Understanding and avoiding maladaptation to climate change
Forthcoming
Status as published by the data source.
Expected Outcome:
Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following outcomes:
• Existing evidence on maladaptation is retrieved comprehensively, and new knowledge is generated for incorporation into main EU repositories, such as Climate-ADAPT or the portal of the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change;
• The risk and adaptation assessment frameworks are improved by better integrating the maladaptation dimension;
• Guidelines and tools for maladaptation prevention and correction strategies are made available to adaptation stakeholders at relevant scales and inform the design and implementation of adaptation strategies and plans of the EU and Member States. Scope:
Recent climate records, showing unprecedented temperatures and extreme weather events, underscore the urgent need for rapid, systemic and comprehensive adaptation to address the escalating impacts of climate change on all natural and managed systems. However, while adaptation is essential, not fully informed measures can backfire, leading to severe unintended consequences or to short-term gains that are not sustainable. In this context, maladaptation refers to adaptation actions unintentionally leading to increased risk of adverse climate-related outcomes, including via increased greenhouse gas emissions or air pollutants, socio-economic, biodiversity and environmental trade-offs, increased or transferred vulnerability and greater social inequity.
Most of the adaptation plans and implemented actions are relatively recent, so even if the cases of maladaptation are increasingly documented, the evidence is still scarce and sparse, as the latest IPCC reports confirm. There is a need to learn from the increasing evidence of maladaptation across sectors and regions, both in Europe and globally, to prevent maladaptation in policy design and implementation (e.g. of the EU Adaptation Strategy).
Actions should address all the following aspects:
• Advance the understanding and identification of drivers that lead to maladaptation for a wide range of systems, socio-economic and environmental conditions. The analysis should be comprehensive and consider an integrated and systemic approach (including insights from Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) to maladaptation causes and drivers of very diverse nature, such as trade-offs and feedbacks with other priorities and sectors, poor decision making and implementation practices and the inherent uncertainty and other features of the adaptation process). The analysis should also integrate the perspectives of public and private stakeholders and end-users, apply intersectional approach and include data disaggregated by gender, where relevant and feasible.
• Map and analyse evidence to identify and validate effective adaptation practices that prevent maladaptation and help to identify maladaptive ones. Case studies should be used for this purpose, for monitoring and evaluation of the adaptation measures, policies, and actions at a local, regional, and national scale, and from regions and sectors with diverse characteristics and environmental conditions. Engagement of end-users is encouraged to ensure robust and realistic characterisation of maladaptation experiences. Among other sources, integrating evidence from and for the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change is encouraged. Evidence and insights gained should be systematized and incorporated into main EU repositories.
• Strengthen the methodological and analytical toolbox for complex climate risk and adaptation assessments to increase public understanding and policy awareness of maladaptation risks, and to advance both qualitative and quantitative understanding of the most important complex risk feedbacks, particularly when they may result in significant constraints on options for climate action.
• Study and propose corrective responses for the identified maladaptation cases and provide systematised prevention guidelines and best practice examples to avoid maladaptive outcomes. Coordination and collaboration with most relevant on-going projects from Mission Adaptation, Cluster 5 Destination 1 “Climate Science and Responses" and from relevant Destinations from other Clusters is encouraged, especially for evidence retrieval, national scale assessment and methodological consistency. Specific resources should be devoted to this purpose and project scientific boards should cross-fertilised. Actions’ results should also contribute to future European Climate Risk Assessments.
- Status
- Forthcoming
- Deadline
- (time not stated)
- Opens
- Published
- Total budget
- €18,000,000
- Grant range
- €5,000,000 – €6,000,000
- Country
- European Union (EU-wide)
- Programme
- Horizon Europe (HORIZON)
- Official page
- Open at the source portal
Other calls under Horizon Europe (HORIZON)
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- Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADSM) for more efficient and flexible distribution grids
- Community of practice - Data-Driven Decision-Making in Energy
- Industrial processes and equipment for innovative, reliable and scalable tandem technologies (EUPI-PV Partnership)
- Integrated Approaches for Retrofitting Infrastructures with Innovative Energy Storage Technologies
- Demonstration of hydropower technologies for efficient and forward-looking refurbishment of existing hydropower plants
- Delivery of industrial CCUS clusters – Societal Readiness pilot
All calls under this programme
Similar opportunities
- Advancing understanding, modelling and prediction of extreme events in a changing climate
- Standardising and supporting climate services for climate adaptation
- Bridging the gap between disaster risk management and climate adaptation
- Climate Change Adaptation
- Climate security and civil preparedness – new ways to develop pre- and post-crisis climate-change related scenarios for a more resilient Europe
- Facilitating implementation of actionable solutions for climate adaptation of regions and local authorities
Where this came from
- Source document
- https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/data/topicDetails/horizon-cl5-2027-01-d1-10.json
- Document fingerprint
a46377ebc6ee41f4(SHA-256, first 16 hex characters)- Retrieved
- First recorded here
What has changed
- url first recorded as https://ec.europa.eu/info/funding-tenders/opportunities/portal/screen/opportunities/topic-details/horizon-cl5-2027-01-d1-10 on
- currency first recorded as EUR on
- amount_max first recorded as 6000000.00 on
- amount_min first recorded as 5000000.00 on
- budget_total first recorded as 18000000.00 on
- deadline first recorded as 2027-03-04 on
- opens_on first recorded as 2026-11-17 on
- published_on first recorded as 2025-12-12 on
- status_basis first recorded as source_status on
- status first recorded as forthcoming on
- title first recorded as Understanding and avoiding maladaptation to climate change on
Data source
© European Union, 2026. Source: EU Funding & Tenders Portal. Reused under Commission Decision 2011/833/EU — CC BY 4.0.
Retrieved from the source on .
The source last updated this document on Mon, 02 Mar 2026 09:41:10 GMT.
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