The European Topic Centre on Climate Change impacts, vulnerability and Adaptation (ETC/CCA) is a Consortium of European Organizations contracted by the European Environment Agency (EEA) to carry out specific tasks – as identified in the ETC/CCA annual Action Plan (AP) – coherently with the EEA five-year strategy and Multiannual Work Programme and specific EEA Single Programming Documents in the area of climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation (CCIVA) across Europe.
As such, the ETC/CCA is an integral part of and support to the European environment information and observation network (Eionet): the EEA partnership network which is crucial to the agency in collecting and organising data and in developing and disseminating information.
The ETC/CCA can be considered the successor of parts of the European Topic Centre on Air and Climate Change (ETC/ACC) and since 1 January 2011, it assists the EEA in supporting EU policy development on CCIVA and disaster risk prevention by providing relevant information and contributing to the harmonisation, quality assessment and exchange of data and/or information. This encompasses knowledge base, data and indicators on climate change and its impacts across sectors and regions, assessment of climate change vulnerabilities and natural hazard risks to society and ecosystems and current or planned adaptation strategies and actions, as well as capacity building in EEA member countries.
In particular, the ETC/CCA supports the implementation and review of the 2013 EU Strategy on Climate Change Adaptation, by assisting the EEA in maintaining the European Climate Adaptation Platform (Climate-ADAPT), which was launched jointly by DG CLIMA and EEA on 23 March 2012, as a follow-up of the EU Commission 2009 White paper on Adaptation to climate change and in preparing updated or new indicators and contributions to relevant assessment reports.
As climate change adaptation mainstreaming is broader and also covers many sectoral (e.g. agriculture, coastal areas, floods, water, mountain areas, etc.) and crosscutting policies (e.g. disaster risk reduction, cohesion, research), the ETC/CCA also provides support to the development of some main EU environmental policies such as on biodiversity (e.g. 2020 Biodiversity Strategy), water (e.g. Water Framework Directive (WFD), 2012 Blueprint for water) and ICZM (Integrated Coastal Zone Management) Strategy.
The ETC/CCA contributes to the five-yearly large assessment reports on the state and outlook of the environment(‘European State of the Environment and Outlook Report 2015’ – SOER 2015 being the most recent) as well as to more detailed thematic and sectoral assessments in the intermediate years (e.g. on freshwater, coastal systems, urban areas, transport).
The 2019-2021 ETC/CCA Consortium was made up of 15 Partner Organisations from EEA member countries that combine their thematic expertise in the area of CCIVA, led by the Italian Fondazione CMCC, Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici.
Fresh Thoughts supported the further development of CLIMATE-ADAPT and the development of specific reports related to adaptation.