New survey on climate change adaptation in Europe

Denis McClean in the news archive of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction: There are strong links between climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) across several European countries according to the results of a survey presented by a Working Group on Climate Change Adaptation, chaired by Norway, at the European Forum on Disaster Risk Reduction in Croatia this week.

Out of 23 survey respondents, 14 confirmed they had carried out an assessment of overall vulnerability to climate change. Only 19 respondents answered the questionnaire fully.  "This is still an emerging issue and we should keep the focus on climate change adaptation to ensure that it is adequately addressed in the new framework on disaster risk reduction which will be agreed in 2015," said Working Group chairman, Dag Olav Hogvold, Senior Adviser, Directorate for Civil Protection and Emergency Planning, Norway.

Eleven of 19 responding countries stated that they have disaster risk reduction legislation which enables climate change adaptation to be part of national or local work on disaster risk reduction. There were four negative responses.  At the same time, five out of 17 countries answering the question, stated that legislation on climate change adaptation enables links between climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction....

Rain in Denmark, shot by Malene Thyssen, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license