On 8-9 October Cerac attended the first Eionet Expert Workshop on climate change adaptation platforms. The objective of the Expert workshop was to explore how adaptation knowledge platforms can support adaptation to climate change in Europe. Experts from EEA Member countries, cooperating countries and adaptation platforms at transnational levels shared their experience in developing, operating and evaluating climate change adaptation platforms in Europe. The workshop built on the experience and lessons learnt from the different experts to assss best practices for informing adaptation policy, planning and capacity building.
Yet, some challenges remain. The lack of concrete and actionable measures proposed on the platform hinders the stakeholders’ implementation capacity on the ground. In relation to this, many participants pointed out the difficulties with selecting and presenting complex knowledge in a comprehensive and understandable way to reach the relevant target groups.
Several proposals were made to overcome these hurdles. The importance of targeting specific audiences and presenting practical and tangible case studies was notably mentioned in the proposal(s). Success (and also less successful) stories are a good way to improve capacity building at local level in the future. And as always it is essential to connect projects and available information to enable stakeholders to benefit from each other in the design of best solutions.