Provide reliable information about:

  • potential climate change impacts and vulnerabilities,
  • adaptation and mitigation options and tools,
  • good practice examples, and
  • potential synergies and trade-offs between adaptation, mitigation and existing policies

to all stakeholders and the wider public. By mapping relevant stakeholders, you can identify their potential degree of influence on the issue and how to involve them.

Take care to:

  • bundle all relevant information sources,
  • improve access to understandable and usable information,
  • identify approaches and methods to fill knowledge gaps (like the vulnerability assessments for regional and local levels presented in step 2), and
  • secure financial resources and gather funding options.

Remember also that in most cases cross-boundary cooperation is required!

Through your political decisions, the climate change issue can be embedded into the existing plans through policy-instruments (e.g. fiscal, regulatory and motivational instruments, as well as voluntary agreements). It is also important to gain long term commitment and to clarify leadership.

Before policy choices can be made, decision makers must assess their regional circumstances. A vulnerability assessment is a useful approach to define the challenges, as well as opportunities, for your region. The final decisions will be made by the regional authority and may be influenced by regional political factors.