PEER Climate Change Projects
November 2007 two joint PEER projects were launched:
- Project 1: Comparative Analysis of European national adaptation strategies, (coordinated by Rob Swart, ALTERRA)
- Project 2: Policy Integration, Coherence and Governance, (coordinated by Per Mickwitz, SYKE)
These projects were finished in 2009. They were voluntarily organised by the PEER partners using mostly internal funding and being carried out in partnership with research organisations and government bodies beyond PEER. The projects aimed at producing scientific evidence relevant for climate change policy marking.
This initiative has lead to publicition in a scientific journal:
Biesbroek, G.R., R.J. Swart, T.R. Carter, C. Cowan, T. Henrichs, H. Mela, M.D. Morecroft and D. Rey, 2010. Europe adapts to climate change: Comparing National Adaptation Strategies. Global Environmental Change, Volume 20, Issue 3, August 2010, Pages 440-450
PEER partners participating in the 1st two PEER climate projects are currently involved in other European projects in the area of climate change adaptation. This includes the FP7 project MEDIATION (Methodology for Effective Decision-making on Impacts and AdaptaTION), led by Alterra with participation of SYKE, and the European Environment Agency's new European Topic Centre on Climate Change Adaptation (led by the Italian CMCC with Alterra, SYKE, DCE and UFZ as PEER-partners). Individual PEER partners are involved in various other follow-up projects with non-PEER partners.
The projects are the result of a joint statement PEER published on the 7th of May 2007 "Climate change and sustainable development – an unprecedented challenge for the research community". In this statement the PEER centres proposed a joint initiative to analyse and explore novel approaches to mitigation and adaptation, inviting regional, national, European and global research partners to participate in this initiative. The aim is to build an open European platform that brings together expertise and exchanges information on the best approaches to mitigate and adapt to climate change.