Abstract
An adaptation gap exists when adaptation efforts fail to meet adaptation needs. While conceptualizing and operationalizing this gap is challenging, we argue that it should begin with aligning climate risks with policy goals, measures and monitoring and evaluation—what we refer to as ‘consistency’ within adaptation policy. Through a comprehensive European study, we demonstrate how assessing consistency in adaptation plans can enhance understanding and help reduce the adaptation gap.
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Data availability
The open-access datasets that support the findings of this study are available at https://doi.org/10.17026/dans-xd6-w7pc (ref. 30).
Change history
04 June 2025
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02370-6
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Acknowledgements
This work would not have been possible without the collaboration of many fellow researchers who helped to compile and analyse urban climate plans of the cities in the data sample. This collaboration runs under the EURO-LCP Initiative (www.lcp-initiative.eu). We thank all members of the initiative for their fruitful collaboration over the years, in particular those who are not co-authors of this paper. D.R.’s work is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 101036458 (2021–2025) and a JPI Urban Europe Grant, funded by NWO grant agreement no. 438.21.445 (2022–2025). A.B.’s research was funded by the Sustainable Development and Technologies National Programme of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (FFT NP FTA). M.O. acknowledges support from the María de Maeztu Excellence Unit 2023–2027 ref. CEX2021-001201-M, funded by the Spanish Government MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033; and by the Basque Government through the BERC 2022–2025 programme. M.O. would also like to acknowledge the support of the grant RYC2022-037585-I funded by MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and ESF+. The work of M.S. and F.P. is supported by the National Biodiversity Future Centre 2022–2025 (id. code CN000033), funded by the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR Mission 4, Component 2, Investment 1.4).
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D.R., A.B. and M.O. conceptualized the study. D.R. and A.B. conducted the statistical analyses. D.R., A.B., P.F. and M.S. developed the figures. All authors contributed to writing and editing.
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Supplementary Tables 1 and 2, Results 1 and 2 and Figs. 1–11.
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Reckien, D., Buzasi, A., Olazabal, M. et al. Explaining the adaptation gap through consistency in adaptation planning. Nat. Clim. Chang. 15, 614–618 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02334-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02334-w
