Strengthening regional resilience through climate adaptation planning

As part of the EU4ClimateResilience project devel­op­ing of region­al cli­mate change adap­ta­tion strate­gies for the Sumy and Dnipropetro­vsk regions has offi­cial­ly start­ed.

In May, stake­hold­ers gath­ered to dis­cuss the incep­tion report and method­ol­o­gy for assess­ing cli­mate risks and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and future staps to devel­op strate­gies. Key cli­mate threats iden­ti­fied for the regions include floods in the Desna and Dnipro riv­er basins, heat­waves, droughts, and an increas­ing risk of wild­fires. The project will pro­duce medi­um-term adap­ta­tion roadmaps for 2027–2031 and long-term plans extend­ing to 2040.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing in the launch event, Deputy Min­is­ter of Econ­o­my, Envi­ron­ment and Agri­cul­ture of Ukraine Olek­san­dr Kras­no­lut­skyi empha­sized:

Cli­mate change adap­ta­tion is a mat­ter of com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty, eco­nom­ic resilience, infra­struc­ture reli­a­bil­i­ty, and the capac­i­ty of regions to recov­er and devel­op. For Ukraine, these chal­lenges are par­tic­u­lar­ly press­ing in the con­text of the full-scale war. We must not only rebuild dam­aged infra­struc­ture but also embed the prin­ci­ples of long-term resilience and secu­ri­ty into all recon­struc­tion process­es. Cli­mate change-relat­ed chal­lenges require a sys­tem­at­ic approach to region­al devel­op­ment and recov­ery plan­ning. This is why, dur­ing the devel­op­ment of region­al adap­ta­tion strate­gies, it is essen­tial not only to iden­ti­fy pri­or­i­ty areas for strength­en­ing region­al resilience, but also to con­duct a com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment of cli­mate risks and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties.