New tool: Check if your municipality or region is successfully avoiding maladaptation

Developing and implementing adaptation measures can be a challenging task, but local and regional authorities must try to avoid falling into the trap of maladaptation when they’re developing their adaptation plans.  

An adaptation plan is a document usually prepared by regional authorities outlining the strategy to adapt to certain effects of climate change, including some specific measures. Maladaptation refers to intentional adaptation measures that end up leading to negative effects, namely “an increased risk of adverse climate-related outcomes, increased vulnerability to climate change, or diminished welfare”, as defined by the IPCC.

The Regilience Tool

The EU Project REGILIENCE team developed a maladaptation checklist to give regions and local authorities a practical tool that enables adaptation planners to check for possible maladaptation outcomes.  

This tool is meant to support adaptation practitioners, helping them acknowledge the risks of maladaptation, recognise trade-offs and take more informed decisions in adaptation planning. To minimize the risk of subjective judgements, it is recommended that more than one person fills in the checklist to compare the results afterwards. This also helps to increase the awareness of maladaptation.   

With the REGILIENCE tool, you are guided through a checklist of 17 questions, each addressing a specific risk factor for maladaptation. By indicating 'yes/no/partially' in response to each question, you can assess the maladaptive potential of the planned adaptation strategy.

As a general rule, the more questions are answered with ‘no’ or ‘partially’, the higher is the maladaptation risk. Once the whole checklist has been completed, all questions marked with ‘no’ shall be further investigated, because they imply a potential risk of maladaptation. They mark specific issues where additional action is needed to minimise or mitigate the risk of negative outcomes. To do so, it is useful to consult the Climate-ADAPT Regional Adaptation Support Tool (RAST) and check the steps of the adaptation process specifically linked to potential maladaptation risks.

Please consider using this tool when undertaking your adaptation planning and assessing completed projects, and provide any feedback through this survey.