This final report summarises the results of the actions to support the Mission Board for “Adaptation to Climate Change, including Societal Transformation” with forward-looking evidence.

In accordance with the Request, the proposed services, approaches to be adopted, and the concrete nature and form of the outputs have been shaped and validated through close interaction with the Mission Board (MB) via the Mission Secretariat, run by relevant European Commission (EC) services, throughout the implementation of the action.

As a result of the interactions with the Mission Secretariat, the following actions were taken:

1. Preparing a short paper Input to Mission Board on scoping activities & tasks
   (Deliverable 1)
2. Analysing national and regional funding programmes of selected countries for
   projects on Climate Change Adaptation, and conducting interviews with selected
   Mission Board members in preparation of a foresight workshop.
3. Preparing an input paper for the foresight workshop Input Document FoD CCA
   Workshop, 23 January 2020 (Deliverable 2).
4. Holding a foresight workshop (23 January 2020) with Mission Board members,
   European Commission representatives (Mission Secretariat), and foresight experts,
   and summarising the results of the workshop. The workshop served to identify
   barriers and solutions, enablers and impacts of climate change adaptation in a variety
   of thematic fields, including health, water, food and agriculture.
5. Developing and implementing a Delphi survey on assessing key aspects of the draft
   paper of the Mission Board. The survey addressed climate experts. They assessed
   future targets in thematic fields (e.g. financial risks, health, social infrastructure), and
   ranked related measures and R&I fields for importance.
6. Preparing and analysing the results of the Delphi survey: Delphi Survey results,
   July/August 2020 (Deliverables 3 and 4).

The report is structured along these deliverables.

The foresight project “Adaptation to Climate Change including Societal Transformation” (Framework Contract 2018/RTD/A2/OP/PP-07001-2018-LOT1) was meant to complement the Mission Boards’ deep and wide-ranging expertise by exploring longer-term time horizons, up to and beyond the year 2050. Building on existing future-oriented work, the project employed dedicated foresight methods, in particular workshops and a Delphi survey, to explore this time horizon in a systematic manner, and involving experts and stakeholders as appropriate.

Climate Adaptation refers to anticipating the adverse effects of climate change and taking appropriate action to prevent or minimise the damage they can cause, or taking advantage of opportunities that may arise. It has been shown that well-planned, early adaptation action later saves money, lives, livelihoods, and biodiversity.

The foresight was based on the European Commission (EC) White Paper “Adapting to climate change: Towards a European framework for action” of 2009, and on the EU climate adaptation strategy adopted in 2013. At the time of the formulation of this strategy, the economic, environmental, and social costs of not adapting to climate change were estimated to range from 100 billion € a year in 2020 to 250 billion € a year in 2050, for the EU as a whole. Meanwhile, the EC in February 2021 elaborated and adopted a new climate adaptation strategy, which focuses on developing solutions and implementation of adaptation measures.

Research directions: Climate change adaptation (CCA) including societal transformation covers a broad range of areas, such as agriculture, dealing with water resources, disaster prevention, migration flows, security issues, behaviour changes, urban areas, industry and trade relations, transforming the energy system and transportation. The thematic scope of the foresight exercise was defined in close collaboration with the Mission Board (MB) through the Mission Board Secretariat. Consequently, the Delphi survey implemented in summer 2020 was used to assess elements of the interim MB report, in particular items around risk management, financial risk protection, social infrastructure, health, water, food/agriculture, and ecosystems. All the work fed into the final report of the Mission Board “A Climate Resilient Europe - Prepare Europe for climate disruptions and accelerate the transformation to a climate resilient and just Europe by 2030” (2020).

The CROSSEU project was launched in response to growing societal needs for effective climate action and stronger socio-economic resilience. As climate change continues to impact our world, it becomes crucial to understand and manage its complex effects. 

Objective(s)
CROSSEU aims to respond to increasing societal needs to reduce climate-damaging actions, adapt to the expected consequences, and increase socio-economic resilience.

The main ambition of the project is to provide a science based and ready to use decision support system built on enhanced understanding of the biogeophysical risks from climate change, and their socioeconomic impacts in Europe, fully co-produced and implemented with practice stakeholders to ensure its uptake, and support effective coping with sectoral and cross sectoral climate risks within the context of the European green transition.

It will do this by delivering a climate-sensitive framework, including a ready-to-use decision support system platform and technical recommendations, to inform investment decisions, cost-effective adaptation and mitigation options and policy response to climate change.

The project will contribute to advancing the understanding of the socio-economic risks and response options associated with climate change impact in Europe in different timeframes, including the post-COVID-19 societal-environmental transformation, and derive practical recommendations for political and societal action.

The solutions proposed are based on an extensive assessment of the socio-economic risks of climate change in a cross-sectoral hierarchical approach, based on storylines addressing key categories of climate hazards in different socio-economic sectors and climate change-sensitive areas across countries and European regions.

The project will offer a ready-to-use solution that integrates complex information from available climate risk data sets and non-climatic sectoral data collected during the project implementation and derived through modelling based on demand-driven climate-socio-economic pathways.

CROSSEU is designed to bridge the science-based information about the economic impacts of climate change, and the unique contributions of the project will be:

1. the quantification of costs of existent and emergent socio-economic risks and opportunities at NUTS3 level
2. an improved representation of adaptation within biogeophysical climate change risk
3. a better consideration of modelling uncertainties by identifying their nature, assessing their characteristics in
a systematic way to determine a better informed and robust decision-making. 

The project's foresight component is crucial for projecting how various climate impacts will unfold under different global pathways (RCP-SSP). By examining future scenarios, it allows decision-makers to anticipate and plan for the most critical challenges, helping societies prepare for the compounded effects of climate change across sectors. The focus on cross-sectoral linkages emphasizes the need for integrated, multi-dimensional strategies to address both immediate and long-term climate risks, while ensuring social equity and resilience.
Future scenarios involve identifying and evaluating highly vulnerable areas across Europe in terms of their exposure to climate change, sensitivity to its impacts, and adaptive capacity. It focuses on key sectors—such as biodiversity, health, agriculture, forests, and water—and examines how these areas are likely to experience intense climate changes, particularly extreme events, in the future (2030, 2050, 2100).

Outputs

• Enhance the modelling of mitigation and adaptation strategies in relation to projected bio-geo-physical processes and socioeconomic risks to different sectors for different time horizons (i.e. 2030, 2050 and 2100) considering both the individual characteristics and interactions between the various sectors
• Co-assess synergies conflicts and trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation strategies across different sectors regions
• Co-produce ready to use tools integrated in a science based decision support system for assessing the social and economic impacts of climate change, and support mitigation and adaptation options towards a climate resilient Europe
• Consolidate the European union's response to climate change challenges and social and economic impacts in the context of the transformation related to the post COVID-19 crisis and geopolitical challenges

Expected outcomes
1. the project delivers a science based and ready to use decision support system built on enhanced understanding of the biogeophysical risks from climate change, and their socioeconomic impacts in Europe, fully co-produced and implemented with practice stakeholders to ensure its uptake.
2. the project consistently contributes to enhancing the overall impact of the destination climate across the EU
3. the project facilitates an improved understanding of the nature and extent of physical risks climate change driven hazards and their socio economic impacts at different levels of warming with or without adaptation
4. CrossEU integrates social sciences and humanities perspectives and insights throughout its entire workflow, engaging stakeholders including representatives of communities or citizen groups, sectoral policymakers, businesses, the scientific community, and civil society, through the entire project cycle.

CROSSEU is an EU funded project, with UK partners funded by UKRI.