Proposals should integrate multi-faceted technological, digital, business, governance and environmental aspects with social innovation into the development of solutions contributing to increase preparedness to changing climate for specific regions, cities or local communities. For example, they should assess and identify management solutions that best minimise and compensate the loss of ecosystem services (e.g., water cycling and cooling that were previously provided by soil and trees) while improving climate preparedness. The proposed solution should address climate risk identified as relevant at regional and local scale, with tailor-made responses and measures taking into account place-based data, socio-economic, identity characteristics, local governance and the regional sustainable and smart specialization strategies when available.

In its approach, the proposed solution should go ‘far beyond addressing a specific sector’, taking into account and addressing wide-ranging impacts. It should take a systemic approach, looking at the interconnections and interdependencies between them.

FOR EXAMPLE:

• proposals could explore solutions addressing the interlinkages between climate, water, food, soil, biodiversity loss and others, which form a nexus where resource use and availability rely heavily on one another. Considering the current increasing trend of water scarcity (periods of drought followed by storms and floods, with a decreasing overall annual precipitations) tackling the pollution problem linked to these extreme climate events would be relevant.
• can be related to the integration of multilevel planning, which integrates spatial and urban planning with the design of different services such as transport, mobility, energy, connectivity in a city. Interesting examples in this sense may come for instance from the New European Bauhaus initiative, which intends to accelerate the green transition by combining sustainability with inclusion and aesthetics/quality of experience.

Proposals should look to how tackle and possibly minimise trade-offs, maximise co-benefits and leverage opportunities a systemic approach offers to address the challenges of a changing climate in the specific local context. In doing this, they should produce state-of-the-art- analysis in a multidisciplinary approach addressing the science-policy nexus; they should go beyond theoretical research and/or theoretical discussions or the pure understanding and quantifying of the links between the different elements and sectors. On the contrary, proposals should turn them into operational and practical insights and tangible solutions experimented on the regional and local grounds, clearly addressing trade-offs and co-benefits, with a view of achieving optimum outcomes. Proposals should also consider how to turn the proposed solutions into new standards so to allow faster uptake at scale. Proposals should mobilise and include all value chain actors and pay careful attention to matching innovators and solutions providers with end-users/regions interested in testing and further developing the proposed solutions on the ground; they should also foster the development of business models that can support the sustainability of the proposed solutions.

Applicants should acknowledge this request and already account for these obligations in their proposal, making adequate provisions in terms of resources and budget to engage and collaborate with the Mission governance.