Governing Uncertainty: COP31 and the New Frontier of European Climate Policy

Translated by Maria Pia Longo

For years, the European Union's climate leadership has been measured primarily through its capacity to reduce emissions. Binding targets, carbon markets, environmental standards, and, more recently, the European Green Deal have allowed the EU to present itself as one of the most ambitious actors in global climate governance. Yet, while the need to mitigate climate change remains imperative, a second challenge is becoming impossible to ignore: adapting to a climate that has already changed.

When governments convene in Antalya, Turkey, for COP31 from November 9 to 20, 2026, the gap between these two dimensions will be particularly evident. The Turkish presidency has placed at the center of its Action Agenda the necessity to translate existing climate commitments into concrete policies, complementing the energy transition with targets linked to resilient cities, food security, health, and industry. The message is clear: after years dedicated primarily to defining new targets, climate policy must increasingly focus on implementation and the tangible capacity to prepare economies and societies for the impacts of global warming.

For the European Union, this shift may require more than just new environmental policies. It could mean rethinking the very way climate risk is governed.

Mitigation stems from a relatively identifiable objective: decreasing greenhouse gas emissions to limit the rise in global temperatures. Establishing a reduction trajectory, measuring emissions, and introducing incentives or constraints does not make the process simple, but it at least allows for defining a clear outcome toward which to strive.

Adaptation presents a different challenge. There is no single quantitative target capable of determining when a society is sufficiently "adapted." The impacts of climate change vary across territories, economic sectors, and social groups, and, above all, they interact with one another. A drought can reduce water availability, impact agricultural and hydroelectric production, increase pressure on energy systems, and contribute to rising prices. A heatwave can simultaneously constitute a public health crisis, a productivity challenge, a threat to infrastructure, and a source of further pressure on energy demand.

Climate risk thus increasingly assumes the characteristics of a systemic risk: not a series of isolated problems to be solved individually, but an interconnected set of vulnerabilities that can interact and produce consequences that are difficult to predict.

Europe has already begun to confront this reality. The first European Climate Risk Assessment, published by the European Environment Agency, identified 36 major climate risks simultaneously affecting ecosystems, food security, health, infrastructure, the economy, and finance. More than half require urgent action today, and several have reached critical levels. Southern Europe is particularly exposed to wildfires, extreme heat, and severe impacts on agricultural production.

It is therefore not only the severity of these events that tests European institutions, but their interdependence. It is here that climate adaptation encounters a broader issue of contemporary politics: how to govern when it is impossible to fully predict either the nature of the next shock or the consequences it will ripple through complex systems?

Literature on adaptation has long referred to wicked problems: issues that cannot be definitively "solved" because they change as efforts are made to address them, span multiple levels of governance, and can produce unintended consequences even when interventions are well-intentioned. In such contexts, governing is not merely about finding the correct solution and applying it, but developing capacities for learning, coordination, and continuous policy revision.

It is precisely here that the concept of resilience becomes politically significant. Yet much depends on how the term is defined.

In its narrower interpretation, resilience means absorbing a shock and returning to the prior state: protecting a power grid from an extreme event, rebuilding infrastructure after a flood, or rapidly restoring an essential service. In the face of climate change, however, simply returning to normal may prove insufficient, because normal itself is transforming.

A more ambitious conception of resilience thus implies the capacity to adapt and, when necessary, transform systems in response to evolving conditions. It means designing infrastructure with uncertain future risks in mind, coordinating energy, agricultural, and water policies, combining scientific and local knowledge, and leaving room to revise strategies as conditions evolve.

This tension is not new for the EU. Resilience has featured in European discourse for years, ranging from foreign policy to infrastructure security. However, studies have highlighted a paradox: as the challenges facing the Union grow more complex, the concept of resilience risks being reduced to the capacity to withstand shocks, stripping away its original focus on uncertainty, non-linearity, and transformation.

Climate change may force Brussels to re-engage with that deeper dimension.

The Commission is preparing a new European Climate Resilience and Risk Management Integrated Framework, scheduled for the second half of 2026. The stated goal is to build a more coherent and comprehensive European approach to climate risk preparedness and management, moving beyond fragmented responses across individual sectors and Member States. The consultations shaping its preparation have already highlighted demands to systematically integrate resilience into policies and investments, as well as to strengthen shared risk assessments.

This same logic extends beyond the Union's borders. In July 2026, the 43 members of the Union for the Mediterranean launched the preparation of the region's first Climate Action Plan. In a region warming faster than the global average, droughts, wildfires, water scarcity, and rising sea levels make clear how little sense it makes to address resilience solely through national policies.

That COP31 is taking place in Antalya thus carries special significance. The Mediterranean serves almost as a laboratory for climate complexity: environmental vulnerabilities cross borders, connecting energy, food, urban, and economic systems across EU and non-EU countries alike. No single regulatory instrument can govern these interdependencies on its own.

The challenge for the European Union at COP31 will therefore not merely be defending ambitious mitigation targets. It will be demonstrating that its climate leadership can evolve alongside the nature of the problem itself.

Reducing emissions remains essential. But in a world where a portion of climate impacts can no longer be avoided, leadership also means learning to govern what cannot be fully predicted: building adaptable institutions, coordinating different levels of government, recognizing interdependencies among risks, and transforming vulnerabilities before they escalate into crises.

The true test of European resilience may ultimately not be the ability to return to normal after the next climate shock. It may be the capacity to recognize that normal no longer exists—and to learn to govern change as it happens.

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