Using Key Type Measures to report climate adaptation action in the EEA member countries

This Technical Paper provides an initial assessment on the Key Type of Measures (KTMs) of climate change adaptation that were reported by the EEA member countries, on a voluntary basis, under the Energy Union Governance Regulation and its specification in the Implementing Act. It also discusses the main challenges of reporting on KTMs and options to overcome them in view of the next reporting cycle.

26 Nov 2021

Markus Leitner (Environment Agency Austria, EAA - ETC/CCA) Katie Johnson (Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC - ETC/CCA) Wouter Vanneuville (European Environment Agency, EEA), Thomas Dworak (Fresh Thoughts, FT - ETC/CCA) Tiago Capela Lourenço (FCiências.ID, University of Lisbon - ETC/CCA) Wolfgang Lexer (EAA - ETC/CCA) Angelika Tamasova (European Environment Agency, EEA) Andrea Prutsch (EAA - ETC/CCA)

Eight EU Member States (Austria, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Hungary, Portugal and Slovakia) reported in total 228 Key Type of Measures (KTMs) in 2021. Measures were reported under each of the five categories of KTMs and eleven categories of Sub-KTMs. KTMs reported thus far serve for inspiration and there is certainly a big diversity of adaptation actions and measures taken at the EU Member States level. This ETC/CCA report is about the use of KTMs to report on actions and (programmes of) measures for adaptation. The rationale, approach and added value were described in 2020 in an ETC/CCA report and in 2021 tested as a voluntary element in the national adaptation reporting under the Energy Union Governance Regulation. Only because an EU Member State did not report KTMs or a low number of KTMs does not mean that no or little work on adaptation is being performed. The governance of adaptation and a potential focus of mainstreaming of adaptation into different, e.g., sectoral policies can be a reason why fewer KTMs are reported at the national level. Moreover, for those countries who reported KTMs, the reporting result does not reflect the country’s priorities. For any of them, it is a subset of all activities ongoing at the different governance levels, and for most of them, there are ambiguous methodologies to tag all measures that are adaptation-relevant. Because reporting requirements are continuously developing as adaptation policies evolve, the reported KTMs will also evolve over time and there might be a need for modifying the KTMs categorisation in future.