Call to action from EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change
Dr Philippe Tulkens, Head of Unit at the European Commission’s DG Research and Innovation has issued an urgent call for support to secure the future of the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change. He called on the climate community to speak out on the value of the work the Mission funds and promotes when he addressed the audience at the opening of Day 2 at ECCA2025, the 7th European Climate Change Adaptation Conference held in Rimini, June 16-18.
Hundreds of delegates – including representatives of EU Horizon-funded projects from across Europe – were gathered for the biennial meeting of leading climate scientists, policy-makers and climate professionals from a wide range of industries and commerce.
Tulkens declared: “The 2024 European Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA) was crystal clear that European policies are not keeping pace with climate risk (…) immediately EU has made it a priority, 200+ regions have been testing innovations funded by the Mission Adaptation to climate change.
“We need your expertise to be part of the Mission. This community can bring us closer to (adaptation) success. The future of the Mission under Horizon Europe is currently uncertain beyond 2027.”
One thing that shines through every ECCA is the willingness to work together between researchers, those working in governments at transnational, national, regional and local level. However in practice that is not always as easy as simply deciding to ‘engage with stakeholders’.
Vilija Balionyte-Merle, Senior Business Developer EU at SINTEF, is the Coordinator of the RESIST, an innovation action project. In the panel discussion among all the plenary speakers, she referenced a recent research-municipality initiative saying: “It should have been a partnership made in heaven but it wasn’t working. Both sides felt frustrated so we needed to take a different approach, we provided different training (for each side) and also joint workshops that enabled them to benefit from each other for faster climate adaptation.”
She addressed Tulkens directly, saying: “Philippe, in the next two years RESIST is going to scale up and I hope the Mission is going to do the same!”
A familiar thread was the need to engage citizens and neighbourhoods in the adaptation projects.
Thomas Koetz, Senior Advisor for Climate Neutral and Resilient Regions at EIT Climate-KIC, Coordinator of Pathways2Resilience Project, called for ‘more concrete scenarios’ urging that social and physical sciences must work together with people on the ground. He added: “For social and just transitions we and they need to know about trade-offs and how they are going to interfere with societal cohesion and address that before problems arise.”
Koetz was among several ECCA2025 speakers who raised the need to social science to partner with climate science, particularly at the earliest stage of projects, to improve the changes of influencing and changing people’s behaviour, extending the real and measurable impact of research and innovation action.
He said this cooperation could answer the questions: “How do we value things in a different way? And share the burden of impacts in a different way? What are direct impacts and shifts in situations, not only in terms of data on water or soil but on people.”
He added: “Social science and a place-based approach have been opened up by the Missions and in the next framework I would like to see more of this ‘living labs’ approach.”
Hein Pieper, Chairman of the Board, Regional Water Authority Rijn & IJssel, Netherlands, picked up on the theme of changing behaviour. He said: “All that data, all that information doesn’t build solutions, I need a new narrative so people will take action – on their farms, in their communities. I love data but there’s a problem with too much of it and we need to give communities time to digest it.
“We need a new story about our future – that is the biggest gap for me.”
Look out for more articles, videos and interviews over the coming days.
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