Climate adaptation : measuring performance, defining targets and ensuring sustainability

Adapting to the inevitable impacts of climate changes is unavoidable and action is needed at all levels of governance. Local and regional authorities (LRAs) are increasingly designing and implementing adaptation strategies and/or plans. As different policy-makers progress with their adaptation actions, consistent assessments of progress and performance become more important as also highlighted in the updated EU Adaptation Strategy. This also means that LRAs will be increasingly expected to assess the performance of their adaptation measures. This study aims to support LRAs by providing practical recommendations on how the performance of adaptation measures can be assessed, progress measured, and targets defined based on insights from existing academic and grey literature as well as from examples of local and regional adaptation plans. For this purpose, the experiences of three cities (Athens, Kielce and Stockholm) and two regions (Flanders and North Rhine-Westphalia) with adaptation plans were researched.