C 264/6
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EN
Official Journal of the European Union
27.7.2023
Involving regional and local level of governance
The phrase ‘think globally, act locally’ becomes ever more important when discussing climate adaptation strategies and plans.
Local and regional administrations are key drivers of adaptation since many climate adaptation interventions take place at the local and regional level and depend therefore on context-specific conditions.
Local governments play a key role in fostering public engagement and local action, by informing people of the benefits of climate adaptation for their region.
Furthermore, local governments possess a lot of vital information on potential localised climate adaptation measures that are viable in their area.
The interdepartmental adaptation taskforce should therefore ensure meaningful exchanges with sub-national authorities to include their expertise in adaptation policymaking and to support regional/local activities in line with the national adaptation policy.
Specific consideration should be given on how to involve the regional and local level of governance.
For example, by reaching out to regional associations, or interregional local government networks like the Covenant of Mayors, where over 11 000 local and regional authorities representing 341 million people are preparing their communities on how to live with the consequences of climate change.
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Identifying and involving stakeholders
Climate change will create uncertainty and impacts throughout the entire society, stressing the importance for the interdepartmental taskforce of identifying all relevant stakeholder groups including social partners and civil society organisations, whose involvement is needed to create robust climate adaptation measures.
Stakeholder participation will increase the quality of decision-making for climate change adaptation by ensuring ownership of the process for stakeholders.
This in turn will improve the overall quality of a climate adaptation strategy or plan created by the interdepartmental taskforce.
The process of identifying stakeholder groups can be aided by distinguishing between two groups of stakeholders – agents of change and those potentially impacted by climate change:
— One group of stakeholders are possible agents of change that can contribute to the efforts of national and/or regional/local administrations by providing extra information, resources, or capacities.
Stakeholders that would fall under this category are research institutes providing or enhancing knowledge bases on climate adaptation, the private sector providing valuable information of better adjustment of adaptation policies or by providing funding, crossborder actors to provide a better understanding of cross-border territories and border regions and non-government organisations, especially local civil society organisations, that help to provide a better understanding of territories, implement adaptation measures and communicate the need for climate adaptation to facilitate change at local and regional level.
— Another group of stakeholders that need to be included in the climate adaptation process are those with an elevated likelihood of being impacted by climate change.
These are mostly vulnerable communities (including but not limited to people in and at-risk of poverty and social exclusion, persons with disabilities, elderly people and those with preexisting health conditions, pregnant women, displaced persons, socially marginalised, exposed workers, and children) or advocates and interest groups that represent these vulnerable communities that would otherwise be excluded from the participation process.
Unequal exposure and vulnerability to climate impacts of different regions and socioeconomic groups worsens pre-existing inequalities and vulnerabilities.
Therefore, it is essential to ensure a just transition that reduces the unequal burden of climate risk and ensures equity in the distribution of the benefits of adaptation.
The conceptual separation of these two groups of stakeholders is to ensure a full enough coverage from the necessary angles, but the overlap between them should be recognised and valued.
In other words, those particularly vulnerable to climate change can also be possible agents of change even if in some respects their resources are limited.
They may even possess resources, most obviously information about how vulnerabilities to climate change are experienced and the likely effectiveness of interventions, that are less accessible to those not in their position.
Furthermore, gender differences in behaviours and attitudes regarding climate change (5) also underscores the need to ensure the balanced participation of men and women in the process feeding decision-making and in implementation.
Children are not typically included in (5) For example, the literature suggests that men tend to be less concerned than women about climate change when countries are wealthier.
See e.g., Bush and Clayton (2023).