29 April 2013: The European Environment Agency (EEA) has issued a report, titled “Adaptation in Europe: Addressing Risks and Opportunities From Climate Change in the Context of Socio-Economic Development.” The report aims to provide policy makers at all levels of government with the information required to undertake adaptation planning and implementation.

The report includes sections on framing adaptation, adaptation in practice, policy context, and agenda-setting issues. It identifies three challenges: ensuring coherent approaches across sectors and levels of governance; tailoring adaptation policy responses to local conditions; and involving stakeholders in adaptation decision making.

The report identifies the need for a combination of “grey” engineering approaches, “green” ecosystem approaches, and “soft” behavioral and managerial approaches to adaptation. The report also notes that while 16 European countries have national adaptation strategies, and 12 have strategies under development, implementation of adaption measures is not widespread.

The report emphasizes the need for: monitoring and evaluation of adaptation policy; considering inter-dependencies of networks and systems to build resilience; implementing transformational adaptation, when incremental adaptation is no longer sufficient; and assessing the costs and benefits of adaptation actions to inform decision making.

It highlights the role of the European Climate Adaptation Platform (Climate-ADAPT) as a knowledgebase for sharing adaptation information and experience. [Publication: Adaptation in Europe: Addressing Risks and Opportunities From Climate Change in the Context of Socio-Economic Development] [EEA Press Release]