Report on the current status quo on EU knowledge on climate adaptation & smart specialization
Across Europe, climate adaptation policies are gaining ground. At the same time, regions are shaping their development pathways through smart specialisation, using innovation and investment to drive long-term transformation. What is less clear is how these two agendas connect in practice, and what that connection means for citizens and cities.
To explore this, we published a report that examines the current status quo on EU knowledge on climate adaptation & smart specialization. Our work looked across EU-funded projects, knowledge platforms, strategic documents, and practical materials to understand how climate adaptation connects with regional innovation and development priorities. What emerges is a relationship that is clearly present, but far from straightforward.
Our main finding is that the relationship between climate adaptation and smart specialization within the EU knowledge landscape is real, but fragmented. It is promising, yet uneven, and often remains more implicit than explicit.
Across sources, climate adaptation is consistently connected to regional transformation and innovation. It is consistently tied to regional transformation. It appears through tools and approaches such as assessment frameworks, decision-support systems, modelling, monitoring, stakeholder engagement, and capacity-building. This pattern shows up repeatedly, even within the same project portfolios, suggesting that the connection is not accidental but embedded in how adaptation policies are being developed.
At the same time, this raises questions about justice. While social cohesion and fairness are often mentioned, they are not consistently built into how adaptation and innovation are designed or assessed. Differences between regions, uneven capacities, and access to resources all shape how these agendas come together. In some cases, the links are clear and supported by concrete tools. In others, they remain vague, making it difficult to understand who benefits and who may be left behind. Looking more closely at the material highlights three recurring gaps.
First, maladaptation is rarely addressed directly. It appears indirectly through discussions on vulnerability, governance, or territorial targeting, but is not treated as a clear category in its own right.
Second, climate justice and social cohesion are not well operationalised. They are often linked to jobs, skills, or inclusion, but less to uneven climate impacts, exposure, or territorial inequalities.
Third, monitoring remains weak. Adaptation is frequently referenced in strategies, but rarely supported by clear indicators, evaluation frameworks, or consistent tracking over time.
These gaps make it harder to translate adaptation into practice and to align it with regional development in a meaningful way. A broader issue also becomes clear. The knowledge is there, but it is fragmented. Information sits across different platforms and documents that are not designed to connect. This makes it difficult to trace how adaptation fits into smart specialisation priorities, or how social and territorial aspects are reflected in decisions. It also creates a gap between high-level strategies and what is actually usable on the ground.
The JustREACH project builds on this by bringing these scattered sources together into a single analytical approach through the Integrated Just Resilience Framework. The aim is to make existing patterns visible and move to a more structured understanding that can support decision-making in practice. What becomes clear is that the relationship between climate adaptation, justice, and regional development is not linear, but made up of overlapping processes shaped by different actors, tools, and priorities. Understanding this complexity is a necessary step. Without it, it remains difficult to align adaptation efforts with broader development goals in a way that is both effective and fair.