Through the work carried out in the framework of the ETC/CCA, the CMCC Foundation contributes to the collection, assessment and sharing of the knowledge base in support to the development of the EU policy process in the area of climate change adaptation.

The European Commission (EC) has published the evaluation of the 2013 EU Strategy on adaptation to climate change, a package including: a REPORT on the implementation of the Strategy and two STAFF WORKING DOCUMENTS, one on the  “Evaluation of the EU Strategy on adaptation to climate change” and one on the “Adaptation preparedness scoreboard Country fiche”.

The evaluation, which was envisaged by the Strategy itself, reports progresses along all its eight main actions, including the further development of the European Climate Adaptation Platform (Climate-ADAPT).

The EU Commission reported that “adapting the EU regions and economic sectors to the impacts of climate change is now more urgent than forecast in the EU’s 2013 adaptation strategy. This is one of the key findings of the Commission’s evaluation of the strategy published today. The analysis results in a report on lessons learned and reflections on improvements for future action”.

Commissioner for Climate Action and Energy Miguel Arias Cañete said: “Our collective work on adaptation has shown we not only know more but can also do more to prevent the worst climate impacts projected by 2050. The need to adapt remains and it has actually grown, as impacts of past emissions unfold through heatwaves, storms, forest fires at high latitudes or destructive floods. This evaluation provides a credible basis for the EU policy on adaptation to explore new directions, improvements and also alignment with international developments since 2013.”

The package acknowledges the support work provided by the European Environment Agency (EEA) and its European Topic Centre on Climate Change impacts, vulnerability and Adaptation (ETC/CCA); the latter is lead by the CMCC Foundation.

The evaluation documents make also direct reference to several key outputs that the EEA produced in the last few years in collaboration with  the ETC/CCA, to which CMCC staff contributed to various extent, namely:

• “Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in Europe” (EEA Report No 1/2017),
• “Impacts of extreme weather and climate related events in the EEA member countries” (EEA indicator 2018),
• “Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2016” (EEA Report No 1/2017),
• “Social vulnerability to climate change in European cities – state of play in policy and practice” (ETC/CCA Technical paper 2018/1).
• “Climate-ADAPT”, the EU portal on climate change adaptation.

Furthermore, the evaluation was informed by other products generated by the EEA supported by the ETC/CCA with CMCC expert contributions, e.g.:

• “Sharing adaptation information across Europe” (EEA Report No 3/2018),
• “Indicators for adaptation to climate change at national level – Lessons from emerging practice in Europe” (ETC/CCA Technical Paper 2018/3),
• “Monitoring, Reporting and Evaluation of national level adaptation in Europe: Lessons and experiences from other policy domains” (ETC/CCA Working Paper 2017/1).

The ETC/CCA is coordinated by the CMCC Foundation, the current coordinator being the researcher Silvia Medri (CSP – Climate Simulation and Prediction Division).

Source: Europe is ready for climate impacts: Commission evaluates its strategy