Sweco Belgium
PPP, a solution to mitigate climate risks?
Sectors like agriculture face many challenges with regard to climate change. The intersection of public funding and private investment is crucial for achieving climate resilience. Sweco talks about this specific field with Dr. Ir. Sarah Garré, a senior researcher at the Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (ILVO), and former professor at KU Leuven and the University of Liège. In this insightful interview, she shares her ideas on optimizing public funds to complement private investments, implementing collective measures and landscape-scale solutions to address pressing issues like drought and flooding.
Sweco shares the belief that joint, policy-supported efforts are crucial for successful climate mitigation. And just like Sarah Garré, we are convinced that specifically water is a domain that would greatly benefit from this approach.
Join us as we delve into the conversation that explores how effective collaboration can pave the way for a resilient agricultural future.
Welcome Dr. Ir. Garré. You propose a combined effort of public funds and private investments to achieve climate resilience, particularly in sectors like agriculture. How can public funds be optimized to complement private investments?
In agriculture, public funds can help in two aspects. Either in covering part of the risks of the private funding agencies, or in helping to pay result-oriented benefits. Covering the risks would mean that private investors help farmers, for example to invest in nature-based solutions or environmental policies. And then measure the results of what they need to achieve. The government could still make sure that the investor doesn’t lose money if the results are not as expected.
In the second approach, the government could say: “We have some goals in our policy. Private investors can invest. If they, together with the farmers reach that goal, we also pay the private investors some benefits, based on the results they achieved together.”
What is lacking to tackle problems of drought and flooding, is that we have very few policies that enable collective measures.
Dr. Ir. Sarah Garré, senior researcher at ILVO
Based on the recent EEA climate risk assessment, what is one immediate policy change you believe would help the private sector better manage climate risks?
Across Europe, there are many. If I focus on Flanders, where most of my research is located, and the agricultural sector, I think water is one of the main topics. What is lacking to tackle problems of drought and flooding, is that we have very few policies that enable collective measures. Policies and investments are often with individuals, individual farms or companies, while the solutions actually are situated on the landscape scale, like investing in river valleys. In case people would like to cooperate, it is very difficult for them. Policy that enables collective management results and then also collective payments, is really necessary to make progress.
Thank you for your insights, a valuable guidance for policymakers and investors alike.
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