European Strategies and Initiatives to Tackle Climate Change: Toward an Integrated Approach

Since the Kyoto Protocol adopted in 1997, Climate Change has become a priority for the European Union. The key role attributed to climate issues triggered a long process characterized by a first phase, mainly devoted to reduce GHG emissions through adequate mitigation strategies; a second phase, addressed to counterbalance the impacts of climate-related events through adaptation strategies and a third phase, still on-going, dedicated to pursue a more effective integration between mitigation and adaptation strategies. This chapter discusses how Climate Change has been so far addressed in Europe, identifying phases, turning points and reasons that led to shift from one phase to another, highlighting the potentialities of existing policies and the obstacles to their actualization. As a matter of fact, the success of climate strategies largely depends on the cooperation among different actors, from a local up to a global scale. Hence Europe, in spite of its strong commitment towards Climate Change, finds itself in grip between local and global choices that inevitably affect the outcomes of the proposed strategies.