BECCA: Sustainable and safe basins for ecology, designed to adapt to climate change
Program/Funding
- ALCOTRA VI France–Italy Program
- Section A "New Challenges"
- Simple AP
- Specific objective 2.iv. "Promote climate change adaptation, disaster risk prevention, and resilience, taking into account ecosystem-based approaches."
Theme
Adaptation to climate change and risk prevention
Partners
Project leader: Autumn Region of the Aosta Valley
Italian partners:
• Turin Polytechnic University
• Piedmont Region
French partners:
• INRAE: 3 research units
• USMB
In 2022, all climate indicators point to drier-than-average conditions across most of Western Europe, particularly in the Alps, confirming the climate change trend of recent decades with serious repercussions for mountain areas.
In particular, climate change has caused:
- A lack of snow in winter that damaged winter sports resorts;
- Severe summer droughts that harm agriculture in rural mountain areas, drinking water supplies for communities, forest fires, and hydroelectric power generation.
In an effort to mitigate the effects of climate change, government agencies and land management organizations are working to identify effective and environmentally sustainable solutions for adapting to climate change, with a focus on ecosystem-based approaches.
One possible solution that has been identified is the creation of small reservoirs distributed throughout mountainous areas, which can mitigate the impacts of climate change while ensuring an adequate level of safety for the territories and communities that live there. The main objective of the BECCA project—Ecologically Sustainable and Safe Reservoirs, Designed to Adapt to Climate Change—is to ensure the proper design of reservoirs and the safety of existing reservoirs.
Activities
- Designing and building small and medium-sized reservoirs in the context of climate change
- Designing tanks with low environmental impact, better integrated into their surroundings, and adopting naturalistic engineering solutions
- Assess the risks associated with the presence of reservoirs and adapt civil protection plans
Impacts
Appropriate land use planning, based on a multi-criteria analysis, to meet the emerging needs of cross-border Alpine regions following periods of drought.
Better integration of small and medium-sized cross-border reservoirs that are safe and inexpensive in mountainous contexts, using nature-based solutions.
Increasing the resilience of the population through participatory actions aimed at developing tools that take into account the risk of dam failure.
Results
Cross-border/multi-criteria methodology implemented to identify areas where small and medium-sized reservoirs should be designed and built to meet the population's demand for water resources following increasingly frequent droughts.
Increase in the number of technicians and professionals trained in the design and construction of safe transboundary reservoirs in line with the changed conditions resulting from climate change, including through the use of naturalistic engineering techniques to reduce impacts on Alpine ecosystems.
Increase in the number of municipalities adapting their civil protection plans to the risk of dam failure.
The contribution of the USMB
In a context of climate change leading to increasingly dry conditions in Europe, particularly in the Alpine region, due to the combined effects of low rainfall and high temperatures, the BECCA project aims to respond to the need for safe reservoirs and the rehabilitation of existing reservoirs, adopting nature-based techniques that respect the environment and biodiversity, in order to compensate for the lack of snow in winter, which is detrimental to winter sports resorts, and the need for water for agriculture during summer droughts, and, more broadly, to respond to the challenges that climate change poses to mountain regions.
The USMB's contribution to the BECCA project will focus primarily on proposing methods and tools for the design and construction of small and medium-sized reservoirs in mountainous and foothill areas that are environmentally friendly, respect biodiversity, are safe, and provide an integrated response for adaptation to climate change.
Learn more about the project
