They will kick off the HORIZON MOUNTADAPT project on 4 and 5 June in Paris

The Kick-off meeting of the 2023 HORIZON EUROPE MOUNTADAPT project will take place on 4 and 5 June in Paris, in which the Pyrenees Working Community will participate as a partner. Representatives of the 27 partners will meet to discuss, present and learn about the initial guidelines of the project, as well as the processes that will be put in place to meet the objectives. The European Climate Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA) will present its policy, contexts and key elements that will enable the MOUNTADAPT project to be implemented. They will also attend several conferences on climate change, health, epidemics and health disasters in European Alpine bioregions.

The overall objective of the project is to improve the resilience of health systems to the adverse effects of climate change in the European Alpine bioregion, building on the results of previous projects. To this end, the MOUNTADAPT project proposes an innovative approach of co-designing concrete solutions and adaptation strategies, which will be tested in 4 demonstration sites and replicated in 3 replication sites across Europe. The MOUNTADAPT project is structured around 5 working groups, corresponding to the 5 specific objectives and their own complementary strategies.

Although there are numerous European projects focused on studying the impact of climate change on the health of city dwellers in plains and coastal areas, few are specifically dedicated to investigating these effects in the European alpine bioregion. The Pyrenees, one of the southernmost alpine bioregions in Europe, stands out as a sentinel territory for climate change. This characteristic makes the cross-border Pyrenean space an ideal area for designing and testing adaptation strategies to increase the resilience of health systems, and may serve as an inspiration for other mountain regions.

Specifically, the CTP will participate mainly in Work Package 1 (WP1: groundwork and capitalisation) and Work Package 4 (WP4: upscaling and replicating), and to a lesser extent in Work Package 3 (WP3: testing and monitoring) in the stakeholder training part. This project would be an excellent opportunity to enhance internal synergies between the 2 units of the CTP: OPCC and the Pyrenean Climate Change Strategy and UD2 through the Health Working Group.