Urban: Gothenburg organization, mandates and financing to address extreme rainfall

The City of Gothenburg in Sweden has developed its own policy and agreement to deal with extreme rainfall that clarifies roles and responsibilities for implementation and management of measures and developing a financial mechanism. The Swedish Planning and Building Act states that the extreme rainfall is an issue for the city to manage. The Comprehensive plan of Gothenburg includes information how this should be done. The action in this area recognizes that in case there is an extreme rainfall there will be very high costs, up to four billion SEK. This is estimated on the basis of the Copenhagen rainfall in 2011 which cost insurance companies 8 billion DKR.

The agreement concludes that the Department of Sustainable Waste and Water (Kretslopp och Vatten) should lead for the work on extreme rainfall solutions. A suggestion is to create a cross-departmental group for extreme rainfall that will work together with the existing collaborations on stormwater.  Department of Sustainable Waste and Water will have the main responsibility for implementing measures, and operation and maintenance.

Possibilities for financing mechanisms will be explored such as development subsidies,  and municipal taxes. Co-financing from the Swedish Transport Administration (Trafikverket) and the National Property Board of Sweden (Fastighetsverket) is in theory possible. Other opportunities to apply for funds from national authorities will be investigated. The Department will work on a long term sustainable solution such as a climate tax.

Gothenburg is one of the most forward thinking cities in Sweden on climate adaptation. It has proclaimed itself the become "the best city when it rains". This approach has been developed for many years, through the hard work of planners and strategists being forward thinkers.

Sweden is a very decentralised country and Gothenburg has taken these actions very independently from the national level. According to many experts, the national level in Sweden needs to take more initiative and support through priority setting, clear division of roles and responsibilities and a national financial model. Instead of all cities taking up valuable time and resources for inventing their own organisational model for climate adaptation, the national level can provide valuable coordination that cities, smaller municipalities without too many resources can rely on. Today's organisation and legislation often leaves water issues and climate adaptation issues in siloes. A more strategic coordination would ensure that issues are not being managed correctly. Many issues and costs related to extreme rainfall end up on the water and waste water organisations, and therefore it is very important to improve the linkages to development/societal/spatial planning and climate adaptation.