Urgent need to improve adaptation to climate change in European cities

Despite the increasing awareness of climate change impacts and the need to adapt, many of Europe’s cities and towns are struggling to handle the impacts of heatwaves, severe droughts and destructive floods. Two European Environment Agency (EEA) reports published today stress the urgent need for action to improve adaptation and resilience at local and national government levels.

ISPRA has been involved for years on the theme of adaptation with the aim of strengthening and improving knowledge on the impacts of climate change and to develop tools, methodological approaches, guidelines to support a more adequate implementation of adaptation to various levels of governance.

The first report Urban adaptation in Europe: how cities and towns respond to climate change, gives the latest state of play on European climate change adaptation planning and action efforts at local level. While many local authorities have realised the importance of becoming resilient to climate change, progress in adaptation planning remains slow. Implementation of adaptation measures and the monitoring of the success of these actions are even slower. The report says that measures currently put in place mostly focus on developing knowledge, awareness raising or policy developments. Physical adaptation solutions — such as developing more green spaces to reduce the impacts of heatwaves or adjusting sewerage systems to cope with flash flooding — have not yet been implemented equally across Europe.

The second one, ‘Monitoring and evaluation of national adaptation policies throughout the policy cycle stresses the importance of monitoring, reporting and evaluation and brings together the lessons learned on how to improve national adaptation strategies and plans in the future. The report also presents examples how indicators can play an important role in tracking progress of implementation and helping to understand the effectiveness of different approaches and measures. In addition to local and national indicators, additional European-level indicators can improve the adaptation picture across the EU.