of the initiative will contribute to identifying the most appropriate strategies for adaptation to climate change, strategies that can be implemented in coastal areas of Spain, where there are important urban and tourist centres.

In addition to analysing the impact and adaptation of beach tourism areas, the impact of infrastructures and various urban elements in which recreational and tourist activities are carried out will also be studied.

The project contemplates several phases in its development, starting with the implementation of the conceptual framework for the analysis of the impact of climate change and adaptation measures, in addition to the selection of the study areas. Subsequently, projections of the impact of climate change on the areas subject to the project will be made and adaptation measures will be identified. Its last phase focuses on the cost-benefit analysis and the presentation of results.

The scope of the project is coastal urban centres with a high cultural, recreational and tourist interest, so for the study the ENT Foundation has considered the entire Spanish territory (peninsular and insular) with a view to selecting the specific areas of analysis.

Among the results expected to be achieved with the initiative, it seeks to obtain an estimate of the impacts of climate change in the study areas within the framework of several climate scenarios, in addition to determining the adaptation measures to be implemented, evaluating their costs and benefits.