At the end of February the EU Commission adopted a new EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change, setting out the pathway to prepare for the unavoidable impacts of climate change.

Building on the 2013 Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, the aim of this proposals is to shift the focus from understanding the problem to developing solutions, and to move from planning to implementation.Economic losses from more frequent climate-related extreme weather are increasing. In the EU, these losses alone already average over €12 billion per year. Conservative estimates show that exposing today's EU economy to global warming of 3°C above pre-industrial levels would result in an annual loss of at least €170 billion. Climate change affects not only the economy, but also the health and well-being of Europeans, who increasingly suffer from heat waves; the deadliest natural disaster of 2019 worldwide was the European heatwave, with 2500 deaths.

• View the Communication Forging a climate-resilient Europe – the new EU Strategy on Adaptation to Climate Change
• View the Q&A document
• View the Speech by EVP Timmermans

Source: the European Commission