Proactive, pro-people, pro-climate

In 2024, the continent sweated through its hottest year on record, experiencing elevated heat stress and extreme weather events like fires and droughts. 

That means building resilient, climate-ready communities is no longer a distant goal—it’s an urgent necessity.

Enter the PRO-CLIMATE project, an ambitious EU-funded initiative dedicated to transforming how communities adapt to and tackle climate change. By establishing six diverse “Living Labs” across Europe, PRO-CLIMATE brings together citizens, local authorities, researchers, and industry to co-create real-world solutions for climate resilience. Their mission? To break down barriers to behavioural change, foster collaboration and spark the social tipping points needed for lasting transformation.

We spoke to Iason Tamiakis of Tero PC, PRO-CLIMATE project Project Coordinator, to find out more.  

The selection of the six Living Labs in the PRO-CLIMATE project was guided by a set of strategic and context-specific criteria designed to ensure diversity, relevance and impact. 

First and foremost, we aimed to capture a wide geographical and climatic representation across Europe, including areas of different socio-economic characteristics. This diversity allows us to explore how different environmental, socio-economic, and governance contexts influence climate adaptation and social transformation processes. 

We also prioritised areas where local and regional authorities and stakeholders showed strong commitment and capacity to engage in co-creation processes and long-term climate resilience efforts. Equally important was the presence of existing climate-related challenges and opportunities for behavioural and systemic change. 

The selected Living Labs offered fertile ground for piloting behavioural change activities in real-life conditions. By working closely with local and regional partners and involving citizens, public authorities, civil society and industry partners, each Living Lab serves as a unique experimentation space to validate and refine our frameworks and interventions, while building a robust evidence base for policy recommendations and upscaling.

Our baseline assessments across the six Living Labs reveal a range of socio-economic and institutional barriers that hinder behavioural change and broader transformation.

Key challenges include limited institutional coordination and siloed governance structures, which often result in fragmented climate adaptation efforts. Additionally, there is often a lack of trust in public institutions, limited awareness of climate risks and insufficient access to resources or incentives to support sustainable behaviours. 

These barriers are further compounded by cultural norms, resistance to change and a perception that individual or community actions have limited impact. These are factors that underscore the need for locally tailored, participatory approaches to unlock transformative potential.

To address these barriers, we've adopted a systems-thinking and participatory approach that places local communities at the centre of the transformation process. 

Through our Living Labs, we unite diverse stakeholders and foster trust, dialogue and shared ownership of climate solutions. We actively work to break down institutional silos by promoting cross-sectoral collaboration and facilitating knowledge exchange between governance levels. Behavioural change is supported through tailored interventions based on behavioural science insights, including capacity-building activities and awareness campaigns designed to resonate with local contexts.

Moreover, we work to identify and amplify social tipping points—small, strategic actions that can trigger broader systemic change, thus helping communities move beyond adaptation toward transformative resilience.

Applying a unified framework to drive behavioural change across the diverse socio-economic contexts of our Living Labs presents both significant challenges and valuable opportunities. 
One key challenge lies in ensuring that the framework is flexible enough to account for differing local realities, ranging from variations in governance capacity and stakeholder engagement to cultural attitudes and economic conditions.

A one-size-fits-all approach may risk overlooking context-specific drivers and barriers to behavioural change, which could eventually limit local relevance and impact. Additionally, differing levels of institutional trust, access to resources and public awareness can affect how interventions are received and implemented. 

At the same time, this diversity offers a unique opportunity to test and refine the unified framework under a variety of real-world conditions and identify common principles and scalable strategies. The comparative insights gained across the Living Labs enrich our understanding of what drives meaningful behavioural transformation, enabling us to produce more inclusive policy recommendations that can inform climate action.

One of the key challenges in scaling the findings from the Living Labs to other regions and communities lies in the diversity of local socio-economic, cultural and governance contexts. 

Climate resilience strategies that are effective in one region can not be simply translated to another due to differences in political structures, resource availability and existing levels of climate awareness. Additionally, the institutional capacity to implement and sustain these strategies varies across regions, making long-term adoption a potential hurdle. Ensuring that governance frameworks remain adaptable and inclusive beyond the project's lifespan will require continued engagement with policymakers, community leaders and other key stakeholders.

Demographics play a crucial role in this process, particularly in maintaining the inclusiveness that we emphasise. Each community consists of diverse groups with varying levels of access to decision-making processes, including marginalised populations such as low-income communities, Indigenous groups, women and young people. If demographic factors are not carefully considered, there is a risk that climate adaptation strategies will disproportionately benefit already-empowered groups while neglecting those most vulnerable to climate impacts. 

To address this, we encourage the use of participatory methodologies that prioritise demographic representation, ensuring that climate policies remain socially equitable and reflect the lived realities of all community members. By embedding demographic considerations into the scaling process, we can help ensure that climate resilience strategies are not only effective but also just and sustainable.

While we're still in the early implementation phase, some promising early indicators of potential social tipping points have begun to emerge from the Living Labs. 

One such indicator is the growing momentum of cross-sectoral collaboration where local authorities, civil society and businesses can increasingly work together. This shift towards integrated governance signals a change in institutional behaviour that can support broader systemic transformation. 

Another sign is the willingness of the communities to engage in dialogue and co-creation processes. Experience has shown that once people see their input leading to concrete actions, they become more invested and proactive. This growing sense of belonging and ownership may act as a catalyst for larger behavioural shifts. Additionally, small strategic behavioural changes are planned to be adopted and normalised within some communities, hinting at the activation of social feedback loops that can accelerate wider transformation. 

These developments are being monitored and will inform the identification of actionable leverage points in the next phases of the project.

A combination of supportive policy measures and community-led actions is going to be essential. 

From a policy perspective, local and regional authorities can play a catalytic role by institutionalising participatory governance mechanisms that embed co-creation into decision-making processes. Also, aligning public funding and regulatory frameworks to support small-scale, community-driven initiatives can accelerate change, especially when combined with incentives for sustainable behaviours (e.g. subsidies for active mobility or energy-efficient home improvements). 

At the community level, empowering local champions and peer networks can help reinforce new social norms and scale behavioural change. For example, community-led campaigns, storytelling and pilot projects that demonstrate the tangible benefits of sustainable practices can inspire wider uptake and build trust. 

Finally, supporting education and capacity-building initiatives can also help shift mindsets and activate long-term engagement. Ultimately, bridging policy and actions through sustained dialogue and collaboration is considered key to unlock the full potential towards climate resilience and systemic transformation. 

We use a combined bottom-up and top-down approach while also ensuring an inclusive and iterative co-creation methodology within each Living Lab. 

We begin by conducting thorough stakeholder mapping to identify a diverse and representative mix of participants. Special attention is given to engaging typically underrepresented voices to avoid reinforcing existing power imbalances. Co-creation is facilitated through a mix of focus groups, workshops, participatory scenario-building sessions and deliberative dialogues, all designed to foster open exchange, mutual learning, and trust-building. 

These interactions are not one-off consultations, but part of a continuous engagement process where stakeholders are invited to shape, test and refine behavioural change interventions. Feedback loops are built into the process to validate assumptions, adjust activities based on lived experience and ensure that solutions remain locally grounded and socially acceptable. This approach not only improves the relevance and effectiveness of interventions but also strengthens local ownership and commitment to long-term transformation.

We're using a structured framework measuring governance effectiveness, behavioural change and climate resilience. This approach aims for sustainable adaptation efforts embedded in local practices. 

Key indicators of success include the number of climate adaptation policies influenced or implemented, as well as the transparency and inclusiveness of governance structures. Active engagement from community members, local authorities, NGOs and other stakeholders will be crucial, with participation levels and trust among partners serving as important progress indicators. 

We'll also track behavioural change, such as the adoption of climate-friendly practices and self-initiated actions. Sustainable intervention is vital, demonstrated by the continuation of climate resilience projects beyond initial funding and the stability of policies amid changes in leadership.

A rigorous monitoring and evaluation process, characterised by co-creation with communities, will provide regular assessments against key performance indicators. Through this approach, we aim to drive meaningful change and build resilient communities ready to face climate challenges.

We hope to empower local communities by embedding knowledge, skills and participatory practices that will endure well beyond the project’s lifetime. 

Our approach is not just to deliver outputs, but to provide the framework and user-friendly tools for co-development of adaptable solutions. Such are the behavioural change and governance frameworks, as well as stakeholder engagement guidelines that the local actors can apply in their evolving local contexts. 

Finally, the strong networks and partnerships formed through the Living Labs create a foundation for continued collaboration, replication, and upscaling to eventually ensure that the transformation initiated by PRO-CLIMATE can evolve and grow well after the project.

Of course. Several actionable recommendations have emerged, including the need to: 

-Embed co-creation in governance structures
-Support local leadership and cross-sectoral collaboration
-Design behaviour change interventions around local contexts
-Pilot, evaluate and scale incrementally
-Create enabling policy environments

These will be further updated during the implementation phase and will be made publicly available to policymakers across Europe. 

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