We are happy to announce that Regions4 is part of the new initiative ‘Pathways2Resilience’ to accelerate climate adaptation in European regions. Starting in January 2023, for the next 5 years we will be working together with 14 partner organizations to strengthen climate resilience across regions, communities, and their ecosystems.

About the initiative

Pathways2Resilience is an initiative aimed at co-developing pathways towards climate-resilient regions in Europe. Designed to increase the climate resilience of at least 100 European regions and communities, Pathways2Resilience will also ignite a wave of political commitments and innovation agendas for climate adaptation in the coming years.

The climate crisis is already having major effects on everyday life in Europe. If we are to survive and continue to thrive, adapting to climate change and building climate resilience is crucial. Regions and communities have a major role to play in enabling rapid and far-reaching change.

According to a recent publication by the European Committee of the Regions (2021), 90% of climate change adaptation measures are currently undertaken by local and regional authorities. However, while many inspiring stand-alone examples of innovative adaptation actions are flourishing across Europe, the complexity of thriving in the face of climate shocks and stresses means that many regions and communities struggle to avoid losses.

Launched to implement the Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change, Pathways2Resilience proposes a systemic innovation and capability-driven approach to strengthening climate resilience more efficiently across regions, communities, and their ecosystems.

The initiative will support over 100 European regions and communities in designing pathways, plans and innovation agendas to become climate resilient by 2030, thus contributing to all three of Mission Adaptation’s objectives:

1. Preparing and planning for climate resilience;
2. Accelerating transformations towards climate resilience;
3. Paving the way to demonstrating transformations to climate resilience.

“In line with both the new EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change and the objectives of the European Green Deal, the Pathways2Resilience project takes an innovative systemic approach to regional climate resilience, catalysing on the European economic and social development, boosting its net zero commitments and commanding a markedly different approach.” – Dr. Fernando Diaz Lopez from EIT Climate-KIC, coordinator of Pathways2Resilience.

What will be achieved

Over the next five years, Pathways2Resilience will mobilise regional interest and networks, progressively elevating the ambition and capability of regional public administrations and connecting innovation agendas. It will develop a Regional Resilience Journey framework and increase knowledge on adaptation options across different Key Community Systems, to equip regions and communities to develop climate resilience pathways and connected innovation agendas that are tailor-made to local challenges and needs.

To achieve this, the initiative will foster cross-regional learning, collaboration, mentoring and capacity building, and citizens and stakeholders will be involved in the co-creation of the pathways. Additionally, funding of €21M will be allocated across 100 regions and communities via two open call cycles.

Gathering 14 partners from 10 countries, Pathways2resilience is coordinated by EIT ClimateKIC, Europe’s largest public-private innovation partnership focused on climate innovation to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

The initiative builds upon the expertise of its partners, leveraging a vast array of knowledge and expertise, as well as access to an extensive network of regions throughout Europe. It also involves regional network organisations, technical designers and innovators of transformative adaptation, adaptation finance experts, learning and capability-building specialists, and monitoring and innovation impact partners.

Regions4 Involvement

Aligned with its strategic objectives and RegionsAdapt strategy, Regions4 will mobilise its regional membership in the EU, and its flagship initiative RegionsAdapt, which gathers over 77 regional governments from around the world, to engage in peer-to-peer support on building robust adaptation strategies and actions.

Regions4 will bring its expertise, through the RegionsAdapt community of practice, to share knowledge on how to build resilient adaptation pathways, share and support capacity-building webinars, workshops, and produce/share knowledge to support regional governments.

Regions4 will promote work with European regional governments to encourage them to engage, and build their capacity to become leading regions on resilience and adaptation.

As Regions4 will contribute and collaborate in most of the Pathways2Resilience work packages throughout the 5-year span of the project, we will be providing our membership with regular updates on the various opportunities and spaces for participation that arise.

List of partners and associated partners

Partners:

• EIT CLIMATE-KIC (COORDINATOR)
• REGIONS4 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
• ICLEI
• ATHENS UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS – RESEARCH CENTER
• ERRIN – EUROPEAN REGIONS RESEARCH AND INNOVATION NETWORK
• FUNDACION TECNALIA RESEARCH & INNOVATION
• LGI SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION
• IIED – INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT EUROPE
• THE CLIMATE CENTRE
• STICHTING DELTARES
• IIASA – INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
• PPMI – PUBLIC POLICY AND MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE.

Associated partners:

• STIFTUNG GLOBAL INFRASTRUCTURE BASEL
• PAUL WATKISS ASSOCIATES LTD.

The general contact email for enquiries are: Pathways2Resilience@climate-kic.org, climate@regions4.org, mcorvaro@regions4.org

*This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement n° 101093942