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Climate change is already having impacts on biodiversity within Europe, with habitats and species needing to change and adapt to rising global temperatures and shifts in bio-climatic zones. Spatial planning represents an important intervention to further European, national and local biodiversity objectives for climate change adaptation. Drawing on case-studies of plans for inland and coastal areas, and involving stakeholder workshops, this paper reports on a trans-national study examining the scope of spatial plans in the Netherlands, England and France in addressing the impact of climate change. It concludes that spatial planning is making provision for biodiversity and dynamic natural processes. However, while good practice in planning for biodiversity under conditions of climate change is developing, systematic use is not being made of available procedures. The paper examines some of the barriers to implementation of this new policy commitment to climate change adaptation. Recommendations are made covering policy development to include climate change impacts upon biodiversity, modified procedures for plan-making and the appraisal of plans and projects. Amongst the specific measures recommended are the climate-proofing of projects and plans through the use of EIA and SEA; the integration of plans through adoption of common objectives and review of time horizons and boundaries; and an ecosystem-based planning approach. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coastal flood maps covering the whole European continent have become available in recent years. However, their ability to complement or replace high‐resolution local flood maps was not investigated so far. In this paper we compare pan‐European estimates of extreme sea levels and coastal flood extents at given return periods with observations and high‐resolution reference maps. The analysis is done for two pan‐European assessments and one global study. We find that whereas the models have good accuracy in estimating storm surge heights, large disparities exist between the large‐scale flood maps and four local maps of flood extents from England, the Netherlands, Poland, and France. Moreover, the accuracy of the underlying digital elevation model and assumptions about flood protection existing in a given area influence significantly the results. In addition, the first pan‐European projection of temporal trends in the size of flood zones is presented, with and without assuming flood protection levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]