Adaptation to Climate Change: Effectiveness and Limits

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Adaptation communities - from researchers to practitioners, citizens and decision makers - have an improved understanding of the factors driving climate change adaptation limits^[1] and effectiveness^[2];
• Policy makers can select and prioritise adaptation strategies to design adaptation policies from improved and more consistent comparability of adaptation options and outcomes;
• The limits and effectiveness of adaptation strategies are evaluated by a comprehensive, multidimensional set of criteria within a standardised methodology, thus contributing to the work of the IPCC. A scientific contribution for updating the 1994 IPCC Technical Guidelines on impacts and adaptation is provided;
• Practitioners and decision makers at all relevant levels of governance (local, national, regional, and European) are provided with a consistent framework and tools for monitoring, evaluation, and adjustment of their adaptation strategies, both in the short term (for more effective disaster prevention and preparedness) and in the long term (for more effective transformative and climate resilient adaptation pathways).

The effectiveness of climate change adaptation measures depends, among other factors, on the magnitude and rate of warming, which can lead to context-specific hard limits being encountered. However, the scientific evidence related to adaptation effectiveness remains limited, and providing a universal definition of what constitutes effective adaptation is challenging. This is motivated by difficulties in defining baseline conditions given the dynamic nature of the adaptation, in measuring avoided impacts and in establishing causality. Other problems arise from the long lead time until responses show outcomes, and limited understanding of trade-offs across spatial scales, community systems and sectors, which limits the application of a system approach, essential for this analysis. Ex-ante and ex-post monitoring and evaluation of adaptation at different timelines and scales is also critical but currently scarcely implemented. It is urgent to better understand and assess adaptation effectiveness and limits to increase adaptive capacity, resilience against extreme, and slow onset, non-extreme events, and to reduce vulnerability and exposure.

The actions should generate assessments of the effectiveness and limits of adaptation options based on quantitative and qualitative evidence (privileging scientific literature but systematically integrating insights from grey literature and including diverse group’s perspectives and knowledge), methodologically sound (replicable and with new metrics and indicators informed with uncertainty) and comprehensive in the criteria considered (such as economic, technological, legal, institutional, socio-cultural, geophysical, environmental and cross-cutting aspects that determine soft limits). Cross-cutting criteria to be included are the contribution of the adaptation solutions to mitigation, their ability to reduce cascading, compound effects and risks transmission, the degree of use of nature-based solutions (NBS), together with the feasibility, the ambition level, and their contribution to equity and justice. Other relevant aspects that should be considered are the exogenous factors, the gender, age and intersectional dimensions, the governance and the barriers and enablers.

Actions should evaluate adaptation effectiveness and limits as a function of time and for a comprehensive range of warming rates, considering the changing variability patterns. Projects should address all of the following aspects:

• Further the understanding of the general and context specific (e.g., regional, sectoral, etc.) drivers of adaptation effectiveness and limits, including vulnerability;
• Develop a robust methodology to assess the effectiveness and limits of adaptation options in a consistent way, assuring comparability among assessments. Such a methodology should:
  • Synthesise different sources of observational (both quantitative and qualitative evidence) and modelling data that are relevant at the regional, local or sectoral levels to assess multiple dimensions of effectiveness and adaptation limits over time;
  • Have sufficient common core elements to ensure consistency and comparability among regions and sectors, and sufficient flexibility to reflect their contextual specificities;
  • Include a comprehensive set of measurements and indicators and approaches to characterise adaptation as a process and assess quantitatively and qualitatively the multiple dimensions and aspects of adaptation effectiveness and limits (both hard and soft);
  • Explore the optimal balance between standardisation and the context specific elements of the methodology.
• Test and apply the methodology for the following purposes:
  • To evaluate the effectiveness of advanced and short-term planned adaptation strategies, for a variety of European (EU Member States and Horizon Europe Associated Countries) environmental and socio-economic sectors, conditions or regions (a minimum of 6 study cases is recommended). Collaboration with the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change is strongly encouraged, for example, in the test cases;
  • To inform the timeline and likelihood of emergence of context-specific (i.e., regions and sectors) limits to adaptation in a warming world, with an emphasis on societal, climate and biodiversity hotspots.
• Synthesising the results as usable knowledge for practitioners and decision makers and communicating and disseminating them using existing platforms (e.g., expanding the Climate-ADAPT platform of the European Environment Agency or other options).

While joint work will not occur at proposal stage, the common core of the methodology should be jointly developed by all the projects funded under this topic by combining their respective proposal’s approaches, to ensure overall consistency. For assuring this, proposals should include a draft plan for joint actions, to be then adapted and agreed between all funded projects. Therefore, all proposals must include a deliverable preferably for month 6 (not later than month 12) that contains the agreed joint action plan. Proposals should dedicate specific tasks and resources, setting aside an adequate budget (in the range of 15 to 25% of their total eligible budget) to collaborate with other projects funded under this topic on developing the common core of the methodology. As a result, this core part should be also a joint deliverable for not later than month 24. Then, the methodology should be separately extended by individual projects to address EU regional and sectoral contexts (e.g., by specific modules) maintaining consistency with the core part. It should build on existing data and approaches, such as those proposed by Copernicus, GAMI^[3], EUCRA^[4], WASP^[5] and other relevant sources. Aspects such as sectorial and geographical coverage of the real-world case studies are left to the proposals to decide, provided they demonstrate a wide variety of existing or new adaptation options in Europe.

Actions should promote the highest standards of transparency and openness and be managed in compliance with the FAIR principles^[6].

This topic requires the effective contribution of social sciences and humanities (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.

In addition, the projects funded under this call should envisage clustering activities with other relevant ongoing projects, in and outside of Horizon Europe, for cross-projects cooperation and exchange of results, and build on projects funded under previous calls of this Destination related to adaptation. Projects funded are also strongly encouraged to participate in the Mission Community of Practice of the Mission Climate Adaptation^[7].

[1] Adaptation limits: The point at which an actor’s objectives (or system needs) cannot be secured from intolerable risks through adaptive actions. Hard adaptation limit – No adaptive actions are possible to avoid intolerable risks. Soft adaptation limit – Options may exist but are currently not available to avoid intolerable risks through adaptive action.

[2] Effectiveness: refers to the extent to which an action reduces vulnerability and climate-related risk, increases resilience, and avoids maladaptation (IPCC, 2022).

[3] https://globaladaptation.github.io/

[4] https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/european-climate-risk-assessment

[5] For example, Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF), Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), Global Climate Facility (GCF), Adaptation Fund (AF).

[6] FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).

[7] https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/mission/community-of-practice