Understanding and avoiding maladaptation to climate change

Expected outcome

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes: Existing evidence on maladaptation is retrieved comprehensively, and new knowledge is generated for incorporation into main EU repositories, such as Climate-ADAPT or the portal of the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change; The risk and adaptation assessment frameworks are improved by better integrating the maladaptation dimension; Guidelines and tools for maladaptation prevention and correction strategies are made available to adaptation stakeholders at relevant scales and inform the design and implementation of adaptation strategies and plans of the EU and Member States.

Scope

Recent climate records, showing unprecedented temperatures and extreme weather events, underscore the urgent need for rapid, systemic and comprehensive adaptation to address the escalating impacts of climate change on all natural and managed systems. However, while adaptation is essential, not fully informed measures can backfire, leading to severe unintended consequences or to short-term gains that are not sustainable. In this context, maladaptation refers to adaptation actions unintentionally leading to increased risk of adverse climate-related outcomes, including via increased greenhouse gas emissions or air pollutants, socio-economic, biodiversity and environmental trade-offs, increased or transferred vulnerability and greater social inequity. Most of the adaptation plans and implemented actions are relatively recent, so even if the cases of maladaptation are increasingly documented, the evidence is still scarce and sparse, as the latest IPCC reports confirm. There is a need to learn from the increasing evidence of maladaptation across sectors and regions, both in Europe and globally, to prevent maladaptation in policy design and implementation (e.g. of the EU Adaptation Strategy). Actions should address all the following aspects: Advance the understanding and identification of drivers that lead to maladaptation for a wide range of systems, socio-economic and environmental conditions. The analysis should be comprehensive and consider an integrated and systemic approach (including insights from Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) to maladaptation causes and drivers of very diverse nature, such as trade-offs and feedbacks with other priorities and sectors, poor decision making and implementation practices and the inherent uncertainty and other features of the adaptation process). The analysis should also integrate the perspectives of public and private stakeholders and end-users, apply intersectional approach and include data disaggregated by gender, where relevant and feasible. Map and analyse evidence to identify and validate effective adaptation practices that prevent maladaptation and help to identify maladaptive ones. Case studies should be used for this purpose, for monitoring and evaluation of the adaptation measures, policies, and actions at a local, regional, and national scale, and from regions and sectors with diverse characteristics and environmental conditions. Engagement of end-users is encouraged to ensure robust and realistic characterisation of maladaptation experiences. Among other sources, integrating evidence from and for the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change is encouraged. Evidence and insights gained should be systematized and incorporated into main EU repositories.

What this means for cities and regions

Regions and cities that already run adaptation plans and want to check them for unintended effects; results feed Climate-ADAPT and the Adaptation Mission portal. Topic budget €18 million; 3 grants expected; €5 million–€6 million per project. Opens 17 November 2026; closes 4 March 2027. Detecting whether a measure worked, or made things worse, needs long, consistent observation records — which Copernicus provides.