Projects are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:

• Support to the implementation of the EU Adaptation Strategy and the Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change.
• Decision-makers at local, regional, national and European level are able to more effectively scale up and accelerate behavioural change for systemic transformations towards climate resilience, knowing more about relevant social tipping points, leverage points and key governance interventions in this context.
• Citizens and civil society have a better understanding of possible individual actions they may wish to undertake or how to contribute to strategic leverage points that bring about behavioural change supporting climate resilience at larger scale. This should also include knowledge or development of possible governance structures and organisational innovations that would help to galvanise the already existing knowledge and activities in many parts of society.
• Easier assessment of the potential of and progress in scaling up change in behaviour and creating multiple positive synergies of individual and organisational actions for directing governance to achieving systemic transformations towards climate resilience.

No matter how successful our efforts to mitigate further climate change will be, some impacts are or will be unavoidable in the future and we will have to adapt to a warmer world. The question is on what terms this adaptation will take place. With the new Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change and the recently launched Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change on this issue, Europe has set out that the direction of this change will be systemic transformations towards climate neutrality and resilience, by 2050.

As nations, regions, cities and local communities are now developing their vision and pathways towards climate neutrality and resilience, increased importance is given to the role of behavioural change, and governance and organisational innovation in achieving the systemic transformations needed to regain resilience in a harsher climate future to events and hazards potentially attributable to climate change.

The objectives of this topic are to reach a better understanding on behavioural change and on how it could be scaled up and connected to the governance of the various drivers of and/or barriers to climate-friendly/climate-resilient behaviour (including EU, national and local policies) to reach the goal of climate neutrality and resilience by 2050.

The role of individual or community behavioural change in this societal transformation is to be approached as embedded in changes of informational, political, economic and technological systems. Shifts from individual values and community behaviour need to be seen as integrated with societal changes in governance, implying a combination of cultural changes and shifting social norms, alongside interventions by institutions and through the market, communications and media^[1].

Within this scope, projects are requested to enhance the understanding of:

• Social tipping points and leverage points in climate adaptation: to better understand the social acceptability of non-adaptive behaviours or how new adaptive behaviour would become widespread (social tipping points); to better understand how a small shift in one part of a system would generate changes across the system as a whole (leverage points); to better understand how various systems’ leverage points may eventually lead to deliberate transformative tipping points; to understand how increasingly serious threats or consequences of climate change lead to changes of individual and social perceptions and behaviours, and how it leads to changes in local adaptation policies, new social organisation forms and actions. This should also include analysis of incentives and barriers to behavioural change in different spheres of the population (according to gender, social conditions, educational level, etc.).
• Features of good governance for systemic transformations to climate resilience: to better understand features and structures of governance and institutions to ensure economically, socially and environmentally just transformations appropriate for the local conditions, e.g. mechanisms leading to most cost-effective solutions; a fair distribution of costs and benefits of the transformations; to better understand features and structures of governance and institutions that generate a high systemic adaptive capacity, e.g. the ability to effectively leverage public-private sector investment for adaptation actions; further operationalisation of the notion of equity and justice to support the required transformative systemic adaptations in governance and policy arrangements.
• Transformative conditions, capacities and learning feedbacks needed for systemic change: to better understand the conditions and capacities that would allow individual behaviour to fundamentally change the system in which they operate so that the system further accelerate new learning feedbacks and changes in individual behaviour, e.g. via experimentation and requiring further access to relevant knowledge and information or opportunities to engage in transformative decision-making.

Projects should focus on all relevant aspects of society, in their interactions with biophysical and climate adaptation components, including, but not limited to, relevant economic sectors, education and up-skilling and re-skilling. Moreover, participatory co-creation approaches at policy making, community, and individual levels, including direct involvement of citizens, new sustainability-oriented business organisations and societal actors where relevant considering social innovation, is highly recommended in order to create robust results. Projects should investigate the dimension of lifestyles and habits and associated factors, motivators and barriers, and be aware of the role of gender and diversity among populations and groups of populations, and how various resources and power relations can influence people’s decisions and willingness to change behaviour.

Projects are expected to contribute to and establish close coordination with the activities of the Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change. They are strongly encouraged to use the results of the Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change and the Copernicus Climate Change Service as testbed to underpin their findings.

Finally, projects are requested to develop the following outputs:

• Concrete recommendations of operational nature to accelerate systemic change in those regions and communities that served as their case studies.
• General guidance for all other actors at national, regional, or communal level about the most feasible and effective leverage point potentially leading to transformative tipping points, including aspects concerning interrelations, alignment and coordination of the actors/stakeholders.
• A science for policy operational framework and indicators for assessing the potential of and progress in scaling up change in behaviour and for directing governance to achieving systemic transformations towards climate resilience.

This topic requires the effective contribution of SSH disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities.

[1] Changing our ways? Behaviour change and the climate crisis, 2021, Report of the Cambridge Sustainability Commission on Scaling Behaviour Change.