Adaptation to climate change – are governments prepared? – a cooperative audit

This joint report presents a cooperative audit based on eight individual national audit reports from Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia and Ukraine, and a fact-finding study by the European Court of Auditors. It reveals that the eight countries are in an early stage in adapting to climate change, and, so far, adaptation activities are related to identifying risk and vulnerabilities and to some extent policy development.

Although the national audits reveal that most countries have prepared risk and vulnerability assessments of sufficient quality, only two of them had developed a comprehensive adaptation strategy. The report discusses the fact that in most countries, weaknesses in coordination of adaptation are identified, and there is also a general lack of cost estimates of impacts of climate change or adaptation measures in policy documents. This increases the risk that climate change and adaptation issues are not being sufficiently addressed in decision-making processes.