Resilience in practice: Leading Europe’s shift towards systemic climate adaptation
Regions in Europe are increasingly exposed to climate extremes – from devastating floods and droughts to rising sea levels and biodiversity collapse. However, adaptation efforts are often reactive and lack the cohesion needed to tackle the systemic nature of the climate crisis. At Climate KIC, we’re working to change that. Through the Regional Resilience Journey, we help regions move from short-term fixes to long-term, systemic transformation – supporting communities to co-design adaptation strategies that are inclusive, rooted in place, and aligned across governance levels.
At the centre of this shift is ARCADIA: a flagship Horizon Europe project that brings together eight European regions to embed nature-based solutions into the heart of climate adaptation planning. While ARCADIA is leading this shift, its principles are reflected in other Climate KIC-supported projects, such as DesirMED and NBRACER. Together, they are turning the Regional Resilience Journey from a framework into practical outcomes.
Redefining adaptation: ARCADIA’s systemic approach
What distinguishes ARCADIA is how nature-based solutions are positioned within wider systems of governance, land use, finance, and public behaviour. Across the project’s network of model and fellow regions, Co-Innovation Labs serve as catalysts for experimentation, bringing together local authorities, researchers, landowners, and citizens to co-create context-specific solutions.
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What are nature-based solutions? “Solutions that are inspired and supported by nature, which are cost-effective, simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits and help build resilience. Such solutions bring more, and more diverse, nature and natural features and processes into cities, landscapes and seascapes, through locally adapted, resource-efficient and systemic interventions.” |
In Emilia-Romagna, for instance, the aftermath of recent floods has led to a renewed focus on the role of mountainous areas in regional safety. Here, ARCADIA is supporting municipal authorities to explore how sustainable management of upland ecosystems can reduce downstream risk and anchor wider resilience planning.
Meanwhile, in Lower Austria, where over half the municipalities participate in climate adaptation networks, ARCADIA is helping integrate nature-based solutions into flood risk strategies and regional policies through three collaborative labs that bridge research, policy and practice.
ARCADIA’s partners in Denmark’s Funen region are tackling one of the project’s most complex challenges: how to align nature-based water management across five municipalities and a shared fjord ecosystem. By building a ‘Water Cycle Master Plan’ and running labs on sustainable drainage, cross-sector collaboration, and catchment restoration, the region is pioneering governance models that are as systemic as the hydrological cycles they aim to influence.
Across the border in southern Sweden, ARCADIA’s focus has turned to the transitional zones between rural and urban – where land pressures, biodiversity loss, and flood risks converge. In the Skåne region, cities like Malmö, Helsingborg and Lund are working with local landowners and researchers to create blue-green corridors that both manage water and support ecosystems. These networks are designed to mitigate impact while integrating natural diversity into suburban and agricultural life.
What ties these efforts together is a shared commitment to adaptation grounded in place but connected across geographies. Knowledge shared between model and fellow regions has enabled places like Zagreb, where brownfield regeneration is addressing urban heat and flooding, to build on the experience of more advanced sites.
In Romania’s Centru region, the presence of Natura 2000 sites has opened a pathway to align biodiversity protection with energy efficiency and land-use reform. A recent workshop showed the growing potential of regional collaboration:
“It was a great starting point for our region and stakeholders to get familiar with the Scorecard,” said project partner, Gabriela Tarau. “The workshop was very well received by the 37 participants. The group-based format worked well, and even when scores varied significantly between stakeholders, it was a good opportunity to foster engagement and dialogue.”
The recent ARCADIA workshop, which took place in Romania.
And in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, the challenge of transforming an industrial base into a climate-neutral zone is being tackled through afforestation, green corridors, and urban planning – with support from regions that have undergone similar processes. As part of this effort, regional stakeholders came together for a round table on water resources management using nature-based solutions, where the Agricultural University of Plovdiv focused attention on sustainable water management. The event helped raise awareness of how nature-based solutions can support basin-level planning and stimulate action at both municipal and regional levels.
Meanwhile, in Slovenia’s Podravje region, restoration of the Mura-Drava-Danube river network is being coupled with institutional leadership from the regional energy agency ENERGAP. In the town of Ptuj, one of the region’s climate hotspots, a local pond has caused repeated flooding near a school and park:
“Heavy rainfall in short periods has made flooding much more common in the last eight years,” explained regional partner, Mirjana Nenad. “This pond received an intervention in 2023 with the implementation of a nature-based solution called a detention basin.”
Beyond ARCADIA: A broader ecosystem of resilience
While ARCADIA provides an example of the Regional Resilience Journey in action, its principles resonate across other parts of Climate KIC’s adaptation portfolio. In the Mediterranean, DesirMED is piloting constructed wetlands for rural wastewater treatment in Greece, and empowering Croatian students to design school gardens grounded in permaculture principles. These initiatives combine practical impact with community learning – helping to shift mindsets as well as systems.
In Denmark’s Central Region, the NBRACER project is reimagining wastewater infrastructure by integrating nature-based solutions into ageing grey systems. A pilot in Lemvig is demonstrating how climate-resilient design can reduce costs and environmental impact, while acting as a platform for innovation among SMEs. Meanwhile, in the Dutch province of Fryslân, regional stakeholders have come together to chart the steps needed to turn bold nature-based visions into implementable roadmaps. Through the identification of barriers, enablers and governance gaps, the project is helping the region move from principles to practice.
These efforts strengthen the argument that climate resilience cannot be achieved through isolated projects or top-down mandates, but through building new relationships between people and ecosystems, government and community, and present needs and future risks.
A blueprint for European adaptation?
ARCADIA illustrates what is possible when systemic thinking meets regional ambition. Its Co-Innovation Labs, behavioural tools, and governance experiments are the building blocks for a new approach to adaptation. And as other projects adopt and adapt this model, the Regional Resilience Journey is becoming a model for Europe’s climate resilience.
Climate KIC works with communities, regions, and partners to build climate-resilient societies and tackle the root causes of climate breakdown. Through systemic innovation and collaboration, we support local solutions that enhance the resilience of people, ecosystems and economies to the growing impacts of climate change. Our #AdaptationInAction series highlights stories from our global adaptation portfolio, real examples of resilience in action. This is one of them.
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