Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CLIMAS (CLIMAte change citizens engagement toolbox for dealing with Societal resilience)
Période du rapport: 2024-07-01 au 2025-12-31
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.
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.
Over the 36 months (M1-M36), the CLIMAS consortium achieved significant technical and scientific advancements in enhancing climate resilience across Europe through citizen engagement. In the RP1 (M1-M18), the project laid the foundation by analysing drivers and barriers to citizen participation in climate adaptation, mapping best practices in deliberative processes, assessing the readiness of diverse European regions for Climate Assemblies, and co-creating and initially testing the CLIMAS Toolbox. During the RP2 (M19-M36), the consortium completed the full development, testing, calibration, and evaluation of the CLIMAS Toolbox across 3 Climate Assemblies (Catalunya, Edermünde, and Riga) and 3 Living Labs (Vilnius, Chios and Ebro Delta). The Toolbox integrated 6 innovative tools to support the entire deliberation lifecycle: knowledge- and evidence-based agenda setting, citizen-collaborative future scenario building, scenario prioritisation based on citizen and expert values, citizen science applications for Climate Assemblies, dynamic climate change adaptation planning, and methodological guidelines for setting up and facilitating Climate Assemblies. All tools were finalised in their second versions based on feedback. In parallel, WP5 completed the monitoring and evaluation of Climate Assembly performance, producing evidence-based policy recommendations, presented at the final CLIMAS policy event in Brussels (November 2025) and to local governance networks through partner dissemination. WP6 delivered two flagship public events, a training webinar series, and the comprehensive Information Materials Pack for Climate Assemblies, all designed for replication. All six project milestones and all deliverables scheduled were achieved on time.
By the end of the project (M36), CLIMAS co-created, tested, calibrated, and evaluated the full CLIMAS Toolbox and submitted all 32 project deliverables on time across both reporting periods. The consortium developed and disseminated a comprehensive Information Materials Pack for Climate Assemblies (including organiser checklists, fact cards, best-practice and tool fact sheets, and lessons-learned materials) targeting local authorities and stakeholders across 150+ cities and 34+ countries. CLIMAS directly engaged over 300 citizens through workshops, Living Labs, Climate Assemblies, and survey-based activities, and reached 5,000+ participants through webinars and conferences. Communication outputs included 240 social media posts, 76 Climate Stories, 56 news items, 15 press releases, and 9 press/magazine articles. The project website attracted 9,709 unique visitors and 7,031 downloads of materials. Scientific dissemination yielded 12 peer-reviewed journal publications (1 under review), 15 open-access publications (2 in preparation), and 44 conference presentations. The consortium organised 2 large public events, participated in 40+ external events, delivered 8 webinars and 10+ workshops, and carried out 11 activities with other EU-funded projects. Seven Key Exploitable Results were identified by structured exploitation workshops, including SWOT analysis and Business Model Canvas exercises to prioritise uptake pathways beyond the project lifetime.