Partnership for European Environmental Research (PEER) is a network of seven large European environmental research centres, created in 2001.
One of the aims of PEER is to foster innovative interdisciplinary research and cross-cutting approaches in support of national and EU policy-makers, industry and society. Member institutes employ about 4500 persons and have a combined annual budget of 340 Million Euro.
Member institutes have for example training and research co-operation. Through the METIER courses, PEER centres have trained young researchers.
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In recent climate change projects, PEER studied climate policy integration and compared adaptation strategies in European countries. The final reports of these projects deal with several aspects of implementing climate policy in Europe. The first report analyses the adaptation strategies of the EU member states, identifying a number of common strengths and weaknesses of the current strategies in the countries studied.[1] The second report assesses the degree of climate policy integration in six different European countries, at national and local levels, as well as within key policy sectors such as energy and transport. It analyses measures and means to enhance climate policy integration and improve policy coherence.[2]
The reports show that communication and awareness raising is going to be important to get public support for adaptation measures, and to help stakeholders to adapt. Since adaptation is very different from mitigation, communication should be designed specifically for that purpose, including exchange of experiences on adaptation practices.[3] Although the inclusion of climate change mitigation and adaptation in general governmental programmes and strategies has substantially increased in recent years, much more is needed in terms of integrating climate issues into specific policy measures. Annual budgets, environmental impact assessments and spatial planning procedures are three examples of existing measures which we believe have significant potential to be climate policy instruments.[4]