Overview of the project

The first global initiative for regional governments to take concrete action, cooperate and report efforts on climate adaptation.

Driven by the governments of Rio de Janeiro and Catalonia, RegionsAdapt was launched on 3 December 2015, alongside COP 21 in Paris. It is open to all governments situated between the local and national level from across the world, regardless of their size or stage of implementation of their climate policy.

Since its launch, the initiative grew from its 27 founding members to almost 70 signatory participants, which represent a combined population of more than 295 million inhabitants from 26 countries on 5 continents.

The RegionsAdapt initiative is a global framework to inspire and support regional governments to take concrete action, collaborate and report efforts on climate change adaptation. With their participation regional governments join an ambitious group of governments pioneering in climate change adaptation, having the opportunity for extensive communication with other governments and thereby learning best practices and share solutions to certain challenges.

More specifically, RegionsAdapt is a platform for:

• Tracking regional adaptation plans and strategies across the world;
• Promoting the acceleration of the adoption or revision of regional climate adaptation plans and strategies;
• Promoting concrete actions on adaptation;
• Regions to cooperate and share best practices within their different capacities and experiences on climate adaptation;
• Reporting and monitoring adaptation processes, actions and their outcomes;
• Fostering visibility opportunities through dedicated materials, publications and events.

The initiative has seven thematic areas:

1. Water Resources and Management;
2. Resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction;
3. Agriculture and Zootechnics;
4. Forestry, Protected Areas and Biodiversity;
5. Infrastructure and Territorial Planning;
6. Economic Impacts and Opportunities; and
7. Social Impacts and Adaptation.