Europe’s Adaptation Agenda Grows Some Teeth

It’s déjà vu all over again.

This summer, the European Commission launched a new European climate resilience and risk management initiative, with the aim of creating an “integrated framework” for hardening EU countries against the worsening floods, fires, heatwaves, and other perils battering the continent. 

EU-watchers would be forgiven for thinking this already existed. After all, just four years ago the Commission adopted an EU-wide adaptation strategy, which was meant to set out its long-term vision for the bloc’s transition “to a climate-resilient society.” Off the back of this, it also launched the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change and a Climate Resilience Dialogue, both intended to facilitate much-needed climate-proofing actions.

So why does the Commission want another bite at the apple?

For starters, because four years on from the original strategy’s launch the EU does not appear to have made much progress on the adaptation front. “There’s a huge adaptation implementation gap — which we know about at the global level — but also at the European level,” explains Lena Grobusch, a policy specialist with Climate KIC, a non-profit working to combat climate risks and drive innovative resilience solutions. “[This new initiative] is supposed to go beyond just being a policy package, and have a legislative component as well.”

In other words, the 2021 iteration lacked real teeth. Now, policymakers are determined to anchor the bloc’s resilience strategy in new laws and regulations — and link it to binding targets as well. Heavyweight backing is being provided by Wopke Hoekstra, the European Commissioner for Climate, Net Zero and Clean Growth, who emphasized in a September speech that the initiative would yield “the first-ever legislation on resilience to climate change at the EU level.”