Bringing together the national level with the engaged regional and local levels (multi-level governance)

Expected Outcome:

In support of the European Green Deal, the Adaptation Strategy and the Mission on Adaptation to climate change, the successful proposal will specifically complement and reinforce the work of the Mission Implementation Platform, by addressing Missions’ current untapped potential, as highlighted in Commission’s Communication COM(2023) 457 final[1] and underlying ”Study supporting the assessment of EU missions and the review of mission areas. Mission Adaptation to Climate Change assessment report”[2].

More specifically, the successful project is expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:

• The national relevant governance for innovation and climate adaptation is further engaged and mobilised to contribute to the objectives of the EU Mission on adaptation to climate change, and benefit from it.
• The EU Mission is deeply connected with national multi-level governance feeding into Member States, regions and local authorities’ efforts to implement the European Climate Law’s requirements on climate adaptation, and to further develop and update their national, regional and local adaptation plans.
• A set of ‘National Adaptation Hubs’ bridge the gap between the EU and regional/local levels, in the Adaptation mission and further disseminate the solutions emerging from the Mission to other regions and local authorities that are not Charter Signatories.
• A robust twinning scheme grouping of regions and local actors facing similar challenges ensures peer-learning and cross-fertilisation of experiences, further strengthening ongoing peer learning opportunities within the EU Mission, and also providing a tool to disseminate EU Mission’s knowledge beyond the regions and local authorities directly participating in the EU Mission.

Scope:

Regional and local authorities are the target groups of the proposed activities and as such they are not expected to participate directly in the consortium, but they should receive services from the project funded by this action.

In order to achieve the indicated scope, the project could provide direct financial support in the form of grants to maximum one entity in each of the MS in facilitating the creation and animation of the “National Adaptation Hub”. To implement the support to third parties, the consortium should include partners with relevant operational and financial experience and viability.

It is expected that the project will have a duration of about 2 years.

Proposals should address two axes of action: 1) establishing and managing so-called “National adaptation hubs”; and 2) implementing a structural grouping scheme as organic component of the multi-governance approach.

For each of the axes of action, proposals should address all the following aspects identified :

• Identify relevant actors at National level, in cooperation with existing national experts/working groups (such as Climate Advisory bodies[3] or members of the Working Group on adaptation of the Horizon Europe Strategic Programme Committee and the Working Group on Adaptation (WGA) under the Climate Change Committee or the managing authorities of the cohesion policy or rural development funds), as well as at regional and local level, to facilitate the connection and integration of the Mission’s approach at national level.
• Concretely, proposals should aim at mobilising National, regional, and local actors and foster the creation of dedicated “National adaptation hubs” for the EU Mission on adaptation to climate change. Such hubs (one per country) consist in a sort of task force or working group composed of the relevant contact points from each level of governance relevant in the individual countries. Those structures are meant to be light, agile, and flexible, to be tailored to the national context. Some countries are already piloting national structures aiming at supporting and complementing the EU Mission at national level (in some cases with more formal and complex structures than the flexible working groups foreseen in this project). In such cases National hubs would consist or would be an integration of such existing structures, which can be served by the project via information products or logistic support in view of helping them to better align and cooperate with the Adaptation Mission. If relevant in the national context, some of those hubs could also tackle the interface between climate adaptation and mitigation by integrating or cooperating with any existing structure dedicated this objective.
• Foster knowledge and solutions sharing and implement dedicated horizontal supporting actions, such as help shaping the National adaptation hubs identifying and connecting national and subnational priorities, create multilingual horizontal information and communication products to help feed the feedback-loop between Adaptation Mission and the National adaptation hubs, including by identifying good practices exchanged as part of the grouping scheme.To retrieve such information, the project funded under this topic is expected to closely cooperate with the project stemming from the topic HORIZON-MISS-2024-CLIMA-01-01 and the different projects in the Adaptation Mission Portfolio, under the coordination of the Mission Implementation Platform.
• Ensure that the knowledge gained by the regions directly participating in the Adaptation Mission is shared with other regions within a certain Member State, further disseminating such knowledge via their own existing channels. These hubs can, in fact, be a first step to bring EU Mission’s knowledge to the regions and local authorities that are not directly participating in EU Mission’s activities, while the EU Mission continues to work with a limited set of regions and local authorities as testbeds for climate adaptation solutions.
• National adaptation hubs should also feed and contribute to countries and regional and local authorities’ efforts related to the adaptation objectives in the Climate Law – with particular reference to the adoption and implementation of national adaptation strategies and plans. National adaptation hubs should support the implementation of adaptation plans, liaising with the relevant national, regional or local authorities to integrate the knowledge developed within the Mission into the development and selection process of projects on the ground, in particular when financed by EU funds. Moreover, in this light, they should also help connect public authorities with existing support opportunities such as TAIEX-EIR PEER 2 PEER[4], the Commission’s Technical Support Instrument, etc.
• Build on existing relevant initiatives, such as the TRAMI project[5] [or followers] and the NCP4missions[6], the new National Contact Points Network, as well as other relevant thematic national hubs, to avoid duplications, ensure horizontal synergies and complement existing structures when relevant for the Adaptation Mission. The proposal should also ensure close collaboration with the Mission Implementation Platform[7], which, at the moment, does not foresee specific budget to organise activities at National level. In such context, the project will remain in close contacts with the Mission’s Secretariat. The project will connect the exchange done via the EU Mission’s Community of Practice (managed by the Mission Implementation Platform) with the subsequent follow-ups, dissemination, and further discussion at “National adaptation hubs” level, effectively connecting and helping the coordination of their activities. Moreover, the project should also ensure that National adaptation hubs connect with the EU Mission Board, to fully exploit further synergies with its members.

• Build on the EU Mission’s key community systems and enabling conditions[8] to identify the priority areas of work of the “National adaptation hubs”, by engaging and exchanging with the National and regional contact points. These priority areas should reflect what is included in the National Strategies and/or Plans on Adaptation to Climate Change. In addition, the action should also identify areas of exchange that are particularly suited for discussion at National level (such as the concept of just transition, including by addressing the social angle of adaptation to climate change) or where existing gaps require specific attention (such as access to finance), or there is high potential for cooperation (the nexus climate adaptation and mitigation).
• Last, National adaptation hubs could be suited to engage with the private sector at national, regional, local level. They should also involve climate pact ambassadors (when relevant), to help amplifying the impacts of these initiative with the civil society.

• To facilitate the concrete dissemination of knowledge, the proposal should foresee a structural grouping scheme. In particular, the scheme should bring together regions and local actors facing similar challenges, and it should help consolidate the multi-level governance. Such scheme might see groups or pairs from the same Member State (to feed the knowledge sharing within each “national adaptation hubs” and cascade knowledge across a national territory) or between different countries. In turn, the proposal should ensure close connections with the Mission’s Community of Practice.
• The grouping exercise will also help disseminating the Mission’s knowledge beyond the regions directly served by the Mission – hence substantiating the new “multi-level governance”. In this context, the proposal should identify the right grouping and pairing participants able to bring the knowledge they acquired by participating in Mission-funded and Mission-related activities (for example, when testing adaptation solutions as part of Mission projects’ work) to other regions in the EU, with particular attention to vulnerable regions. Moreover, in some cases the scheme might group and /or pair, depending on demand, less advanced regions with front-runners. When developing the scheme, the proposal should ideally involve the National level into the peer learning scheme, including by ensuring that the best practices shared via the grouping scheme can also feed the National level in view of policy innovation (see point on Climate Law requirements).

Likewise, the grouping should be equally open and encouraged for Mission’s signatories to be clustered and/ or paired with other Mission’s signatories so as to complement ongoing matchmaking and peer learning efforts as part of the Mission Implementation Platform, and other Mission’s initiatives.

[1] COM(2023) 457 final: com_2023_457_1_en_act_part1.pdf (europa.eu)

[2] https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/52e75b81-537f-11ee-9220-01aa75ed71a1/language-en

[3] For example, the European Environment Information and Observation Network (Eionet)

[4] https://environment.ec.europa.eu/law-and-governance/environmental-implementation-review/peer-2-peer_en

[5] About TRAMI | TRAMI (trami5missions.eu)

[6] https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101121092

[7] Currently managed by MIP4Adapt under the contract CINEA/2022/OP/0013/SI2.884597 funded by the European Union. About MIP4Adapt (europa.eu)

[8] As defined in the Mission Implementation Plan: https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-09/climat_mission_implementation_plan_final_for_publication.pdf

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