Risk levels and priorities: financing climate adaptation requires clear decisions
As the European Commission prepares an integrated framework on climate resilience and risk management for the EU, the public consultation has just wrapped up – an important step towards the publication of the proposals for the framework later this year.
One of the main areas of focus will be the issue of financing adaptation, with the first key challenge being to mainstream the concept of resilience by design into all European funding currently under discussion, including structural policies such as the Common Agricultural Policy and the Connecting Europe Facility.
But while we need to invest better, we also need to invest more – at European level and in each Member State – to ensure climate resilience, a key component of European security and the continent’s economy.
The question is how much and in what. The difficulty lies not in a lack of analysis but in the absence of clear decisions on adaptation choices at all levels of government. What level of risk are we prepared to accept? And above all, what responses do we want to prioritise: which activities are we seeking to maintain at all costs, and what are we prepared to transform?
Our work in France has already shown that adopting a reference trajectory – currently being considered at European level – provides a solid basis for clarifying the question of the risk to be considered. The preferred responses must be the subject of policy dialogue on a sector-by-sector and region-by-region basis. It is a question of understanding dependencies and making coherent strategic choices in terms of planning, equipment, technologies and solidarity.
Close monitoring of expenditure contributing to adaptation shows that preparing for a changing climate has many co-benefits: it also means testing new technologies, helping to ensure the sovereignty of essential sectors, strengthening the robustness of critical infrastructure, and making agricultural, tourism and industrial development bets that may prove successful.
A clear understanding of these collective gains and how they are distributed is essential for developing the economic models that will provide the necessary fundings to meet this challenge. We come to the same conclusion when we consider the conditions for financing adaptation in developing countries. This is a central subject of I4CE‘s work programme in France, Europe and internationally in 2026.
