Urban adaptation in Europe: Implementing climate action in European cities
Our climate is changing. It can no longer be ignored. Temperatures across Europe are rising even faster than the global average. The direct and indirect effects of this can be potentially devastating to the environment and our quality of life (EEA, 2024a). Mitigating the further impacts of climate change by limiting greenhouse gas emissions and reducing resource use will not be enough: we need to adapt to the changes already seen in our climate and prepare our society for further expected changes in the near future.
Adapting to climate hazards is not new, with measures such as relocation or the installation of sea walls having been used for centuries. However, today’s climate is changing at an accelerated rate, compounded by megatrends such as urbanisation, biodiversity loss, pollution and unsustainable consumerism. Effective adaptation actions and policies can and should be tailored to simultaneously address these additional trends. The benefits of action in cities go beyond reducing the direct impacts of climate change and bring a multitude of additional positives, such as health and well-being, quality of life and social sustainability.
Almost three quarters (74.8%) of the European population is estimated to have lived in urban areas in 2021 (EUROSTAT), and the overall share of artificial (sealed) surface increased by over 6% between 2000 and 2018 (EEA, 2019). High population density, combined with high degrees of soil sealing and compounding factors, such as high pollution and inequality, can lead to urban populations being more exposed and vulnerable to the impacts of a warming climate.
Europe has some of the oldest city centres in the world, with 42% of all buildings built before 1950. Europe’s renovation rate lies at around 1% of buildings per year (Economidou et al., 2019). This means that infrastructures are usually old and are not easily and frequently maintained. Buildings are not necessarily adapted to the current climate conditions or to future climate conditions. Life expectancy in Europe is increasing and birth rates are decreasing. This means that we will have an increasingly older population which may be more vulnerable to climate change. On average, people in Europe now live 5 years longer than they did in 1995 (EC-DG ECFIN, 2018).
While urbanisation and urban sprawl remain an issue, almost half of Europe’s cities are actually shrinking in terms of losing population. This brings additional concerns on retrofitting and adjusting infrastructures to the changing needs of the population, compounded by the need to adapt the built environment to future climate conditions. However, cities are often very progressive in taking climate action. For example,
European cities’ signatory to the Covenant of Mayors (CoM) signed an overall commitment to reduce their emissions of 27% by 2020 (Kona et al., 2018), which was well above the minimum requested EU target at the time (20%). Moreover, the implementation of specific known climate adaptation measures, experimentation and innovation are often done at the local level, meaning that this is where real change
can happen.
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