Pathways2Resilience supports regions in
developing transformative solutions
to foster their climate adaptation.
What is climate resilience?
Climate resilience could be defined as the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and respond to hazardous events, trends, or disturbances related to climate. Improving climate resilience involves assessing how climate change will create new, or alter current, climate-related risks, and taking steps to better cope with these risks. It is different to climate adaptation, which is the process of adjusting to actual or expected climate and its effects, in order to moderate harm or exploit beneficial opportunities.
Why is it essential to foster regional climate resilience?
Climate change is a reality, and whether we like it or not, we are already locked into future warming.
With it comes a range of potentially damaging impacts, with more frequent and intense extremes weather events.
Under the now highly likely 2°C global warming scenario, studies are even projecting welfare losses of 83 €billion/year (Szewczyk et al., 2020).
While the economic impact is concerning, it is the potential feedback loops that could be truly devastating – including the breakdown of ecosystems, unemployment, large-scale migration, increased inequalities, and the weakening of the state (IPCC 2022).
Regions and communities have a major role to play in enabling rapid and far-reaching change. According to the European Committee of the Regions (2021), 90% of climate change adaptation measures are currently undertaken by local and regional authorities.
What is the current situation in Europe regarding
regional resilience?
Despite inspiring examples of adaptation solutions in Europe, the common practice is to focus on stand-alone, easy-to-measure projects that tackle specific issues on a case-by-case basis, sector by sector, and depending on policy opportunities. Therefore, the Mission Adaptation and European Green Deal acknowledge the need to adopt a systemic, transformative approach instead of the current piecemeal approach.
However, adaptive capacities vary considerably across Europe, from well-prepared locations having detailed knowledge of climate risks and risk mitigation measures, having a diversity of competencies, and well-functioning governance structures, to more vulnerable locations.
As climate impacts and adaptive capacities differ greatly across regions, tailor-made responses and measures are required for a positive and sustainable transformation towards climate resilience.
The EU Mission on Climate Adaptation
The Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change focuses on supporting EU regions, cities and local authorities in their efforts to build resilience against the impacts of climate change. Its objective is to accompany at least 150 European regions and communities towards climate resilience by 2030.
Pathways2Resilience contributes to the objectives of the Mission and of the Adaptation Strategy by helping the regions to:
- better understand their climate risks
- develop their pathways to be better prepared and cope with the changing climate
- test and deploy innovative solutions needed to build resilience
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