Adaptation AGORA supports the objectives of the Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change by leveraging and step forwarding best practices, innovative approaches, policy instruments and governance mechanisms to engage communities and regions meaningfully and effectively in climate actions, accelerating and upscaling adaptation processes for building a climate resilient Europe. Pilot regions (Rome, Italy; Zaragoza, Spain; Dresden, Germany and Malmö, Sweden) constituted the co-production arena to co-design, co-develop and co-implement climate adaptation solutions. The project has developed a roadmap for transformational change and upscale of citizen engagement, for transferability of effective policy instruments and for ensuring long term legacy.Citizens civil society organizations, academics, experts, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, and other relevant actors were engaged in the co-design and co-creation of innovative and problem-oriented climate adaptation solutions that could be extensively adopted in Europe.
Furthermore, the project developed four information and communication tools (ICTs) creating a baseline to empower citizens in climate change adaptation processes. Additional cities, regions or organizations who wished to replicate the experiences were registered as “followers” , and they interacted directly with the project’s activities, supporting the process of creating ICT tools, and methodologies. The community of followers also took part in the webinar series, capacity building events, and contributed to providing key insights and feedback to validate the ICTs and work carried out within Adaptation AGORA.Following the great interest from the local communities, additional activities were carried out with new target audiences, expanding from the scope of the project to include non-previously addressed stakeholders such as prisoners, individuals with cerebral palsy or mental health workers. In this way, the project promoted democracy, climate justice, gender equality, equity, and fosters adaptive capacity and citizens’ empowerment to pro-actively support decision-making processes. The project has gained interest from international research institutions such as the Nomura Research Institute from Japan and international organizations as the Organization of American States, as well as being one of the few Horizon Europe Projects focusing on stakeholder engagement to present at the UN COP.
