Engaging Communities and Communication are Key to ‘Adaptation on the Ground’

By Elisa Fiorini Beckhauser and Eleonora Mattacchione

Effective climate adaptation requires well-informed, precise and contextual information to support decision-making and the enforcement of policies on the ground, but public engagement and understanding are also key to the success of adaptation efforts!

The Opening Plenary of ECCA2025 ‘Adaptation on the Ground’ examined relevant examples of good practices, challenges and potential solutions for adaptation at local and regional levels.

Anna Montini presented the Safe Bathing Plan, an initiative carried out in Rimini to promote climate resilience, aimed to improve sewage treatment and enhance the quality of the city's water and hydraulics.

Local initiatives also benefit from the input and perception of stakeholders from diverse backgrounds, realities, and knowledge. Sabrina Dekker then elaborated on the planning system's approach to adaptation in the Intergenerational Conversation on Biodiversity in Ireland. This approach involves engaging with people of different ages and communities to understand their needs, perceptions and knowledge about a project.

Finally, effective implementation of adaptation efforts at the local and regional levels of governance, which are usually responsible for enforcing climate policies in the territory, highly depend on public understanding and support.

The opening discussion also addressed the challenges that legal and scientific communities face in advancing adaptation: Joško Klisović observed that regulatory frameworks lacking the flexibility to address the needs of on-the-ground actions; Antonio Navarra, instead, highlighted the needs for scientists to further work on providing localized information for decision-making processes on timescales of a few decades and on connecting climate data with economic and social elements to optimize the relevance of climate data to adaptation in practice.

Don’t miss updates from the next two days of #ECCA2025 at LinkedIn: MAGICA Climate project

and X: @JPIClimate and @ECCA_Conference

Chair

Karen Coleman, broadcaster and journalist

Speakers

Blaz Kurnik, Acting Head of the Climate Risk and Resilience Unit, European Environment Agency
Anna Montini, Councilor for Ecological Transition and Blue Economy, Municipality of Rimini
Giulia Garavaglia, Head of the 2030 Sustainable Development Metropolitan Agenda Office, Metropolitan City of Milan
Sabrina Dekker, Regional Climate Action Coordinator, City Council of Dublin
Joško Klisović, President, City Assembly of Zagreb
Ronan Dantec, Vice-President of the Committee of sustainable development in French Senate – Région Loire Atlantique, and President of Climate Chance
Antonio Navarra, President CMCC Foundation and Chair of JPI Climate

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Engaging Communities and Communication are Key to ‘Adaptation on the Ground’

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