IMPETUS: turning climate commitments into action

Description

Working with local citizens, policy-makers and businesses in our demonstration sites around Europe, our multidisciplinary teams are analysing solutions, boosting knowledge, and creating packages of climate-change adaptation measures that other communities can use as a pathway towards a climate-neutral and sustainable future.

IMPETUS has demonstration sites in 7 of Europe’s 11 biogeographical regions, as defined by the European Environment Agency. In these sites, our project teams are:

• engaging with local communities, policy-makers and businesses in co-creation of knowledge, policies and innovative approaches relevant to their situation;
• testing various relevant technologies and nature-based solutions that will mitigate the local impacts of climate change;
• encouraging ‘ownership’ of adaptation measures by local stakeholders so they sustain activities after IMPETUS project ends;
• gathering knowledge about scientific, technical, social and policy developments in local ‘Resilience Knowledge Booster’ (RKB) hubs;
• knowledge sharing at local and regional level through events, learning materials, promotional activities etc. centred around the RKBs.

IMPETUS results will be further disseminated and amplified by:

• coordinating with related projects;
• interconnecting the RKBs with other active communities and organisations to scale-up citizen engagement and share lessons learned more widely across Europe, increasing the number of communities that become more resilient to climate change impacts.

Aim

IMPETUS was launched in October 2021 with the objective: turn climate commitments into tangible, urgent actions to protect communities and the planet. With a 14.8 million euro budget and 32 partners in 9 countries, IMPETUS is one of the EU Green Deal flagship projects, a 4-year programme that will accelerate Europe's response to climate change and support the European Union’s ambitions to become the world’s first climate-neutral continent by 2050. IMPETUS is working in close collaboration with sister climate-change projects REGILIENCE, ARSINOE and TransformAr, overseen by CINEA, the European Climate Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency. The IMPETUS project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme in the Green Deal call, under grant agreement No 101037084.

How to participate

The first opportunity to get involved in IMPETUS regional activities is to share knowledge, expertise, concerns and ideas about regional climate change impacts and solutions via our regional surveys. Members of the public, researchers, environmental groups, industry, media, local governance and other interested parties are invited by IMPETUS partners in our 7 regions to complete these 15-minute surveys, which are available in English and in local languages for Berlin metropolitan region (Germany), coastal Catalonia (Spain), Attica (Greece), Zeeland and Rijnmond (Netherlands), Troms and Finnmark (Norway), Zemgale (Latvia), Valle dei Laghi in Trentino (Italy).

Links to all the different regional language surveys as well as articles explaining each regional situation, partners and climate change challenges are available via the IMPETUS survey launch news story.

Based on survey inputs, the initial plan for regional engagement activities will be defined and further invotations to participate will be issued, so that citizens can further shape the programme of activities.

Equipment