Category: News

OTS1: The EU Landscape on resilience | March 22nd 2023, 10h-12hCET

The REGILIENCE team is pleased to announce the first Open Training Session (OTS) of our series of capacity-building events for regional actors working on climate adaptation. This session will be focused on the EU resilience landscape and explore highly innovative EU initiatives and projects. We will provide guidance on where to get support with respect to your current challenges and needs and highlight opportunities to boost your climate resilience developments.

Agenda

Welcome and introduction | Moderator: Matthias Watzak-Helmer (FEDARENE)
Presentation of the EU resilience landscape | Johannes KLUMPERS (DG CLIMA)
REGILIENCE and the first Adaptation Mission projects cluster | Jole LUTZU (ICLEI Europe)
Presentation of the Mission Implementation Platform for Climate Adaptation (MIP4Adapt): | Richard SMITHERS (Ricardo Energy & Environment)
Covenant of Mayors – Policy Support Facility | Alison De Luise (Covenant of Mayors)
Wrap-up and closing | Matthias Watzak-Helmer (FEDARENE)

Registration

Click here to register

Recording

Will be available soon.

Takeaways

Will be available soon.

HAVE A SAY ON THE AGENDA!

The sessions are conceived including a lot of interactions with the audience. In addition to the many opportunities you will have to give your opinion and feedback, you will also be able to vote on the topics to be tackled during the second cycle.

On this page, you can see the Open Training Sessions (OTS) available for all interested parties, that will take place between March 2023 and 2025. The sessions are organised in a series of ten online events divided into two cycles.

Web-based climate change adaptation platforms in Europe: why should we use them?- Opinion article

Web-based climate change adaptation platforms in Europe are critical tools for addressing the challenges posed by climate change and, fortunately, the number of existing or planned national and transnational adaptation platforms in Europe is increasing (European Environment Agency, 2015). These platforms can offer a range of features and tools that can help, for example, citizens, organizations and regions – among others – adapt to changing weather patterns, extreme weather events, and other unavoidable climate-related impacts.

There are several reasons why we should use web-based climate change adaptation platforms in Europe, for example:

Enhance climate resilience: by using web-based climate change adaptation platforms, citizens, communities, regions and many more can better understand and prepare for the impacts of climate change. These platforms can provide information on climate projections, risks, and vulnerabilities, as well as tools for risk assessment and management, and can be updated more easily than books. By building climate resilience, we can minimize the negative impacts of climate change and better adapt to a changing environment;
Foster collaboration: web-based climate change adaptation platforms can foster collaboration between different stakeholders, including government agencies, businesses, communities, and citizens. By sharing information, best practices, and experiences, these platforms can help build partnerships and networks that are essential for effective climate action;
Improve decision-making: climate change adaptation platforms can provide decision-makers with the information they need to make informed decisions about climate-related risks and opportunities. By using data and analytics, these platforms can help identify and prioritize adaptation strategies that are most effective and cost-efficient, and, for example, support avoiding maladaptation with decision support tools;
Increase public awareness: web-based climate change adaptation platforms can raise public awareness about the impacts of climate change and the importance of taking action. By providing accessible and engaging information, these platforms can help educate citizens, communities and regions about climate-related risks and inspire them to act;
Support innovation: climate change adaptation platforms can support innovation and even promote replication by providing a place to showcase innovations, for experimentation and collaboration. By bringing together stakeholders from different sectors and disciplines, these platforms can foster the development of new technologies, solutions, and approaches to climate change adaptation.

Under the implementation of the REGILIENCE project, we mapped and analyzed 124 web-based climate change adaptation platforms in Europe. The project identified 16 platforms that have more potential to support regions with practical knowledge resources and tools to assist them in implementing resilience pathways, complementing the efforts of the European Climate Adaptation Platform (Climate-ADAPT). The review process confirmed that the web-based climate change adaptation platform landscape is dynamic, and each platform provides unique features and tools for addressing climate change, being all essential for building a more resilient and sustainable future. The type of information most often offered by the platforms includes experiences from practice and implemented adaptation measures, decision-support tools, scientific research results, and policy actions at transnational, national and subnational levels. Most of the platforms are a result of temporarily funded projects and international/national/regional policy initiatives. Another important finding was that 25% of the platforms sampled were not available in English, which demonstrates their strong national and regional focus.

The most comprehensive web-based adaptation platform is Climate-ADAPT. Launched in 2012 by the European Commission and the European Environment Agency (EEA), it aims to provide an extensive database of information on climate change adaptation in Europe, including information on climate impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation strategies and measures – allowing users to integrate their own information and results. The platform is designed to support decision-making at different levels, from national to local, and is intended for use by policymakers, researchers, and practitioners working on climate change adaptation.

While web-based climate change adaptation platforms in Europe offer a wealth of information and tools for addressing climate change, there are also some factors to consider. Some of them are:

Data availability and quality: climate change adaptation platforms rely on climate data and projections to inform decision-making. However, data availability and quality can vary across regions and time periods, which can limit the accuracy of climate models and projections;
Accessibility: despite efforts to make web-based platforms accessible to all users, some citizens may face barriers in accessing the information and tools they need, particularly those with limited internet access, language and digital literacy barriers, or disabilities;
Local/regional context: climate change impacts and adaptation strategies can vary significantly depending on the local/regional context, including geography, demographics, and socioeconomic factors. Web-based platforms may not always capture these nuances, which can limit their functionality for local/regional decision-making;
Policy implementation: even with the most detailed/comprehensive information and the best tools available, the successful implementation of climate change adaptation measures often depends on political will, resources, and coordination across different sectors and levels of government. Web-based platforms alone, unfortunately, cannot address these complex policy and governance challenges;
Funding: climate change adaptation requires significant resources, including funding opportunities, capacity building, and technical expertise. While web-based platforms can provide information and guidance, they cannot always address the funding gaps and resource limitations that may hinder effective adaptation efforts.

Web-based climate change adaptation platforms in Europe are essential tools for addressing the challenges imposed by climate change. They can enhance climate resilience, foster collaboration, improve decision-making, increase public awareness, and support innovation. These platforms may indeed provide vital support when it comes to tackling climate change and implementing adaptation measures, building a more sustainable future for ourselves and future generations. Web-based adaptation platforms in Europe are an important resource for addressing climate change, and they should be seen as part of a broader suite of tools and approaches for building climate resilience and adaptive capacity.

You can download the opinion article here.

Celebrating female talent in the context of The International Day of Women and Girls in Science

On 22 December 2015, the United Nations General Assembly decided to establish a day, to celebrate and recognise the achievements women play in science and technology. This is how The International Day of Women and Girls in Science was established and is now celebrated every year on 11 February.

Why is talking about gender imbalance in STEM so important?

Women are key players when it comes to driving innovation and progress. When it comes to higher education, the SheFigures study from 2021, based on data from Eurostat, highlights that in 2018 the EU had already achieved some important goals for gender parity, with women representing 48.1% of doctoral graduates at the European level. However, on the other side, at both European and country levels, female doctoral graduates were over-represented in the field of Education and under-represented in the broad fields of Information and Communication Technologies and Engineering, Manufacturing & Construction. When it comes to employment, women were also less represented among the population of employed scientists and engineers at the European level (41.3%).

Another worrying statistic is that just 33,3 % of researchers globally are women and even then, they are less likely to get funding or get promoted.

Not to mention that women’s work rarely gets the recognition it deserves – less than 4% of Nobel Prizes for science have ever been awarded to women, and only 11% of Senior research roles are held by women in Europe.

The lack of gender balance in STEM is rooted to some extend to the early educational development of women. From an early age, women are excluded from some subjects in school that are considered more male-oriented. Females also lack strong female role models they could look up to within those highly crucial years of their development.

These factors accumulate over time and discourage women not to pursue careers in STEM. Did you know that “women account for only 29% of PhD graduates in engineering, manufacturing and construction across the EU? They represent only 25% of self-employed professionals in technical professions such as science, engineering, or information and communication technologies and significantly under-represented among inventors, with only 10% of patent applications coming from women”.

“As the world hurtles towards a future threatened by climate change and resource scarcity, the global scientific community must lose no time in recognising and promoting women scientists’ achievements.”

Surely we all thought that we were working towards putting an end to the gender gap within science and technology, yet the McKinsey analysis shows a tech talent gap of 1.4 million to 3.9 million people by 2027 for EU-27 countries. However, the analysis also has a positive outlook on the situation and believes that if Europe manages to double its share of women in tech roles to about 45%, which in numbers is an estimated 3.9 million additional women by 2027, apart from closing the talent gap, it will also bring benefit from a gross domestic product (GDP) increase of as much as €260 billion to €600 billion.

What will this year’s focus be for IDWGIS?

This year, the 8th International Day of Women and Girls in Science Assembly will take place on 10 February 2023 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City. The theme of the event will be Innovate. Demonstrate. Elevate. Advance. (I.D.E.A.): Bringing communities Forward for sustainable and equitable development.

The event will focus on the role of Women and Girls and Science as relates to the SDGs in review at the forthcoming High-Level Political Forum (HLPF), namely SDG 6 (clean water and sanitation), SDG 7 (affordable and clean energy), SDG 9 (industry, innovation, and infrastructure), SDG 11 (sustainable cities and communities) and SDG17 (means of implementation).

The event’s goal is to connect the International Community to Women and Girls in Science and strengthen the ties between science, policy, and society for strategies oriented towards the future.

What is the EU doing to increase women participation in STEM?

The European Commission is committed to supporting gender equality in the fields of research and innovation, as part of the Gender Equality Strategy for 2020-2025. The Strategy presents policy objectives and actions for a gender-equal Europe.

Within the context of Horizon Europe, the Commission has identified 3 areas of consideration:

having a Gender Equality Plan (GEP) in place becomes an eligibility criterion for certain categories of legal entities from EU countries and associated countries
the integration of the gender dimension into research and innovation content is a requirement by default, an award criterion evaluated under the excellence criterion, unless the topic description explicitly specifies otherwise
increasing gender balance throughout the programme is another objective, with a target of 50% women in Horizon Europe related boards, expert groups and evaluation committees, and gender balance among research teams set as a ranking criterion for proposals with the same score

“The promotion of equality between women and men is a task for the Union, in all its activities, required by the Treaties. Gender equality is a core value of the EU, a fundamental right and key principle of the European Pillar of Social Rights.”

REGILIENCE embraces female talent and recognises the value and expertise women bring.

It may come as a surprise, but the workforce behind the REGILIENCE project consists of predominantly females. The ratio is in favour of women with 63% female representatives and 37% males. The women take on roles within coordination, research, communication, management finance and head of project management office.

The REGILIENCE project is committed to including gender and intersectionality as a transversal aspect in the project’s activities. In line with EU guidelines the project’s consortium recognises the importance of advancing gender analysis and sex-disaggregated data collection in the development of scientific research.

The project has set up a strategy for gender mainstreaming and created a working group on gender in order to guarantee that gender mainstreaming is taken into account throughout all the activities of the project. The strategy consists of 3 pillars:

Research:

Collecting sex-disaggregated data, when possible, as well as asking our regions for such data;
Collecting information on gender from interviews, surveys and questionnaires;
Validating said surveys, interviews and questionnaires and feedback for platforms, indicators, activities development etc. only if coming from a balanced number of women and men.

Events:

Ensuring an equal number of women and men as speakers to workshops, conferences, forums and other events;
Providing equal space and power to all genders when moderating a discussion;
Inviting a balanced number of female and male representatives attending workshops, conferences, forums and other events;
Organising at least one specific activity with a focus on gender targeting up to 10 European regions.

Potential:

Including the gender results from the project in presentations and other external activities;
Use gender sensitive terminology in all dissemination materials and platforms.

European Community of Practice launch provides climate adaptation opportunities

The drive towards climate change resilience and adaptation across Europe took a step forward with the launch of a Community of Practice for regional authorities on 26 January. Representatives of the REGILIENCE, IMPETUS, ARSINOE and TransformAr projects joined hundreds of participants from around the continent to network and learn together.

Organised by the European Union’s Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change – known as ‘Mission Adaptation’ – the event was an opportunity to learn about the Mission, its charter, intentions for the Community of Practice, and the online resources that support this collaborative effort, such as a planned Mission implementation platform and Climate Adapt.

Participants were urged to become ambassadors of climate change adaptation, in the opening welcome by Mission Manager Clara de la Torre of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Climate Action, DG CLIMA. The Mission’s objective is to support at least 150 European regions and communities towards climate resilience by 2030.

Around 300 regions and authorities are currently part of the Community of Practice. More than 200 of these are signatories to the Mission charter, representing 24 EU countries and other parties from countries associated or potentially associated with Horizon Europe, the EU’s research and innovation programme.

European survey

During the opening session, results were presented from a survey of European regions and local authorities. This showed that – while 76% of participating regions have a regional adaptation strategy, and significant numbers have dedicated budget, people or collaborations to support the work – the greatest barriers to deciding and implementing climate change adaptation measures remain finance and knowledge. On this basis, finance, access to data, and citizen engagement were selected as topics for interactive workshop segments for participants from projects, regional governance bodies, research organisations and European institutions to discuss together.

Projects participate

Thirteen representatives of the EU-funded climate projects REGILIENCE, IMPETUS, ARSINOE and TransformAr took part in the event. This was a great opportunity to meet newly-launched sister projects funded under Horizon Europe, and to explore opportunities for synergies with them and other meeting participants.

TransformAr was presented in a panel that showed examples of available tools for citizen engagement and how to organise it. These examples provided inspiration for the workshop discussion that followed. Likewise, examples from other projects and organisations were presented before the financing and data access discussions, including updates about the Copernicus Climate Change Service and the European Risk Data Hub. Regional, national and European funding opportunities were also explained.

In response to the wealth of information presented, the Community of Practice launch event also generated some feedback for Mission Adaptation. For Europe’s regional authorities to be able to build trust and pioneer climate change adaptation for their communities, they need support with translating materials and general awareness-raising around climate change impacts and the meaning of key terminology. And they need easy-to-apply guidance through the various tools, platforms and options, notably to support their decision-making processes.

These are areas where REGILIENCE, IMPETUS, ARSINOE and TransformAr are collaborating to maximise impact – for example, jointly listing their developing tools and solutions. All four projects are committed to playing their roles as part of the wider EU adaptation strategy The Community of Practice launch event marks a hopeful moment in the move towards these goals.

Further information

To stay up to date about the work of REGILIENCE, IMPETUS, ARSINOE and TransformAr and our role in the European climate adaptation community, please subscribe to our joint newsletter, or read previous editions of ‘The Climate Resilience Post’.

Self-assessing your adaptation project: How to avoid maladaptation?

When an adaptation action or project goes wrong, the targeted adaptation situation and resilience are not strengthened, but rather worsened, leading to maladaptive outcomes. Maladaptation refers to the process that an intentional adaptation action may lead to negative effects which increase vulnerability, diminish well-being or undermine sustainable development. This can happen within the same or different regions, systems, sectors, or social groups than those targeted by the adaptation action.  

To identify possible measures of maladaptation, REGILIENCE developed a tool with a self-assessment list to check adaptation actions, and spot those factors where further effort to avoid maladaptation is needed. The questions from the checklist shall be filled out in the planning phase. It can be used to avoid that adaptation actions cause increased vulnerability or harm to livelihoods, ecosystems, and the economy. By checking the risks of maladaptation, it becomes less likely for adaptation actions to cause increased vulnerability or harm to livelihoods, ecosystems, and the economy. It is useful to look at the risks of maladaptation to detect the risks early on in the planning phase of an adaptation action and once identified, the risks can be reduced. Also, understanding potential risks can raise general awareness of maladaptation.

The tool is mainly designed for people or institutions who are in charge of planning and implementing regional adaptation projects or actions, but it can also be applied in a wide range of contexts. Most adaptation actions are fostered by the public sector, but the importance of the private sector and community organisations in adaptation is growing, and we, therefore, encourage decision-makers on all levels to use the tool to spot potential maladaptation risks. 

Adaptation to current and future impacts of climate change is urgently needed, but should not be done unplanned or rushed in order to avoid adaptation actions turning into maladaptive outcomes.
We hope that this self-assessment tool for maladaptation will be found useful to spot maladaptation risks early on in your plans!

To further develop this tool, we would like to ask for your feedback and experience using it.

The infographic below summarises the root and causes, risk factors for maladaptation, and recommendations on how to avoid it:

How are European regions adapting to climate change and embracing resilience?- Opinion article

The launch of the Sharm-El-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda at COP27 is a clear sign of how progress towards adapting to the unavoidable impacts of climate change and enhancing resilience is crucially needed.

At the European level, the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change and Societal Transformation will contribute to putting the EU Adaptation Strategy into practice by enabling local actors to take evidence-based decisions, bringing research and its solutions closer to the citizens.

Regions have an essential role in driving this transition, experimenting with innovative approaches to address regional and local needs, which may vary across Europe, depending on the intensity of climate change impacts, as well as the capacity to adapt and address cross-sectoral challenges. This may lead to the deepening of existing imbalances and hinder territorial cohesion, with a risk of leaving certain low-capacity regions behind.

How do regions understand and address climate resilience?

When looking into regions’ agendas and policies, a broad diversity emerges across European regions, in how each of them, depending on the context, integrates resilience from a different angle. The heterogeneity through which multilateral development organisations and consultancy agencies promote and guide adaptation, addressing gaps in knowledge, data and information, also highlights the challenges of aligning actions for a common understanding of how to build resilience at the regional level. The adaptation agenda is broad, while implementation at the local and regional levels is always specific.

Understanding the contextual nature of governance structures – something that has implications for institutional arrangements, resources, and stakeholders’ involvement – and looking at which policies and mechanisms are in place is key to having an overview of the state of the art of regional resilience in Europe.

This is the reason why the REGILIENCE project conducted a needs assessment across European regions.

The report Resilience planning & development needs of regional authorities and stakeholders present the main results from this study, gathering baseline information from key stakeholders and reflecting on what lessons can be learned from these experiences.

What are the main implementation challenges regions currently face?

As part of the assessment carried out, relevant actors shared insights on up- to-date policies, hazards and risks, implementation challenges and resilience options, barriers to transformation and opportunities, knowledge gaps and ongoing and planned initiatives in their regions. They also had the opportunity to raise important climate-related implementation challenges that they encounter in their daily work or life, providing unique perspectives on which factors may limit or support them in putting into practice long-term and integrated adaptation solutions.

The main outputs show that most of the highly vulnerable regions in need of systemic change lack experience, capacity and resources to drive such change.

From an institutional perspective, some of the key challenges include:

Lack of coordination at the regional level, hindered by a lack of interest in climate-related challenges, a topic that scores a low priority for the regional government, but that would instead require jumping at the top of the political agenda;
Institutional fragmentation and difficult cooperation among different levels of governance, intensified by issues of overlapping competencies among national and regional administrations, that limit holistic approaches and impede to design more integrated policies;
Institutional rigidity of existing administrative and political sectors which creates unfortunate compartmentalization where climate adaptation can be seen as the isolated task of a singular sector that may hinder mainstreaming and horizontal coordination across sectors and departments;

When looking at financial challenges, it was widely recognised:

Lack of funding and financial capability to overcome crucial and strategic needs, and to dedicate especially to human resources and necessary equipment (interestingly enough, most regions recognised the availability of a great number of resources coming from the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility, but at the same time a lack of personnel to implement the needed measures);
Structure of the funding, often coming in silos, that naturally leads to siloed approaches, when dealing, for example, with flooding, water pollution and drought;
Low level of knowledge of how to use existing financial opportunities and how to put in place financial models that could also incentivize the private sector to step in;

Technical skills and capacities were often brought up, also in relation to the challenges above, and the main reflections were referring to:

General lack of skills and expertise on the topic, connected to the call for more training for technicians in the different regional departments;
Confusing (over)abundance of general strategies, online tools, solutions, guidelines, etc. on adaptation and building resilience, but rarely specific and practical (action-oriented and enabling) information tailored to the specific needs of the individual regions.

Overall, it can be recognised how challenging it is currently moving from a fragmented approach to a more holistic one, being able to conciliate trade-offs to combine coherent short-term and long-term strategies, as well as mitigation and adaptation policies, in integrated action plans.

However, in the specific context of the many upcoming opportunities for regions and communities to increase their resilience under the Mission for Adaptation to Climate Change and Societal Transformation, the assessment carried out within REGILIENCE offers a first step toward a coherent action. The overview of key needs to tackle, identifying highly vulnerable and low- capacity European regions willing to take action and receive support, is a key preliminary baseline to kick-start the Mission’s activities. In the light of the above-mentioned implementation challenges, a strategic and inclusive approach is needed, involving researchers, companies and international organisations within the implementation of the Mission addressing and providing support along the 3 clusters of implementation challenges identified.

You can download the article here.

Why should cities, regions and communities engage in the Mission for Adaptation to Climate Change and Societal Transformation? 

Regions, cities and communities were encouraged during COP27 to:

1) agree on a clear vision for climate resilience, but also make clear what are the implementation challenges, roadmaps and actionable items that can take further the goals set by the Paris Agreement;

2) prioritize multi-level governance actions and specifically emphasize on the interplay between the local and regional level and

3) raise their voices about the need to act now, build partnerships with key institutions, reach out to strategic partners that are thinking out-of-the-box and engage with bottom-up initiatives that may elevate local climate action. 

That said, the Mission for Adaptation to Climate Change and Societal Transformation provides an excellent opportunity to act towards all these objectives!  

More than 12 EU-funded Horizon projects with over 150 million EUR of funding have already been granted under the Mission for Adaptation to Climate Change, while, in parallel, numerous academic and non-academic institutions have produced evidence and guidance on the benefits, shortcomings and potential of integrated adaptation planning over the past years. Demand for effective support to regions and communities entering the Mission and engaging in the development and promotion of transformative adaptation pathways becomes more than evident. The overarching goal of the Mission Implementation Platform (upcoming launch in 2023) is to accelerate upscaling of adaptation action at local and regional level and link to implementation in science, business, policy and practice in line with the EUs’ ambitions to address the most important climate hazards by 2030. 

These projects and the cities and regions involved, either as partners or as case studies, need to work together, elevate their efforts in peer-to-peer exchange and upscaling, to achieve:  

even higher policy impact across the EU and globally by better implementation of recent or immediately upcoming key policies (e.g., EU Adaptation Strategy, EU Green Deal, EU Biodiversity Strategy 2030, Climate Law, Global Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework) and initiatives (e.g., Green City Accord, Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, Climate Pact, EU Taxonomy, EU Missions on Oceans, Climate Neutrality or Soil Health and Food),  
convince all relevant EU policy sectors (including both public and business-oriented decision-makers and practitioners) that local and regional adaptation actions matter and work for their goals and purposes as well;  
support highly vulnerable and low-capacity regions and communities that, for various reasons, have not yet engaged in large consortia applying for Mission-related projects (REGILIENCE, based on the regional needs assessment carried out, is planning to select 10 highly vulnerable regions in Europe by the end of 2022 and support them in developing their transformative resilience pathways) and, last but not least,

provide a space for strategic and advocacy work at EU and global level is necessary to ensure adaptation and resilience building opportunities as well as needs are voiced in and worked on by the EC and globally.

In addition, the European Commission explicitly committed – through the publication of the 2021 EU Strategy of Adaptation to Climate Change – to increase financial support to local and regional communities to accelerate the transition from planning to action in climate adaptation. Via the pilot programme “Policy Support Facility”, which runs under the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy – Europe, cities and regions from the 12 most vulnerable members states of the European Union have received access to tailored opportunities such as personalised technical assistance, national workshops and interactive webinars.  

Finally, yet as important is the fact that the European Commission has started sending invitations for the first meeting on the Community of Practice of the Mission that will take place on 26 January 2023 in Brussels. This event is addressed to practitioners of regional and local adaptation, and will include Signatories of the Mission Charter, the Friends of the Mission, Mission Board members and national representatives. One of the main objectives of this meeting, is to invite regional and local authorities to share about their main challenges in terms of financing, citizen engagement and access to data.  

Melting glaciers require mitigation and adaptation – Opinion article

Worse than 2003: Swiss glaciers are melting more than ever before! Italian Alps glacier collapse! Zermatt suspends summer skiing as glacier melts! Hiking routes closed due to falling rocks!

Headlines like these have been around the news all summer. They describe the crucial state of alpine glaciers, which are heavily affected by global heating. Glaciers are retreating at historically- unprecedented rates and, in 2022, only glaciers above around 3500m altitude did not lose mass in the Alps. The IPCC states that the tipping point for mountain glaciers worldwide will be most likely reached in case of global mean temperature of 2°C above preindustrial age, but for sure in- between 1.5° and 3.0° C. It would even be earlier for alpine glaciers as they are at lower altitude. A tipping point means that the ecosystem exceeds its temperature limits and will collapse, becoming lost forever. With today’s temperature rise of more than 1°C, we already see the heavy and fast impact on alpine glaciers. Mitigation measures are therefore needed to stop global heating applied jointly with adaptation measures to adjust to the new circumstances.

Why are melting glaciers bothering us? Isn’t skiing during winter nicer anyway? What can be done to reduce the impact of global heating?

Glaciers have several important and very crucial functions for us.

Glaciers store short term precipitation and set it free over a longer period. This ensures a stable drinking water supply and more stable water levels in rivers. Worldwide, an estimated 1.9 billion people rely on glaciers as their primary source of drinking water. Stable water levels of rivers ensure a good energy supply from hydropower plants and allow cargo ships to efficiently transport goods. The further glaciers melt down, the more alternative drinking water sources like energy-intense seawater desalination plants will have to be harnessed, in addition to more renewable energy sources and less efficient transport routes – despite all their downsides – and small artificial glaciers will be used as regional water source.

Additionally, the tourism sector is suffering from melting glaciers. A melting opportunity for early ski- openings in autumn and especially summer skiing will cause either the shut-down of alpine skiing resorts or necessitate high effort countermeasures to facilitate skiing. One idea is to protect snow with huge plastic sheets, another is to reassemble ski lifts into deeper frozen areas of the glaciers. Both are costly endeavours. Faster erosion and falling rocks caused by thawing alpine permafrost already led to closed hiking routes, endanger alpine huts and whole villages. Adaptation measures are set to reduce the risk of falling rocks by covering mountain faces with steel nets and installing massive steel fences.

Furthermore, glaciers and high alpine areas are the natural habitat of unique species like the snow hare, snow grouse, and alpine flora like the glacier buttercup. As the snow line retreats towards the mountain top, the natural habitat of these highly specialised animals and plants is getting narrower. From below, new species are invading their space to live and high alpine residents have nowhere to flee to and face extinction.

Sadly, the melting of the alpine glaciers itself will heat up the planet by an estimated additional 0,1°C. New solutions and adaptation measures will have to be set in place and additional mitigation measures will have to be introduced to protect the alpine habitat as we know it today. Initiative like the Alpine Space programme of Interreg Europe are addressing these challenges.

Luckily, regions and regional actors will receive support in their work on climate adaptation. REGILIENCE and its sister projects provide a broad portfolio of topics that will be addressed in information sessions and highlight upcoming funding opportunities for regions.

You can download the article here.

REGILIENCE, and its sister projects, were presented at the ‘Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change’ webinar

The ‘Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change’ webinar took place online on Monday, 24th October 2022, 10:00-12:00 (Brussels time) and was attended by about 50 participants.

Chaired by Richard Smithers, Ricardo Energy & Environment, the webinar’s objective was to introduce the Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change and to identify and foster synergies with the Green Deal Projects. In order to do so, the webinar addressed four sub-objectives:

Provide an introduction to the Mission for climate adaptation (from an EC-policy level perspective);
Explain how information flows from science to the Mission (show the links between science-policy-implementation and feedback loops);
Illustrate through the GD Climate Adaptation projects, which are preparing the ground for the Mission, how H2020 projects are building a bridge between science and implementation on climate adaptation pathways and solutions through the pilots that can then serve as a reference for the Mission signatories;
Provide the H2020 GD projects with useful information on how they can connect and interact with the Missions.

During the session, ‘H2020 Green Deal projects’ objectives and contributions to the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change, Guido Schmidt, REGILIENCE technical coordinator, presented REGILIENCE and its sister projects ARSINOE, IMPETUS and TransformAr’ activities, among the climate adaptation projects.

The Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change is a fundamental element of the 2021 EU Climate Adaptation Strategy. It contributes to a European area of policymaking that has received less attention than climate change mitigation, but where the EU is prepared to take bold steps. The recently published report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on Climate Change regarding Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability confirms the need to substantially accelerate our efforts to adapt to climate change.

The Mission deploys the new impact-oriented approach of European research and innovation policy in support of the European Green Deal’s objectives and will play an important role in promoting implementation of the 2021 EU Adaptation Strategy.

Investments from the EU and Member States in research and innovation for adaptation in past decades have already contributed to generating solutions. Once implemented at scale, they will contribute to increasing resilience to climate change. The H2020 Societal Challenge on climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials supported over 30 adaptation projects with more than 200 million EUR. Support was allocated through the H2020 Green Deal Call (for a total of 45 million EUR) to develop innovation packages and prioritize their application in regions with high vulnerability, limited adaptive capacity and/or high exposure to climate change impacts.

This resulted in four projects, which can be considered as the predecessors of the Mission. The four projects are REGILIENCE, ARSINOE, IMPETUS and TransformAr which are part of the Green Deal Project Support Office’s (GD-SO) Climate Change and Biodiversity Working Group.

Resilient Cities and Regions ahead of COP27; what should they expect from COP27 and what should be done to emphasize on adaptation and resilience action? – Opinion article

More than 200 local and regional governments and hundreds of their stakeholders will gather in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt next month for the UNFCCC COP27; they gather once again, like every year, but the stakes are really high this time! As of 1 October 2021, over 2000 jurisdictions in more than 35 countries all over the world have declared a climate emergency, while extreme events are becoming more and more frequent in even surprising locations across the European continent; have you read about the deadly flash floods in the southernmost island of Crete, Greece in mid-October 2022 for example? At least two citizens were found dead and two people are declared as missing after torrential rain brought major flooding to the island. And this has not been the only one; More than 4700 heat stress related deaths occurred in Spain over the summer of 2022, a number that tripled the average of the last five years! One thing is clear – COP27 comes as the continent reels from several extreme weather events, from floods to extensive droughts and increasing threats to food security.

What to expect from COP27?

Regions and cities should, and do expect an action-oriented COP, which will focus further on the practicalities of adaptation and resilience implementation, on disaster risk reduction efforts and approaches to innovative financing, not to mention that they do have high expectations on resilient recovery for Ukrainian cities and regions.

In any case, this COP27 is expected to go beyond climate mitigation and renewable energies! Not to forget, the upcoming COP27 has added focus on Africa’s climate vulnerability as well as the Global North’s non-commitment to its UNFCCC pledges so far. The narrative around an “equitable, people-oriented and just transition” seems to be finally recognised by national governments after years of bottom-up action and activist demands and community struggles. Many African countries, including the event’s host Egypt and the energy-intensive Namibia, seem to be ready to support the move towards a greener and climate-resilient economy, but will also definitely insist on putting Africa’s energy and resilience needs on top of COP27’s packed agenda.

Why is a narrative around an “equitable, people-oriented and just transition” so important now?

Green hydrogen production and development claims to provide a space for reducing climate change impacts, while aiming to be able to sustain future economy and development. The Egyptian ambassador to Namibia Wael Lotfy Batea has recently emphasised that green hydrogen production (green hydrogen is the one produced by splitting water by electrolysis) is one of the priorities for the countries of Egypt and Namibia, sharing a vision to become a regional hub for green hydrogen production among African countries.

This is a game changer definitely, and comes centrally in the COP27 agenda, just when we still need to emphasize on putting adaptation and resilience to the forefront of the discussion!

But is the platform that COP27 provides the real deal for elevated adaptation action by default? Or do cities and regions need to emphasize on their needs, challenges and ways forward they have identified?

Here are some suggestions on what regions and municipalities at COP27 can do to make sure that adaptation and resilience are back for good and in the centre of the international discourse:

Agree on a clear vision for climate resilient development for both cities and regions (participants in Egypt should join the Multilevel Action Pavilion @ COP27 which is hosted by ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability this year as well), but also make clear what are the implementation challenges, roadmaps and actionable items that can take further the goals that have been set by the Paris Agreement in 2015;
Prioritize multi-level governance actions and specifically emphasize on the interplay between the local and regional level;
Raise their voices about the need to act now, build partnerships with key institutions, reach out to strategic partners that are thinking out-of-the-box and engage with bottom-up initiatives that may elevate local climate action to other levels of governance.

That said, the upcoming COP27 may create a fresh opportunity for regions and cities to restore their trust in their national governments, provided that commitments will be respected and clear implementation objectives and targets will be put forward! It will be also critical to highlight the interrelation between fossil fuels, loss and damage and to ensure effective collaboration on market-based financial incentives for low carbon and resilient development and for tackling disasters at regional and city levels!

You can download the article here.