New framework reveals patterns in urban climate adaptation planning – Image for illustrative purposes only (Image credits: Pexels)
Cities have emerged as frontline responders to climate risks, producing thousands of adaptation plans over the past two decades. Measuring the quality of those plans, however, has remained elusive because strategies must fit local conditions. A new assessment framework now delivers the largest standardized review yet, covering more than two thousand documents submitted to the Global Covenant of Mayors.
Why Tracking Adaptation Quality Has Been So Difficult
Climate adaptation differs sharply from mitigation because its success depends on place-specific hazards and policy goals. Without consistent yardsticks, planners and researchers have struggled to compare efforts across regions or identify what actually improves outcomes. The new framework fills that gap by scoring plans on six core elements rather than attempting to measure results on the ground.
Researchers adapted an earlier European model to the Global Covenant of Mayors reporting format. They then applied it to every Climate Action Plan filed between 2007 and 2024. The result is a dataset large enough to reveal both common strengths and persistent shortfalls in how cities organize their work.
Strong Action Planning, Weak Follow-Through
Most plans perform well when it comes to identifying risks and listing concrete steps. The majority include climate projections, name responsible agencies, and set delivery timelines. Roughly 85 percent designate implementing bodies, and 88 percent attach specific timeframes to proposed measures.
Performance drops sharply once attention turns to goals and oversight. Only 74 percent of plans contain even one adaptation goal, and just 20 percent connect those goals to particular hazards. Measurable targets remain rare. Budget allocations appear in only 32 percent of documents, while timely monitoring reports exist in just 9 percent and active goal tracking in 7 percent.
Implementation and adaptation measures tend to rise or fall together, showing strong internal links. Monitoring and evaluation, by contrast, stands apart with almost no statistical connection to other components. This separation suggests many cities treat evaluation as an afterthought rather than an integrated part of planning.
Size Does Not Determine Success
Contrary to expectations, larger cities do not produce higher-quality plans than smaller ones. Performance varies widely within every population category, and national context shows little consistent influence. Instead, institutional capacity and governance arrangements appear to matter most.
High-scoring plans remain uncommon. More than half the cities examined fail to reach strong marks in any single component, while only a small share excel across multiple areas. These patterns point to deeper structural issues rather than simple resource differences.
Regional Governance Shapes Outcomes
Plans from the same region often resemble one another. Belgian municipalities benefit from coordinated technical support through Covenant Coordinators, producing more consistent results. Sicilian authorities have tied funding to plan approval, creating similar alignment. Spain, however, displays far greater variation, indicating that weaker regional coordination leaves outcomes more dependent on local politics.
Where stronger governance networks exist, cities tend to score higher on several components. The findings suggest that external coordination can help offset capacity gaps at the municipal level.
What matters now
- Clearer global standards for goal setting would help translate intentions into measurable progress.
- Stronger integration of monitoring systems could close the gap between action and evaluation.
- Regional support networks offer one proven route to more coherent planning across cities of all sizes.
The study underscores that effective adaptation requires more than lists of projects. Cities must also build reliable systems to define targets, track delivery, and adjust course when needed. Without those systems, even well-intentioned plans risk remaining statements of intent rather than drivers of lasting resilience.
