‘Leaving No One Behind’ in Climate Resilience Policy and Practice in Europe - Overview of Knowledge and Practice for Just Resilience

Climate change impacts affect people in different ways and some members of society will find it more demanding to adapt their living and working conditions and their livelihood to changing climate conditions. Managing climate change adaptation and transition to a climate resilient society in a just and inclusive manner requires awareness about which conditions generate injustice with burdens from climate impacts shared and costs and benefits from adaptation measures distributed in a fair and equitable way.

The present technical paper provides an overview of knowledge and practice for just resilience in Europe as a scoping exercise based on a rapid review of scientific literature on social impacts of adaptation and resilience, information from National Reference Centres, input from the Expert Group on Just Resilience, established for this analysis, information from regulatory reports on national adaptation progress and a screening of the Climate-ADAPT database. The context of the technical paper is European policy developments, notably the EU Green Deal and the revised EU Adaptation strategy, which stresses the importance of achieving resilience in a just and fair way in order for adaptation benefits to be shared equitably. For purposes of clarity, the technical paper uses the step-wise approach proposed by the EU Adaptation policy guidance framework – the Adaptation Support Tool - for exploring current knowledge and practice. The technical paper concludes with barriers and enabling conditions for just resilience, actionable recommendations for policy-makers, adaptation planners and practitioners and identifies a number of knowledge gaps and directions for future research.