PRO-CLIMATE has submitted D6.1, the project’s first draft policy papers – six regional analyses and one European-level synthesis built directly on what stakeholders told us in this year’s Living Lab workshops.

Between September and December 2025, PRO-CLIMATE’s six Living Labs. Sligo (Ireland), Leipzig (Germany), Badajoz Province (Spain), Bergen (Norway), Gdańsk (Poland) and Zakynthos (Greece) brought together public administrations, researchers, civil society groups and local stakeholders for a series of participatory workshops. The goal: identify, in each region’s own words, what is actually standing in the way of climate adaptation on the ground.

The result is D6.1: Policy Papers Draft Version, submitted under WP6. It’s the first time PRO-CLIMATE has translated two years of fieldwork (governance assessments, stakeholder mapping and Living Lab dialogue) into concrete policy directions.

The core finding: this is a governance problem, not a technical one

Across all six regions, one conclusion came through clearly: the knowledge, strategies and pilot projects needed for climate adaptation largely already exist. What holds implementation back is fragmented governance, weak coordination between institutions, limited administrative capacity, and tension between environmental goals and economic or political pressures.

To make sense of this, the papers look at each region through three connected lenses – the micro level (individual behaviour, participation, trust), the meso level (institutions and coordination) and the macro level (politics, structural and economic pressures).

What each region is grappling with

• Sligo, Ireland: Strong citizen engagement and citizen-science traditions, but participation fatigue and weak coordination across governance levels are slowing follow-through.
• Leipzig, Germany: Adaptation is as much a communication and trust challenge as a technical one, playing out against a backdrop of political tension around urban transformation.
• Badajoz Province, Spain: Climate measures intersect with rural depopulation and economic vulnerability; adaptation is sometimes seen as a constraint rather than an opportunity.
• Bergen, Norway: Land-use governance is the crunch point, as urban expansion competes with biodiversity and climate priorities across multiple planning authorities.
• Gdańsk, Poland: Expertise and funding exist, but administrative complexity and fragmented responsibilities make it hard to prioritise long-term investment.
• Zakynthos, Greece: Tourism development, water scarcity and fragmented governance are colliding, pushing the region to rethink its identity beyond mass tourism.

A European-level pattern

Zooming out, the European synthesis paper identifies a shared “implementation gap”: fragile public participation at the micro level, institutional fragmentation at the meso level, and structural tensions (between environmental protection, economic development and short political cycles) at the macro level. These levels reinforce one another: weak coordination undermines trust, and fragmented governance makes participation harder to sustain.

The papers point to a single, high-leverage fix that runs through nearly every region: stronger coordination. Better-aligned governance levels, clearer institutional responsibilities and more genuine participation don’t just speed up implementation, they rebuild the public trust that adaptation efforts depend on. In that sense, the papers argue, climate adaptation governance is not only a technical or administrative question, but a democratic one.

What’s next

This is a first draft Version 1.0, submitted 30 June 2026. The recommendations will continue to develop as PRO-CLIMATE’s modelling and scenario work (including the TransCliR simulation tool) feeds back into the policy process over the coming months.