A Gathering place to cO-design and co-cReate Adaptation (AGORA)

Description:

AGORA promotes societal transformation to empower local communities to address the climate crisis. This can be achieved through a multidisciplinary, integrated approach and four living laboratories all around Europe. These pilot regions are located in Rome (Italy), Zaragoza (Spain), Dresden (Germany) and Malmö (Sweden). In addition to the regions and communities selected for the pilot studies, other districts, provinces, and geographical districts within these countries will be involved as “followers” participating and learning from the AGORA initiative, also joining the mission on adaptation.  

Indeed, AGORA is a growing community to co-create and share advanced tools to enhance awareness on climate change and on possible adaptation solutions. AGORA is also the meeting point where citizens and policymakers share knowledge, practices, expertise and needs, based on scientific knowledge to design, and build a more resilient Europe through a living dialogue between local communities. On the one hand, informed citizens can actively participate in public life giving their contribution to ensure safe and sustainable local development. On the other hand, public administrations can benefit from the expertise of this project’s partners to identify solutions to address climate change impacts, defining them upon local needs and sharing them with citizens. This will contribute to increasing the effectiveness of the implementation of adaptation measures.  

Objectives: 

• Support the overall objectives of the Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change by engaging communities and regions in climate actions. 
• Promote societal transformation processes in different socio-economic and political contexts, through transdisciplinary tools and approaches. 
• Foster the exchange of knowledge and cross-fertilization among the pilot regions and the communities interested in the project. 
• Enhance local adaptation by supporting public administrations and related communities in co-designing solutions. 

Expected outcomes: 

• A package of digital tools to support citizens with an open space for learning and exchanging knowledge about adaptation. Those include:
  • a Digital Agora, the living digital environment that enables stakeholders, scientists, experts, media and citizens to network and communicate;     
  • two digital academies to support citizens and stakeholders to access open-source climate data for adaptation and tackle climate change disinformation and
  • a mobile app to support education on climate change and disinformation through an entertaining and engaging approach. 
• Innovative problem-oriented climate adaptation solutions. 
• Blueprints for effective decision making and collaborative processes that build on the dialogue among stakeholders and on the integration of different types of knowledge. 
• A digital handbook, an interactive multimedia platform that gathers a collection of the lessons learned by project, with a dynamic and user-friendly navigation system. 

Project information

Lead

CMCC Euro-Mediterrenean Centre on Climate Change, Italy

Partners

European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) – Germany 
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) – Spain 
Fondazione Centro Internazionale in Monitoraggio Ambientale (CIMA) – Italy 
ICLEI European Secretariat GmbH (ICLEI Europasekretariat GmbH) (ICLEI) – Germany 
Agenzia per la Promozione della Ricerca Europea (APRE) – Italy 
Internationales Institut für Angewandte Systemanalyse (IIASA) – Austria 
Stiftelsen The Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI HQ) – Sweden 
Stockholm Environment Institute, Oxford Office Ltd. (SEI Oxford) – UK 
Stockholm Environment Institute, Tallinn Centre (SEI Tallinn) – Estonia 
Fundación Ibercivis (IBE) – Spain 
Athens Technology Center (ATC) – Greece 
Université de Genève (UNIGE) – Switzerland 

Source of funding

HORIZON-MISS-2021-CLIMA-02-05 - Local engagement of citizens in the co-creation of societal transformational change for climate resilience