Brussels, 23/03/2012 (Agence Europe) - Climate-Adapt, a new interactive tool to create policies to adapt to climate change by pooling information, was put online on Friday 23 March by the European Environment Agency (EEA), which will host and manage it. This European climate change adaptation platform, which is accessible to the general public (http://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu ), aims to help political decision-makers at all levels - European, national, regional and local - in creating measures and policies which are up to the job of anticipating the harmful effects of global warming in order to prevent them and limit their scope. Its official launch took place in Copenhagen at a ceremony attended by Jacquelince McGlade, executive director of the EEA, and Connie Hedegaard, European Climate Action Commissioner.
“We are too bad at sharing best practices as well as information on what not to do. This new interactive tool will make efforts much more efficient”, said Connie Hedegaard.
Created with the support of the European scientific and political community, Climate-Adapt will allow users to have access to information regarding: climate change anticipated in Europe; the vulnerability of the regions, countries and sectors, today and in the future; national adaptation strategies and activities; case studies on current and future adaptation options; assistance tools for planning climate change adaption, research projects; orientation documents, reports, information sources, links to news and events on adaptation to climate change. The knowledge input of Climate-Adapt will serve as a basis for creating an EU adaptation strategy, which the Commission is planning to present early in 2013. Much is at stake, because according to the PESETA study carried out by the EU Joint Research Centre, without adaptation to climate change and if climate forecasts for the 2080s were to come about today, the damage to the economy of the EU would be in the order of €20-€65 billion a year. (AN/transl.fl)