Climate change remains one of the most pressing challenges facing Europe. In 2025 alone, heatwaves, droughts, and floods affected a quarter of all EU regions, with record-breaking wildfires burning over 380,000 ha across Spain, devastating fires sweeping Greece, Türkiye, and Cyprus, fuelled by temperatures exceeding 45°C, and unprecedented heat reaching the Arctic Circle, with Finland enduring three consecutive weeks above 30°C. The economic losses from extreme weather were estimated at €43 billion in 2025, projected to reach €126 billion by 2029. Against this, CLIMAS drew on accumulated experience in citizens’ engagement in climate change action and built citizen-supporting infrastructure for climate adaptation measures to help 150 European regions and local communities strengthen their resilience. Climate Assemblies and Living Labs proved to be sustainable and effective tools to stimulate deliberative democracy in climate policymaking.
CLIMAS project pursued a transformative approach to climate policy-making by embedding a values-based, bottom-up methodology within Climate Assemblies and Living Labs across the European Union, ensuring that all community voices, especially those typically underrepresented, were integrated into decision-making. The cornerstone of CLIMAS was the development of an innovative Toolbox that supported the creation of climate adaptation strategies, facilitated scenario development, and enhanced decision-making processes by incorporating citizen insights and expert knowledge through citizen science and design thinking methods. The Toolbox was designed to address potential tensions and dilemmas in climate adaptation, enabling robust engagement strategies that resulted in a society “resilient by design”. It leveraged the best practices from previous assemblies, enhancing them with new tools that ensured transparency and inclusivity in deliberations. By democratising the process and shifting from expert-dominated discussions to multi-stakeholder deliberations, CLIMAS made Climate Assemblies a regular feature of policy development rather than an extraordinary event. Throughout the project, the consortium continuously evaluated and refined the Toolbox using feedback from Climate Assemblies, ensuring it remained effective.
Through these efforts, CLIMAS contributed to building climate resilience across Europe and enhanced the acceptance of climate policies, making a significant impact on both local and regional scales.
