This working group deals with the EU Taxonomy Regulation.
For addressing the EU Taxonomy environmental objective "climate change adaptation", there is currently no clear description of how compliance needs to be demonstrated. Among other things, there is a lack of legal requirements, precise minimum methodological standards, and transparent, uniform indicators and/or threshold values. At the moment, consulting firms are working on the topic and, through pioneering work, may be setting possible standards that aren't necessarily aligned with the state of the art. This calls for appropriate neutral, scientific guidance to ensure quality assurance and validation.
Questions that arise include, for example: Who checks conformity with regard to the environmental objective "climate change adaptation"? Who defines which climate risks are relevant — and on the basis of which data? Which climate scenarios should be used? There is also an interplay here with the ÖKS Next Generation project (klimaszenarien.at). How should the assessment of adaptation solutions be carried out? Who defines for Austria what constitutes "established practices and available guidelines" and "the best available scientific knowledge" for vulnerability and risk analysis? From when is a project considered adapted to climate change?
The aim of the working group is to first discuss these and any further open questions and to identify what concrete action (framework conditions for implementation, data sources, etc.) is still needed in Austria to carry out a standardised, objective taxonomy assessment (with regard to the environmental objective of climate change adaptation). In doing so, the environmental objective of climate protection (mitigation) is intrinsically taken into account wherever necessary. In order to ultimately address these questions and develop the necessary foundations, the working group also aims to secure funding (for: developing an assessment methodology, creating relevant data bases, the work of the working group, etc.) from, for example, the federal government / federal states / stakeholders and, where appropriate, also from businesses.
