While European countries have made considerable progress in putting in place policies to adapt to climate change, the pace and scale of adaptation actions need to increase and widen to cover more areas like the health, agriculture, and forestry sectors. A European Environment Agency (EEA) review of the EU’s Climate-ADAPT online platform, shows that sharing examples of adaptation actions can boost learning across the EU, Member States as well as regional and local authorities to help societies better prepare for climate change.
The Climate-ADAPT platform, which is maintained by the EEA, targets governmental decision-makers as well as the organisations supporting them in the development, implementation, and evaluation of climate change adaptation strategies, plans and actions at all governance levels in Europe. The platform currently includes 134 case studies for learning and to inspire action.
According to the new EEA briefing 'Preparing society for climate risks in Europe — lessons and inspiration from Climate-ADAPT case studies', the recently published European Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA) stressed the need to scale up adaptation measures and actions across all policy sectors and governance levels to address escalating climate risks like extreme heat, drought, wildfires and flooding.
While Climate-ADAPT case studies cover many risks, gaps remain in practical examples that showcase adaptation in some specific risks under the food, and economy and finance risk areas. New perspectives for developing case studies for other key vulnerable sectors (such as forestry), for governance levels (such as transnational case studies to address cross-border impacts) and for some European regions and the outermost regions of Europe are also under consideration.
Case studies play a key role for learning
The EEA is encouraging EEA Member States which often have national case studies to help fill these gaps by sharing more examples of adaptation actions and initiatives that can serve to build knowledge and experiences and serve as inspiration. Showcasing these case studies on Climate-ADAPT helps users explore the co-benefits and potential trade-offs of adaptation measures. They also highlight the need for enhanced monitoring, evaluation and learning to assess the effectiveness of these actions and prevent adaptation failures.
The EEA briefing notes that the future development of Climate-ADAPT case studies will focus on addressing specific risks identified by the EUCRA. Cooperation between EEA Member States will be crucial to upgrade the Climate-ADAPT case studies and to share practical learning experiences, including best practices, across Europe.
