The Project

DISTENDER is an EU-funded project developing actionable strategies for climate change mitigation and adaptation. The strategies will result from the integration of climate change adaptation and mitigation actions with participatory approaches bringing scientists, businesses, governments, policy makers and citizens together. 5 Case Studies at the EU level will be involved for testing the holistic approach developed by the project against specific climate risks and 6 additional Follower Case Studies are first in line for replication. Finally, a Decision Support System will be developed to help policy makers to take the most out of the knowledge, tools and recommendations generated by DISTENDER and further replicate them.

The ambition of DISTENDER is to provide a methodological framework that supports climate adaptation and mitigation strategies, that integrate top-down and bottom-up approaches into a multi-scale cross-sectoral framework (agriculture, health and well-being, energy, water, biodiversity, forestry, transport and urban planning) and to use this framework to examine multi-scale interactions of climate adaptation and mitigation actions.

A Decision Support System (DSS) based on a multicriteria analysis tool will be developed to take into account PROS and CONS and make a final classification of the different proposed robust strategies. DISTENDER will bring together the mathematical model tools and the policy maker strategies and produce robust strategies which will be classified using an ad-hoc DSS.

DISTENDER is funded under the Horizon Europe call HORIZON-CL5-2021-D1-01-05 -“Better understanding of the interactions between climate change impacts and risks, mitigation and adaptation options”. Together with its fellow projects NEVERMORE and KNOWING, DISTENDER will make substantial progress towards the objectives of the call by building a methodological framework guiding the integration of climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies and participatory approaches with the ultimate goal to tackle the impacts and risks of climate change while enlightening interactions, synergies and trade-offs.

• Stakeholder engagement process & participation using co-creation
• Participatory development of localized socio-economic scenarios
• Produce localized climate storylines through a downscaling framework
• Risk and vulnerability assessment based on a set of bio-physical, social and economic indicators produced by a wide range of multi-scale and cross-sectorial models
• Robust adaptation and mitigation actions and policies from a suite of harmonized strategies constructed through participatory methods
• Sectoral, integrated and economy-wide economic evaluation of climate strategies
• Translate scientific results into policy relevant actions
• Testing and replication of the outcomes of the project through case studies
• Network to promote and exchange the outputs of the projects with other EU and international initiatives about CC

DISTENDER will outline a methodology to identify the trade-offs and interactions between adaptation and mitigation measures under dynamical socioeconomic and climate scenarios. The DISTENDER methodology will be based on results from multiscale and multi-sector modelling tools, leading to:

• More effective climate action policies
• Better knowledge about the risk and impacts of CC
• Check feasibility of the strategies across various scenarios
• Enhanced legitimacy and robustness of integrated assessment frameworks based on more realistic representation of climate processes and their impacts

Cost-benefit assessment, local climate and socio-economic scenarios, risk and vulnerability assessment are the key components of the DISTENDER Decision Support System, being the ultimate result helping policy makers to take the most out of the knowledge, tools and recommendations generated by DISTENDER and further replicate them.