Due to climate change, a wide range of environmental and socio-economic impacts can be expected in the Baltic Sea Region in the future. Islands are among those coastal areas where impacts might be the most severe, and thus the planning of climate change adaptation measures has increasing importance for Baltic Sea municipalities.

Fehmarn island is in the north-eastern coast of Germany. Here, climate change will cause more extreme weather events such as storm surges and heat waves, but also prolonged summer seasons that attract more tourists. The heat in the summer can increase the attractiveness of the Baltic coast even more and draw tourists from the Mediterranean and other popular holiday regions where it can get uncomfortably hot. Hence, the coastal and marine sector may expand. This will cause spatial conflicts between wildlife and coastal tourism.

In the Land-Sea-Act project the municipality of Fehmarn island and the Baltic Environmental Forum Germany collaborate to assess climate change adaptation measures combined with sustainable tourism concepts.

Implementations:

• Evaluating impacts of climate change on Fehmarn.
• Surveying tourists and local actors to knowledge about climate change, currently available sustainable tourism offers and development potentials (summer 2019 and 2020).
• Developing a set of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures with local actors, in the format of sequence of discussion rounds and working group meetings.
• Resolving spatial conflicts between coastal, marine tourism and wildlife, by means of a water- and land-based water sports guidance system and buoys.
• Developing a so- called “Green Week”, a set of tourism offers for pursuing sustainable holidays on the island.