10.1 Climate change adaptation in the EU
Adapting to Climate Change is a relatively new topic for most cities across Europe.
Increasing their resilience to Climate Change impacts is therefore an urgent challenge (144). To tackle this issue, the EU 2013 Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, establishes a framework and mechanisms for taking lead towards the preparedness for current and future climate impacts. Concretely, Action 3 of the EU Adaptation Strategy (145) was dedicated to urban issues (see Annex 1). 25 EU Member States have also adopted national adaptation strategies (NAS) where urban-related issues are covered under sectoral strategies. In addition, different initiatives – such as the EU Covenant of Mayors or the EEA’s Climate-ADAPT portal – have been developed to support city adaptation processes and increase awareness among local authorities.
10.2 The Adaption Pillar of the Covenant of Mayors initiative
The adaptation pillar was first introduced through Mayors Adapt, launched in 2014 by the European Commission (DG Climate Action) as a parallel initiative to the Covenant of Mayors. Mayors Adapt was an EU-wide movement of cities committed to adaptation. In 2015, the European Commission merged the two initiatives into the Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy in an effort to promote an integrated approach to climate and energy action. From 2015 onwards, adaptation and therefore the Mayors Adapt initiative is entirely integrated into Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy. According to the Covenant website (146), more than 1,000 local authorities (signatories) are committed to adaptation.
Figure 4. List of Covenant signatories committed to adaptation
Source: Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy website, June 2018 (147)
(144) UCCRN, 2011. Climate change and Cities: First Assessment report ARC3. Urban Climate Change Research Network. Cambridge press, pp.28
(145) European Commission, 2013. COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN
PARLIAMENT, THE COUNCIL, THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL COMMITTEE AND THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS: An EU Strategy on adaptation to climate change. COM (2013) 0216 final, Brussels, 16.04.2013 (146) The “origins and development” page on the Covenant website:
https://www.covenantofmayors.eu/about/covenant-initiative/origins-and-development.html (147) https://www.covenantofmayors.eu/about/covenant-community/signatories.html
Local authorities committed to both mitigation (2020 and/or 2030 target) and adaptation. The status points out the phase of the process: 1. Signature; 2. Submission of adaptation strategy; 3. Monitoring results in June 2018.
By joining the initiative, signatories commit to voluntarily developing a comprehensive local adaptation strategy or integrating adaptation into on-going development plans, as well as to reporting their progress every second year. COR (2016) points out that small- and medium-size cities are the majority of Covenant of Mayors signatories, reflecting a more pressing need for support and resources than bigger cities (148) (Figure 5).
Figure 5. Signatories size and location
Source:https://www.covenantofmayors.eu/about/covenant-initiative/covenant-in-figures.html
(148) Revi, A., D.E. Satterthwaite, F. Aragón-Durand, J. Corfee-Morlot, R.B.R. Kiunsi, M. Pelling, D.C. Roberts, and W. Solecki, 2014. Chapter 8: Urban areas. In: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Part A: Global and Sectoral Aspects. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 535-612
Even though an upward trend in cities’ willingness to increase their resilience to Climate Change is observed, many barriers still remain to local adaptation — especially in smaller cities (149), such as the lack of:
budget and difficulties to access funding tailored to adaptation;
multi-level/multi-stakeholder governance;
political commitment;
legal framework enabling adaptation;
data about risk and vulnerability at local level;
good-practice exchange.
Another obstacle to adaptation to Climate Change is to break the "silo-thinking" and move towards a more cross-cutting approach; this demands a change in the way local authorities usually address urban development. Such horizontal governance crossing different sectoral strategies is a new issue for most cities, which still struggle to understand local impacts of Climate Change and define clear accountability across different local authority' departments and stakeholders.
An analysis of the main knowledge gaps (150) was conducted by the Mayors Adapt team in the first semester 2015 through literature review, online survey and more in-depth interviews. It pointed out that the initiative offered a great possibility for exchange of information, objectives, approaches and good practices between cities; even though they reported that they often have a limited capacity to make full use of this opportunity. Most of them said that limited cooperation between government levels was still a barrier to adaptation, as well as lack of funding. Moreover, the lack of knowledge on potential economic costs and social impacts and the limited knowledge on potential impacts on essential services (e.g. energy, water, food supply…) were also highlighted among others as main difficulties.
Similarly, the outcomes reported in the Covenant of Mayors Needs Assessment report (151), conducted in the first semester 2017, confirm the fields for which local authorities encounter much difficulty in developing and implementing the action plans. In this process, local authorities were asked to select the two main barriers they face in developing/implementing a mitigation or adaptation plan, among a range of options.
Limited financial sources and lack of technical expertise were the barriers that were most frequently selected by local authorities, with respectively 84 % and 34.4 % of respondents selecting those options (Figure 6).
(149) COR, 2016. Regional and local adaptation in the EU since the adaption of the EU Adaptation Strategy in 2013. Report by European Committee of the Regions, pp. 114.
COR, 2017. Towards a new EU climate change adaptation strategy – taking an integrated approach. OPINION by European Committee of the Regions, ENVE VI/015, pp.11. Plenary session, 8-9 February 2017
(150) https://www.covenantofmayors.eu/IMG/pdf/MA_KnowledgeBaseStrat_ExecSummaryFinal.pdf
(151) European Covenant of Mayors needs assessment report Covenant community’s needs for SE(C)AP design and implementation August 2017. http://www.eumayors.eu/news-and-events/news/1522-the-european- covenant-of-mayors-needs-assessment-report-is-now-available.html
See the “origins and development” page on the Covenant website:
https://www.covenantofmayors.eu/about/covenant-initiative/origins-and-development.html
Figure 6. Barriers faced by local authorities
Source: European Covenant of Mayors Needs Assessment Report (151)
The needs’ assessment survey (151) showed also that out of the Covenant 3 pillars, climate adaptation is where cities need most support (45.14 %). Cities, whose national government demonstrated weak engagement to adaptation, indicated that the lack of appropriate legislative and regulatory frameworks hindered action (149). Even though some local authorities recognized the need for technical support, e.g., vulnerability and risk assessment and selecting adaptation options, they also argued that this support should be provided locally (Figure 7).
Figure 7. Results of the survey conducted by CoMO in 2017 on the Covenant signatories’
main needs when developing and implementing their SE(C)AP
Source: European Covenant of Mayors Needs Assessment Report (151).