Editor’s choice
Editor’s choice
This policy brief from the CASCADES project presents a number of Covid-19 lessons for European climate change research and policy.
A window from a refugee orange tent in Romania.
The impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic have raised concerns about the resilience of our interconnected world against major shocks and pressures that are foreseeable but uncertain in timing and effects. This crisis shows that when governments, businesses and communities are taken by surprise, they can adapt or create new strategies on the fly. However, these strategies do not prevent large-scale impacts on health, income, well-being the environment and social equality.
Overall, the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic suggests that the world is ill-prepared for the ongoing and accelerating societal and environmental risks induced by climate change. A pandemic is just one type of transboundary risk that may be exacerbated by climate change. Other combinations of climate events with environmental degradation will likely have wide-ranging implications for our global systems in the future. This will increase the need for greater international social-ecological resilience.
These lessons, which are explored in this briefing by the CASCADES project, should be taken as a new starting point when planning for future crises.
Project / CAScading Climate risks: towards ADaptive and resilient European Societies – an EU H2020 project assessing the interconnected impacts of climate change.
Perspective / SEI's Katy Harris and Richard Klein present four principles to foresee a climate-resilient Europe in a blog post published by the CASCADES project.
Perspective / The EU's Adaptation Strategy recognizes for the first time that adaptation creates winners and losers, and presents a vision for 'just' resilience.
Event on 20 June – 28 June / SEI colleagues are taking part in events at LCAW to highlight global leadership in industry and energy transitions, climate resilience finance, and adaptation.
