Peer reviews on transformative innovation for climate change adaptation : the urban case of Turku

Within the frame of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) work on transformative innovation for climate resilience, in collaboration with DG CLIMA as orchestrator of the European Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change and DG Research and Innovation, JRC's Unit B7 "Innovation policies and economic Impact" organised in Autumn 2024 a series of on-line Peer Review workshops on "Transformative Innovation for better Climate Change Adaptation". The Peer Reviews followed up on territorial case studies published throughout 2024 that also served as a starting point of the analysis of Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) implementation bottlenecks. Among the 16 territories covered by the case studies, three territories volunteered to undergo this peer review process. These three territories are also representative of three territorial levels: National (Slovenia), regional (region Blekinge, Sweden) and urban (City of Turku, Finland). The peer review format was tested to federate the experience of peers from other territories across Europe on how to best address CCA bottlenecks and to help volunteering territories to define pathways towards integrating transformative innovation in their climate adaptation strategies. Since the topic is complex and nobody has the full answer, creating a safe space for peer exchanges based on openness and 'no naming and shaming' was the method proposed in the peer reviews under the Chatham House rule. The three peer review reports, based on the three aforementioned territorial levels, aim to lay the ground for the strong and urgent imperative to deploy adaptation strategies at the right territorial level and compile the testimonies shared by peers from other territories to overcome specific bottlenecks in implementing their CCA strategies.