A first EU policy document on adaptation to the impacts on climate change

02.08.2007 |Solomiya Babyak

Today european news are overwhelmed with extreme weather reports: floods in UK, heat waves on Balkans, forest fires on the South of Italy, electricity black-out in Macedonia due to intensive use of air-conditioners. The list of events mirrors the content of Green Paper "Adaptation to climate change in Europe - options for EU action", adopted on 29 june 2007 by European Commission.

Green paper is a first EU policy document on adapting to the impacts of climate change. The main message is: Climate change is taking place and Europe will not be spared. Therefore, besides reducing the CO2 emissions “...European Union also has to take on challenge of adaptation, working in partnership with its Member States and globally with partner countries”.

According to European Commission, adaptation actions could range very widely, covering e.g.:

Soft, relatively inexpensive measures, e.g. water conservation, changes in crop rotations, sowing dates and use of drought tolerant crops, public planning, and awareness raising.
Costly defence and relocation measures, e.g. increasing the height of dykes, relocating ports, inductry and entire cities and villages from low-lying coastal areas and flood plains, and building new power plants because of failing hydropower stations.

The Green Paper outlines a need for multilevel governance on climate change adaptation involving all actors from the individual citizens and public authorities from local till the EU level. Moreover, it stresses that the EU should introduce adaptation to climate change into all the relevant EU policies (both internal and external ones).

WECF in its turn welcomes the first step undertaken by the European Commission and underlines that the best way to adapt and to mitigate climate change is through implementation of sustainable solutions (e.g. renewable energy and saving energy measures, ecosan toilets etc).

More information can be found on European Commission website.