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\TopicFR{Sciences du climat}
\TopicEN{Climate Sciences}

\editornote{Article submitted by invitation}
\alteditornote{Article soumis sur invitation}

\title{System innovation to address the urgency, scale and complexity
of climate action: Climate KIC's European vision and experience}

\alttitle{L'innovation syst\'{e}mique pour r\'{e}pondre \`{a} l'urgence, \`{a} l'\'{e}chelle et \`{a} la complexit\'{e} de l'action climatique : Climate KIC, une vision et une exp\'{e}rience europ\'{e}ennes}

\author{\firstname{Thanh-T\^{a}m} \lastname{L\^{e}}\CDRorcid{0000-0001-8313-0553}}
\address{Climate KIC, 10 rue de Penthi\`{e}vre, 75008 Paris, France}
\email{thanh-tam.le@polytechnique.org}

\keywords{\kwd{System innovation}\kwd{Mitigation}\kwd{Adaptation}\kwd{Resilience}\kwd{EU Missions}}

\altkeywords{\kwd{Innovation syst\'{e}mique}\kwd{Att\'{e}nuation}\kwd{Adaptation}\kwd{R\'{e}silience}\kwd{Missions Horizon Europe}}

\begin{abstract}
Juxtaposing incremental solutions can no longer respond to the climate
emergency. This requires integrated approaches that take into account
the interdependencies between actors and combine the levers of
transformation---technological, behavioral, regulatory, and financial.
The European Commission has created five Missions under Horizon Europe,
reinforcing the coherence of objectives and means in support of the
Green Deal. Notably, the ``Smart and climate-neutral cities'' and
``Adaptation to climate change'' Missions support cities, metropolitan
areas, communities and regions that are aiming for decarbonization and
climate resilience by 2030. In this paper, we discuss some structuring
projects for these Missions, and other systemic innovation initiatives
anchored in specific places, in particular Deep Demonstration programs
led by Climate KIC in support of national and regional governments.
\vspace*{2pt}
\end{abstract}

\begin{altabstract}
La juxtaposition de solutions incr\'{e}mentales ne peut plus
r\'{e}pondre \`{a} l'urgence climatique. Celle-ci exige des approches
int\'{e}gr\'{e}es qui prennent en compte les interd\'{e}pendances entre
acteurs et qui combinent les leviers de transformation, technologiques,
comportementaux, r\'{e}glementaires, financiers. La Commission
europ\'{e}enne a cr\'{e}\'{e} cinq Missions dans le cadre d'Horizon
Europe, renfor\c{c}ant la coh\'{e}rence d'objectifs et de moyens en
soutien au Pacte Vert. Ainsi, les Missions \og Villes
intelligentes et climatiquement neutres \fg et
\og Adaptation au changement climatique \fg
soutiennent des territoires qui tentent de viser la d\'{e}carbonation
et la r\'{e}silience climatique d'ici 2030. Nous \'{e}voquons ici
quelques projets structurants pour ces Missions et d'autres initiatives
d'innovation syst\'{e}mique ancr\'{e}e dans les territoires, en
particulier des programmes de \og Deep Demonstration
\fg d\'{e}velopp\'{e}s sous la conduite de Climate KIC en
soutien \`{a} des gouvernements nationaux et r\'{e}gionaux.
\end{altabstract}

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\noindent
Experts that have been working on climate change and its effects would
generally agree that this is a universe of high nonlinearity. From my
experience as a young researcher in 4-dimensional topology, dynamical
systems and singularity theory, decades ago, having later worked with
the aerospace sector and, in the last twelve years, on innovation in
the face of climate change, I have had abundant opportunities to
observe how much the notion of nonlinearity is unfamiliar and
counterintuitive to the vast majority of people, including probably
most university graduates. When it comes to climate change, this is
quite problematic, as linear thinking by default hampers the basic
understanding of physical phenomena, of risks and threats, and also of
the effects, positive or negative, of human interventions for climate
change mitigation or adaptation. It is true for climate modelling, it
is also true when it comes to planning, implementing innovation
roadmaps and to understanding their actual impact.

Similar misconceptions will also occur when we think of climate action
at different geographic scales. When we started trying to work as a
community across Europe, a widespread idea was that impact at scale
would naturally result from validating theoretical concepts in research
laboratories, testing them at very local levels, transferring them to
markets at regional and national levels, and that European networks
would then help them get to the continental level and beyond. While
this is not completely wrong, it grossly oversimplifies the many ways
different scales interact and the complex factors that, at \mbox{every}
level, will challenge assumptions of linear growth and scaling models.
One of the key lessons we have learnt, from fifteen years exploring the
possibilities of innovating for the climate, is that the capacity to
progress at the scale of countries and continents requires long and
deep immersions in the realities and singular features of cities,
landscapes and regions.

This short paper could not possibly touch upon all the dimensions of
our experience, or of what joining forces across Europe can bring to
climate action. The conference \textit{L'urgence climatique: un
tournant d\'{e}cisif~?} (Climate emergency: a decisive turning point?),
organized in March 2024 by the French Academy of Sciences, gave us the
opportunity to provide a glimpse at what we have been doing with the
European Commission, our community and a range of stakeholders
\citep{Le2024}. This is an enriched summary of my contribution to the
conference, and an invitation to join us for further exploration of the
fast evolving, urgently needed, but still largely experimental field of
climate innovation.

\section{System innovation in the face of climate change: the Climate
KIC approach} \label{sec1}

Climate KIC (or EIT Climate-KIC before 2025) is an organization and
community, selected in 2009 by the European Commission through the
European Institute of Innovation and Technology to bring together and
grow the dynamics of innovation in the face of climate change, at
continental, national and subnational levels. It has been gathering
universities, research bodies, businesses of all sizes, public
authorities, NGOs and others, across some forty countries, as well as
thousands of start-ups, students and professionals supported through
our acceleration and education programs.

The foundational hypothesis is that the urgency and complexity of
climate-related challenges require something different from the
traditional approach to innovation, as shown on the left of
Figure~\ref{fig1} below. While there can be rich debates on how, and
where, the notion of ``transformation'' is relevant to inspire and
guide climate action, with ideological and political undertones too
often associated with it, what we want to convey here is the necessity
of profound, deliberate and wide-ranging change in the way
\mbox{communities} and organizations are empowering themselves to act.
To support in-depth transformation, we need to move towards
``portfolios'' of closely connected projects that combine a range of
levers for change, not only technological but also societal,
behavioral, natural, economic, financial and\break regulatory.

\begin{figure*}
\includegraphics{fig01}
\caption{\label{fig1}From incremental to transformational.
{Source:} Climate KIC document, 2023.}
{\vspace*{.2pc}}
\end{figure*}

The scope of Climate KIC's activities is articulated around six main
themes: the built environment, regional adaptation and resilience,
integrated landscapes as carbon sinks, regenerative agriculture, just
transformation, waste and circularity. Starting with hundreds of
independent innovation projects, start-up acceleration hubs and
educational programs, we have evolved over the years towards an
integrated approach on the scale of cities, regions and even
\mbox{countries}.

In programs called Deep Demonstrations (Figure~\ref{fig2}), 
stakeholders recognize that the
climate-related challenges in their area cannot be decisively tackled
through incremental, siloed approaches. We work with them to define the
scope of these challenges, explore the range of possibilities to act on
them, and identify their priority objectives. On this basis, we
co-develop together portfolios of diverse experiments, with their
learning cycles, to respond to the challenges identified in a much more
coherent, precise and deep-probing way. The Deep Demonstration
methodology will inevitably come in many variants to address the
diversity of specific contexts, cultures and challenges. It generically
consists of four phases: intent, frame, portfolio of action, and
sensemaking.

\begin{figure*}
\includegraphics{fig02}
\caption{\label{fig2}Deep Demonstration schematic structure.
{Source:} Climate KIC document, 2023.}
\end{figure*}

In the Intent phase, we work with challenge owners to secure
commitment.\ ``Challenge owners'' can typically be national, regional or
provincial governments, city authorities, sectoral confederations.
However, while the initial commitment from such actors is essential, a
much wider range of local public and private actors is convened very
early in the process. Building ecosystems of actors for such programs
is a complex endeavor, in which identifying and bringing together the
relevant actors is only the starting point, up to the stage where
innovation communities are organized and ready to effectively work on
deep systems transformation.

In the Frame phase, we describe together the systems to be addressed in
more detail and from multiple viewpoints, and we map the needs that
local actors identify as priorities, barriers, relevant innovations to
date or in the pipeline; we agree on \mbox{leverage} points to
intervene in the systems; and \mbox{actively} \mbox{engage} in mobilizing public
funding, private finance and investment.

In the Portfolio of Action phase, the focus is on deploying innovative
solutions, policy labs, on testing new financial models, on pursuing
work around multi-level governance, interconnected decision-making,
complemented with matching business solutions to demand (notably
through accelerator programs), and with building capacity, upgrading
skills, learning with stakeholders.

The Intelligence phase is not consecutive to the other three but is
more of a permanent, iterative sensemaking effort, collecting
intelligence, business cases, pursuing financial mobilization in more
specific schemes, implementing or further developing monitoring,
evaluation and learning processes, and creating assets from all the
insights and learning, further supporting decision and investment.

Importantly, the Deep Demonstration approach seeks to go beyond more
traditional designs for sets of projects, where each project is
selected, implemented, assessed and funded independently to address a
single question, and the outcome of the set is then the collection of
results from those independent projects. In a portfolio of actions, not
only is the set of questions determined and \mbox{prioritized} from a whole
system perspective, but the actions launched to address those questions
remain interconnected during the whole program, meaning that the
component ``projects'' are more interdependent and can be modified,
reoriented or \mbox{further} developed, leveraging progress across the
whole{\break} portfolio.

\section{System innovation in support of the Green Deal: the Horizon
Europe Missions} \label{sec2}

This pioneering approach has, by now, become part of a wider dynamic at
European level.

Horizon Europe, the European Union's current multiyear framework
program to support research and innovation, has introduced five
``Missions''\footnote{\url{https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/funding/funding-opportunities/funding-programs-and-open-calls/horizon-europe/eu-missions-horizon-europe\_en}.}
for climate-neutral and smart cities (shortened to ``Cities Mission''
in this paper); adaptation to climate change (``Adaptation Mission'' in
this paper); the fight against cancer; the restoration of oceans and
watersheds; and the transition to healthy soils. The aim is to move
away from calls for projects launched without complete concertation,
spreading expertise too thinly and generating too little real momentum
for progress in each area, towards better coordinating the Commission's
human and financial resources and its political and regulatory levers,
and involving public authorities, businesses, farmers, investors,
citizens and researchers more actively and systematically.

The Missions support the Green Deal for Europe, with a 2050 horizon
including climate neutrality, and a mosaic of objectives for 2030.
Brandished by its opponents as a red, even yellow or brown rag, the
Green Deal has nevertheless marked a step forward in taking political
account of scientific realities, with a tree structure of clearer and
more coherent
objectives\footnote{\url{https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/attachment/869414/Architecture\_Factsheet\_EN.pdf}.}.
Although the Missions are an exceptional investment at the global
level, it will take a thousand times more investment to achieve
decarbonization or resilience in supported areas, by blending public
and private funds in multiple ways. However, they will give cities and
regions the capacity to direct, structure and use this funding to
achieve climate neutrality and resilience. This is an enormous,
essential task. Conceiving and managing a hundred million-euro projects
or one hundred-million-euro investment plan are very different
endeavors.

As Climate KIC, we have been involved in large projects with all
Missions except for the Cancer Mission (so far). In this paper, I will
focus more on our work with the Cities and Adaptation Missions.

\subsection{Working with the Cities Mission to accelerate
decarbonization of cities and metropoles} \label{sec2.1}

The EU Cities Mission has proposed that European cities should come out
of the woods and state if they were aiming for carbon neutrality by
2030, \mbox{subsequently} selecting 112 of them for support towards
that target. Climate teams in some of Europe's most engaged cities
questioned the stated objective: ``Carbon neutrality in 2030? Even if
you multiply what we are currently doing by three or five, it is
totally out of reach'', to which the answer was, ``It might well be,
but it is indeed not a question of merely multiplying what you are
currently doing within each unit or each program''. Indeed, one of the
first tasks to radically accelerate decarbonization trajectories is to
rethink multi-level governance and cross-silo decision-making. More
than 350 cities and metropolitan areas responded to the Mission's call
for expression of interest, which came as a surprise to many, and as a
strong signal, since selection by the Mission did not in itself entail
funding, and submitted expressions of interest were announced publicly
in almost all cases.

Despite a plethora of information on multiple parameters and variables,
cities remain ill-equipped to make decisions that involve multiple
dimensions, sectors and services. A classic, but still valid example is
that in most cities, one could very well have green roofs on fire and
flooding in the streets at the same time. Neither the green spaces
department nor the water management department is structured to manage
interdependent problems on their own. They would therefore need to
first deconstruct, and then reconstruct the indicators, management and
arbitration mechanisms to better connect and integrate these green and
blue grids into the city. More generally, each of the actor groups in a
city or a \mbox{region} has access to certain levers of action and not
to others. And each tends to treat the boundary conditions and
limitations over which they have no control as external, immovable
constraints. System approaches make it possible to re-internalize and
relax these constraints, so that we can respond collectively to the
needs using all levers available to the entire range of actors.

Mayors and presidents of regional or metropolitan councils need to give
their departments and units the explicit mandate and the capacity to
work together on transformation, prioritizing cross-departmental impact
objectives, while avoiding excessive expectations that can be
counterproductive. But breaking down silos is a heavy-lifting endeavor
that requires a long dialogue process. Conversely, such
transformational initiatives must not be entirely dependent on
political support, to enable consistency of action on transformations
that typically extend beyond the duration of an elective mandate. In
fact, while clear impulsion and support from elected leaders are
essential in terms of prioritizing such initiatives, most of the actual
work with local authorities will be done with civil servants and
technical bodies.

While one hundred or so cities across Europe might not seem to be a
large number, success for all of them in reaching or strongly
approaching the 2030 target would mean that 12\% of Europe's population
would be on accelerated decarbonization trajectories, making for a rich
set of lessons available to all other European cities.

NetZeroCities\footnote{\url{https://netzerocities.eu/}.} is the
backbone project for the implementation of the Cities Mission. It is a
service platform, implemented by a consortium of 33 organizations, led
by Climate KIC and supporting the Cities Mission. It supports the
cities and metropoles selected by this Mission (including 9 in France)
and facilitates access to the solutions they need to achieve their
climate neutrality objectives, in a socially inclusive way. The first
major step is the establishment of ``Climate City Contracts'' (CCC).
The CCC brings together three interdependent components: a shared
ambition, an action plan, and an investment plan, all three with a 2030
horizon. Developing a CCC requires intensive dialogue between municipal
teams and with many partners. To date (December 2025), ninety-two
cities have submitted their plans and obtained the Mission's
Label. The Label officially recognizes the relevance and quality of a
city's climate planning. The city can then use it as a lever to further
involve citizens, stakeholders and investors.

After the labelling, the next phase of NetZeroCities helps cities to
acquire the knowledge and capacities necessary to implement their
plans. This includes support by city support groups; working groups
focused on critical areas, such as just transitions or citizen
engagement; peer-to-peer connections across different cities, both
structured and informal, including through a twin cities program
coupled with cities in the Mission.

Going deeper, a Pilot Cities program then aims, in the specific context
of each city, to overcome the major blocks on the road to rapid
decarbonization. The program in its globality aims to address all urban
systems contributing to climate neutrality. The selection of pilot
cities therefore takes into account the complementarity between
proposed projects. The resulting set of innovative solutions should
then be ready for implementation and upscaling. Learning throughout the
program will develop capacities and skills, at the level of each city
and between the pilot cities.

The next step is an Enabling City Transformation program. This focuses
on implementing innovations necessary for the transformation of the
city as a whole. Here again, the selection will constitute a portfolio
of transposable interventions, which respond to the challenges that
frequently emerge across the cities of the Mission, with a view to
broader scalability in the medium and long term.

It is increasingly clear that these transformation processes cannot be
financed primarily by the cities themselves. After completing work on
their Climate City Contracts, public authorities for large cities or
metropoles have been able to estimate that even if their whole budget
in the upcoming years were allocated entirely to decarbonation, which
will obviously not happen, they would cover only 10\% of the cost of
decarbonation. What municipal finance can enable must be multiplied by
combinations of grants, public financing and private capital. The
Climate City Capital Hub, developed by NetZeroCities with the European
Investment Bank (EIB), provides technical and financial assistance to
cities that have received the Mission Label, to facilitate capital
flows to fully implement climate action plans. It equips cities with
several tools to navigate the options for raising funds, loans and
financing for sustainable urban development, including: a knowledge
repository of investment plans, innovative financing mechanisms; an
interactive financial guidance tool, to identify the most suitable
sources of financing for their projects; and a climate investment tool,
which assesses the economic viability and potential climate impact of
projects.

The fact that dozens of cities and metropoles have each drafted
ambitious, detailed and prioritized action plans to achieve climate
neutrality, with the will to invest simultaneously in all components of
this action plan, is already a remarkable step forward. One should be
fully aware of the long and steep road that separates this step from a
real organizational and operational capacity to finance the
implementation of such plans, to accelerate them in a systemic and
evolutionary way, with all that it entails in terms of
interdependencies, iterations and hypotheses that need to be confirmed,
invalidated or refined on a sustained basis. We can no longer treat the
financing of transition as an externality, as a ready-to-use tool once
cities are clear about their transformation trajectories. Financing
must be an integral part of systemic transformation; it cannot be
worked on exclusively within the financial sector, whether public or
private, but it must experiment, question its limits and evolve in
direct interplay with the other levers of urban transformation.

This embedding of financial components in the climate trajectory of
cities requires profound changes within municipal administrations,
where financing and investment mechanisms remain modelled on
organizational silos and on the fragmentation of objectives and
indicators. And cities need support from regional and national
governments, in terms of commitment and of dedicated resources.
However, this work cannot be limited solely to operations supported by
the public authorities. If the bulk of funding for decarbonization is
to come from private players, it is important to involve them in
investment funds. But this will not be sufficient if they, themselves,
remain within the traditional logic of performance and profitability.
All this requires both the ability to respond to the specific contexts
of each city and the essential pooling of effort and experience at
regional, national and European levels.

In Spain, the citiES 2030 \footnote{\url{https://cities2030.es/}.}
platform provides Spanish cities with an instrument that amplifies the
benefits brought by the Cities and Adaptation Missions and anchors them
fully in the national landscape. The citiES 2030 platform is promoted
by the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge
(MITECO) through the Biodiversity Foundation and the Spanish Climate
Change Office, and is developed by Climate KIC and the Centre for
Technological Innovation for Human Development of the Polytechnic
University of Madrid (itdUPM). It facilitates multi-stakeholder
collaboration between cities, public sector bodies, the private sector,
academia, civil society and citizens; articulates collaboration at
multiple levels---European, national and local---in line with the
Cities and Adaptation Missions; provides a range of services tailored
to cities and their stakeholder ecosystems, including summer schools,
citiES 2030 breakfasts, climathons, training journeys, support for the
drafting and implementation of Climate City Contracts (CCC), strategic
communication, exchanges between cities (within Spain and with European
cities), support to structure plans for financing the transformation
involving players from the financial sector.\looseness=-1

\looseness=-1
More broadly, it promotes dialogue and the creation of multi-city
initiatives and programs, offering services to implement the portfolio
of interconnected projects within each city and develop collaborative
programs between the cities and organizations involved in the platform.
One of its flagship activities is a massive energy renovation program
with a target of 100,000 home renovations per year. The citiES 2030
platform was initially inspired by the Deep Demonstration work in
Madrid, by the Spanish platform \textit{El d\'{i}a despu\'{e}s} (The
Day After) bringing together four communities including one on urban
transformation. Its development was boosted by the formal launch of the
EU City Mission and a motion from the Spanish Senate to promote climate
neutrality in Spanish cities within the framework of the European
Cities Mission and the citiES 2030 initiative. The citiES 2030 platform
currently gathers the seven Spanish cities supported by the Cities
Mission plus ten others, of variable sizes, with more expected to join.

Other national platforms in support of accelerating city
decarbonization, often coupled with climate resilience, have been
operating or are being developed notably in Sweden, Poland, Romania,
Austria. In countries such as France, where active city networks exist
and quite a sophisticated set of frameworks and rules plays a
prescriptive and normative role in climate and energy objectives and
indicators, it could be very relevant and powerful to couple the
integrated approach underlying EU Missions and systemic initiatives
such as Deep Demonstrations with the elaborate analytical instruments
with which all regional and local authorities and administrations have
to comply, and to do so with the support of permanent national
platforms where collaborations and joint experimentations by regions
and cities are at the core, and national bodies can identify where
their investment, regulatory role and capacity to provide data,
assistance and resources would be the most effective and needed.

\subsection{Working with the Adaptation Mission to{\hfill\break} design
and enable the implementation of{\hfill\break} pathways to regional
climate resilience} \label{sec2.2}

The Adaptation Mission supports the implementation of the European
Strategy for Adaptation to Climate Change, which aims for smarter,
faster and more systemic adaptation. More and more regions are calling
for climate mitigation and adaptation to be combined with climate
justice, sobriety, circularity and biodiversity. A sociologist once
remarked that the net-zero carbon objective could not claim to form a
new social contract just by itself. This could be debated, but the
observation was quite to the point. When it comes to adaptation, the
parameters, variables and metrics are more diverse than for mitigation,
and the objectives depend more on societal choices and the
place-specific priorities of each country or region, even though global
perspectives remain essential---hence the focus on regions and
communities.

In contrast to the Cities Mission, the Adaptation Mission has not
started by selecting the regions it will support.\ It has drafted a
charter, signed by more than three hundred regions and communities to
date. Its support for the regions is then being implemented through
calls for Horizon Europe (HE) projects. And the overall coherence of
this support across HE \mbox{Adaptation} Mission calls and activities
is explicitly put forward, from the design of the calls to the
selection, implementation, dissemination, synergies and
complementarities between projects.

One of the Adaptation Mission's backbone projects,
Pathways2Resilience\footnote{\url{https://www.pathways2resilience.eu/}.}
(P2R) will support a hundred regions in building a shared vision of
their future regional resilience journeys (Figure~\ref{fig3}).
Each pathway will be broken
down into an action plan that can be implemented across sectors and
territories, with coherent monitoring, evaluation and learning systems
and the development of an investment plan to finance the pathway. The
methodological framework is common to all regions. As Climate KIC is
the coordinator of both NetZeroCities and Pathways2Resilience, we have
made sure that the framework between the two projects would be as
shared or mutually compatible as possible, to foster synergies for
cities and regions and to make outputs and outcomes from both projects
easier to action and disseminate consistently. However, the framework
is highly modulable according to different contexts and aspirations. As
with NetZeroCities, the process must above all emanate from the region
and be guided by its ``desirable futures.''

\begin{figure}
\includegraphics{fig03}
\caption{\label{fig3}The Regional Resilience Journey map
(Pathways2Resilience). {Source:} Climate KIC/Pathways2Resil\-ience
document, 2024.}
\end{figure}

As much as access to a series of training modules, to an adaptation
finance innovation lab (involving nine pilot regions for
real-circumstance development and testing) and to a detailed practical
toolbox, Pathways2Resilience puts emphasis on innovation practice
groups that aim to support the locally led formulation of shared
visions, pathways and innovation agendas, to build on existing
knowledge and best practice, but also to foster and facilitate
cross-regional exchanges about regional adaptation across similar
challenges and widely different contexts. A first batch of forty Europe
regions and communities was selected in the summer of 2024, gathering a
total population of 53 million; the P2R project will have supported
sixty more within its lifetime. Like other projects selected by the
Mission Adaptation, P2R is taking the lens of Key Enabling Conditions
for climate adaptation (access to knowledge and data; governance and
engagement for innovation; behavioral change and empowerment; local
economic systems; finances and resources) and cross-sectoral Key
Community Systems (critical infrastructure; health \& wellbeing; water
management; land use \& food systems; and a connection system of
ecosystems \& nature-based solutions).

In the downstream part of the Adaptation Mission's portfolio, a family
of seven ``Innovation Action'' projects, generally centered each on one
European biogeographical region, is testing, refining and evaluating
nature-based solutions on site and in real life. Not only are
technologies validated, but also uses, economic models, regulatory
barriers, behavioral patterns, and more. Climate KIC is actively
involved in three of these projects
(NBRACER\footnote{\url{https://nbracer.eu/}.} in the Atlantic region,
DesirMED\footnote{\url{https://www.desirmed.eu/}.} in the Mediterranean
region, ARCADIA\footnote{\url{https://www.arcadia-adaptation.eu/}.} in
the Continental region). Each project has engaged eight regions not
only as hosts for experiments, but as full-fledged consortium members.
In the 24 regions involved, each solution is explored from the outset
as a link in the regional journey towards resilience. What is the real
impact of such solutions? Under what conditions do they go beyond ``no
regret'' measures? How should knowledge and expertise in the physical
and technological dimensions of solutions be much more closely, and
realistically, coupled with factors linked to social dimensions,
economic, financial, behavioral, regulatory, cultural, all of which
have a major influence on the actual impact of solutions over time, but
are often very incompletely understood and assessed, separately and
even more in their combinations and interactions? Answering such
questions is key to unlocking the required investment levels and to
replicating and transposing such solutions on a larger scale.

Being deeply involved both in upstream and downstream projects within
the Adaptation Mission's portfolio allows us to work concretely with
regions and communities on how to connect different spatial and
temporal scales. For instance, each of the demonstration sites in the
above-mentioned Innovation Action projects is concentrated in small
areas (generally ranging from a few hectares to a few square
kilometers). Aiming for a deep, comprehensive understanding of the
actual solutions tested in real-life contexts demands to delve into the
specifics of places, engaging with very local expertise, notably in
regions such as Flanders where the social culture itself is highly
focused on local and hyperlocal scales. At the same time, one core
objective of these projects is to identify how relevant nature-based
solutions could, and should, be much better streamlined and leveraged
to accelerate regional resilience journeys.

Part of the work is then to make clearer and more tangible the
interplay between local experimentation and learning, as delivered in
demonstration sites, and the development of the pathways to resilience
at regional levels, not only conceptually but, most importantly, in the
actual practice of all stakeholders involved. Concrete reflection and
collaboration work across the regions involved in these projects is no
less important, notably to test how the wealth of knowledge created
during the projects' lifetime does not end up as mere reports gathering
dust on shelves, but can be effectively turned into a keyboard of
possibilities, further inspiring relevant solutions for communities
within and beyond those regions, and into actual guidance to implement
them in ways that make the best of their potential impact on climate
resilience.

Obviously, this work also requires building consistency of action
across different time scales as well. There is real urgency to make
visible the first lessons learnt and progress made in actual sites, to
maintain and grow the momentum and citizen engagement generated by
preceding projects (for instance in Porto with the URBINAT project).
There is also a pressing need to challenge and improve, or to
substantiate and validate, choices made by incumbent political
leaderships and public administrations, so that the learning and
determination to act can be anchored and made more sustainable beyond
political mandates, while it is acknowledged that achieving regional
resilience will happen over longer time{\break} scales.

Reconciling and integrating the local and the regional, the short, the
medium and the longer terms in climate adaptation are, once again, a
matter of breaking silos, not only between different organizations and
units but also between the priorities and objectives set within
organizations and units \mbox{themselves}.

\section{Of the role of data for climate action} \label{sec3}

The use of data in support of climate action is a critical issue, as
mentioned in a short paper Herv\'{e} Le Treut and I wrote in 2023 on
the potential of climate data \citep{LeTreutLe2023}. Identifying,
collecting, understanding, organizing, connecting Earth Observation
data, historical data, traditional or indigenous data, on physical and
socio-economic dimensions, on causes and impacts, and making them
accessible, intelligible and actionable by multiple actors in regions
and communities, is an extraordinarily complex, daunting task but an
essential requirement. Regional and local actors need to be able to
base their decisions on data that they trust and consider relevant, and
to acquire the capacity to appropriate it and take action.

Several years ago, the Horizon 2020 MARCO project that I coordinated
(also cf.~its sister project EU-MACS) was a pioneering attempt to
better understand the current state and the potential of the European
market for climate services, on which opinions were markedly divergent
at the time \citep{Leetal2020}. One of the main points that MARCO amply
confirmed was the gap between the way this emerging climate services
market was conceived and structured by the supply side (data providers
and the chains of downstream service developers, providers and
purveyors) and how it was actually perceived by the demand side, which
mostly struggled to identify which services could be truly relevant to
the actual needs as users experienced them, and how.

Certainly, in recent years, significant progress has been made through
the adoption of more detailed regulations that have boosted the demand
for climate services (under that name or others) and their use. We
would, however, challenge the assumption that more explicit regulatory
demands, while necessary, are sufficient in themselves to unlock the
potential impact of services for climate mitigation and adaptation.
There is still, in our experience, a loss in translation at multiple
levels of the value chains between data and action by decision-makers
and final users.

In addition to the promising work being engaged around data and
monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) within Innovation Action
projects, for instance in Nouvelle-Aquitaine as part of the NBRACER
project, it is worth mentioning a few more Horizon Europe projects
which aim to ensure that climate services are modelled on the real
information needs of local authorities.

One of them is VALORADA\footnote{\url{https://valorada-project.eu/}.},
part of the Adaptation Mission portfolio, which aims to raise awareness
of the untapped potential of existing data in effectively adapting to
climate change, through a comprehensive approach that integrates
technical and governance perspectives, seeking to create
interdependencies between various types of data, notably emphasizing
the importance of ground data for climate analyses, observation, and
tool validation. The co-development of data manipulation tools and
climate data, and further capacity-building, scalability and
replicability activities, are done with public authorities and local
service developers across several European regions.

Taking a complementary perspective, the
PROTECT\footnote{\url{https://www.protect-pcp.eu/}.} and
PCP-WISE\footnote{\url{https://pcp-wise.eu/}.} projects apply
innovation procurement instruments, in this case pre-commercial
procurement (PCP) as adopted and \mbox{further} developed by the
European Union, to {climate} services, both for adaptation and for
mitigation. From a current state where the identification of needs for
climate-related data is generally incomplete and scattered across
administrative units of public bodies, leading to the purchase of
isolated tools that imperfectly meet the needs and are underutilized,
the aim is to move to a more integrated expression of demand at an
organizational and, further, local or regional level, that can generate
both greater clarity and a critical mass of users for climate service
providers. The PCP process shall then allow potential service
purchasers and service providers to build a joint understanding of the
needs and of the current and near-future capacity to address them, and
to test assumptions through R\&D, before actual tenders can be issued
at the end of the projects, enabling more strategic and effective
procurement from public organizations.

\section{System innovation for regional{\hfill\break} transformation:
learning from{\hfill\break} Deep Demonstration initiatives}
\label{sec4}

As previously highlighted, for the systemic transformation of a region,
it is essential to be anchored in its specific characteristics. As an
organization and community with constantly evolving membership working
across Europe and beyond, Climate KIC is seen as neutral in the local
landscape. Our role is not to choose between opposing sides. It is to
support the region and its components to define, with sufficient detail
and diversity of perspectives, what are the desirable futures they can
envision across their diverse identities and needs and they want to
choose from; what systems do they need to transform in integrated ways
to open pathways to such futures; and how to design, through innovation
portfolios, and enable roadmaps to implement those pathways. This
allows us to convene stakeholders to open dialogues of which no one
holds full control and ownership. But if we are to support far-reaching
and demanding transformations, to turn methodologies and concepts into
actual moves towards positive climate impact, we need to immerse
ourselves in the region, the ways it breathes, its specific tensions
and contradictions. This is what inspires the Deep Demonstration
approach and must guide how to land it into the reality of places.

A region's identity can be a driving force, if it is not used as a tool
for exclusion. Take the example of Gipuzkoa, the smallest Spanish
province and one of the seven traditional Basque provinces. In its
global strategy \textit{Etorkizuna Eraikiz} (Building the Future), the
provincial government describes the ``Gipuzkoa Model'' as the
conjunction of values and capacities of the province, that explains how
its economic and social development has been built, and forms the basis
for the shared construction of the future of Gipuzkoa. Those values and
capacities are (a)~the leadership, vitality and capacity for
cooperation of Gipuzkoan society, a high level of social capital; (b)~a
recognized socio-economic model, which successfully combines wealth
creation and social protection, and promotes balanced development in
the territory and a supportive community, with a Basque culture and its
own language; and (c)~a future anchored in the principles of
competitiveness, equality and{\break} collaboration.

Interestingly, the strategy is not primarily structured in terms of
priority sectors but in terms of coherence with the Gipuzkoa model, of
collaborative governance, a new public agenda based on collaboration
and experimentation, and of generating democracy, trust and public
value. The strategy is then divided into three layers: a space for
deliberation; a layer consisting of 11 reference centers and
strategies, which are collaborative workspaces generating their own
ecosystems, one of them, Naturklima, focused on climate change; and a
space for experimentation. It is a particular challenge to explore
transformation trajectories for the climate in such a mental, political
and social framework. While the Gipuzkoa strategy is ambitious,
provincial authorities did not yet feel that it was sufficiently
defragmented and concrete. This is how a Deep Demonstration
program\footnote{\url{https://www.climate-kic.org/spotlight-initiatives/gipuzkoa/}.}
was designed with Climate KIC, where the province wanted to make deeper
progress, focusing on two ``missions'': sustainable food and new forms
of mobility. The structure of the program integrates all the categories
of players involved, and also the three main levels of governance: the
Basque Country, Gipuzkoa, and the development agencies in each of the
valleys.

In Ireland, the agri-food value chain accounts for 37\% of Irish
greenhouse gas emissions.\ Our ongoing Deep Demonstration
program\footnote{\url{https://www.climate-kic.org/sustainablefoodireland/transforming-irelands-agri-food-system/}.}
with the \mbox{Department} of Agriculture, Food and the Sea, currently
engaging with further ministries and agencies, aims to reconcile
prosperity for farming and rural communities, sustainable business
models for agri-food and bio-based industries, and ambitious climate
targets.

A complete mapping of the agri-food system has been carried out. The
choice of priority trajectories was then made by the Irish
stakeholders, and this process was conducted in a very inclusive way,
resulting in the definition of seven ``flagships'', some overarching
and structural (``Vision 2050: re-imagine Ireland's land and agri-food
system'', ``Foster innovation and investment in new value chains to
diversify the sector''), others with more focus on thematic areas
(``Promote circular bioeconomy models in regions and multiple value
chains'', ``Diversify incomes through a carbon farming and nature
credit framework'') or specific value chains (``Produce and certify
climate-neutral beef'', ``Accelerate emission reduction and
sustainability in dairy farms'', ``Grow and diversify the tillage
sector''). For example, flagship no.~6 works with the dairy sector with
several major projects: defining what ``fully sustainable dairy
production'' means, demonstrating emissions reductions with
stakeholders from dominant and alternative systems, and informing Irish
and European policies. The list of these seven flagships may not be
very vegan, but it is ambitious, concrete and motivating for the
players involved, and also verifiable in terms of real impact.
Implementation must then take place with a selection and clustering
from 280 project ideas on the ground and with partners all along the
value chain. The Irish Deep Demonstration is the first to have entered
the implementation of the Activity Portfolio phase.
\looseness=-1

A third program will allow to introduce a visual tool that can help
design innovation portfolios. Slovenia is a pioneering country in the
circular economy at the international level, having led some two
hundred advanced circularity projects across the country. However, its
government fully \mbox{understands} that going from that point to
achieving near-circularity across the entire national economy is a
massive change in nature, not merely a quantitative scaling problem.
This was the reason why, after a long period of discussing and building
mutual trust and understanding between the multiple Slovenian
ministries and public organizations involved in circularity projects,
Climate KIC and the EIT Raw Materials KIC, the decision was made to
engage in a Deep Demonstration
program\footnote{\url{https://www.climate-kic.org/circularslovenia-2-2/}.}
that could enable such a change of scale and scope.

We agreed on a representation of the systems to be transformed based on
three constituent elements: (a)~four priority value chains: Built
environment, Mobility, Food systems, Forest products---wood industry;
(b)~five levers to make the transformation possible: Education \&
training, Public policies \& procurement, Entrepreneurship, support for
SMEs \& business models, Science, research \& technology, Financial
architecture; and (c)~four levels of intervention to drive this
transformation: Awareness \& capacity, Behavioral change, Structural
change, Redefining paradigms---creating the conditions for change.
These elements form the three axes of a 3D representation. Through
broad consultation, a series of ``positions'' emerged, i.e., points in
the systems where one can concretely intervene, experiment and catalyze
the transformation towards near-circularity. In the very simplified
diagram below (Figure~\ref{fig4}a,b), some of these ``positions'' are
mentioned and graphically represented along the three axes.

\begin{figure*}
\includegraphics{fig04}
\caption{\label{fig4}Simplified representation of a problem space
(Deep Demonstration in Slovenia). {Source:} Deep demonstration
of a circular, regenerative and low-carbon economy in Slovenia:
implementation of Phase~2, Del~2.1 (April 2023).}
\end{figure*}

Finally, one can refine the representation by showing all existing
projects that are relevant to the circularization of Slovenia, and then
identify by projections where new projects, capacities and expertise
need to be developed to build a comprehensive and consistent portfolio
of interventions across the system. This kind of representation
requires time and practice to acquire familiarity and precise agency
with it, but it then helps to design actual innovation portfolios,
connected and integrated, which together meet the needs to get closer
to the targeted systems transformation.

\section{Enabling and boosting ``concrete''{\hfill\break}
climate-relevant innovation} \label{sec5}

The projects and initiatives described above obviously all strive to be
anchored in reality, providing communities and organizations with
\mbox{actionable} schemes, methodologies and knowledge, creating actual
space for their collaborative systemic approaches, and empowering them
to create impactful solution portfolios. However, some more examples of
specific activities (arbitrarily sampled among hundreds) might help the
reader visualize more ``\mbox{concretely}'' the range of innovations
that Climate KIC has catalysed, nurtured or boosted over the years.

Thousands of start-ups across Europe and, in the last few years, on
other continents have benefited from our climate acceleration
programmes. A few examples of supported innovation include wood
fractionation to enable circular bioeconomy (Chrysalix
Technologies/Lixea), low-carbon, high-performance computing (Qarnot),
precision monitoring of ecosystems, vegetation and carbon (OPENFORET),
high-energy density solar technology (Naked Energy), home thermostats
and intelligent cooling (tado{\textdegree}), electrically powered
personal mobility (Lilium, Volocopter), automated wind-assisted
propulsion systems for maritime transport\break (bound4blue).

Among the many collaborative projects born within the Climate KIC
community, let us mention the early, pioneering
CarboCount\footnote{\url{https://anr.fr/fileadmin/documents/2015/posters/Poster\_CarboCount.pdf}.}
and CarboCountCity (precision monitoring of greenhouse gas sources
across large forested regions and across metropolitan areas
respectively---lead CEA/LSCE; fed notably into the Low Carbon City Lab
programme,
LoCaL\footnote{\url{https://www.climate-kic.org/news/curbing-carbon-cities-climate-finance-get-connected/}.}),
OASIS (open-source climate risk monitoring frameworks, involving major
insurance and reinsurance companies, which was further developed by
OASIS LMF\footnote{\url{https://oasislmf.org/}.}), WINnERS and ARISE
(protecting smallholder farmers in Africa and building
climate-resilient agricultural supply chains---lead Imperial College
London; with further developments to this
day\footnote{\url{https://www.imperial.ac.uk/business-school/faculty-research/our-research/research-impact/how-take-the-risk-out-farming/}.}),
Climate
VAR\footnote{\url{https://www.msci.com/documents/1296102/16985724/MSCI-ClimateVaR-Introduction-Feb2020.pdf/f0ff1d77-3278-e409-7a2a-bf1da9d53f30?t=1580472788213}.}
disclosing the risks to companies' assets under the Task Force on
Climate-related Financial Disclosures---Carbon Delta and Climate KIC;
further developed and deployed by MSCI), Cool Farm
Tool\footnote{\url{https://coolfarm.org/}.} (standardised metrics for
the framing sector on greenhouse gases, biodiversity, water use, and
food loss and waste),
SATURN\footnote{\url{https://sites.google.com/fmach.it/saturn-project/home}.}
(enabling economically sustainable, multi-functional land use around
three cities, based on landscape identity---lead Fondazione Edmund
Mach),
LOOP-Ports\footnote{\url{https://circulareconomy.europa.eu/platform/en/good-practices/loop-ports-driving-circularity-port-sector}.}
(transitioning to a circular economy in the port sector---lead
Fundaci\'{o}n Valenciaport; fed notably into ongoing Deep Demonstration
in
Lavrio\footnote{\url{https://hradf.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Green-Port-Lavrio-flyer\_DIGITAL.pdf}.}
and CO-WATERS\footnote{\url{https://www.co-waters.eu/}.} project),
SuSMo\footnote{\url{https://cleantech.bg/en/project/susmo-shared-mobility-transition-guidance-tools/}.}
(lifting barriers to the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of
shared mobility---lead Cenex Nederland),
Reboost\footnote{\url{https://www.climate-kic.org/news/lignite-regions-just-transition/}.}
(developing resilient and robust sustainable development strategies in
three lignite-dependent regions---lead Potsdam IK; early seed of a rich
portfolio of current post-coal projects linking to the European Just
Transition Mechanism), or the Horizon Europe projects
ClieNFarms\footnote{\url{https://clienfarms.eu/} {and}
\url{https://www.climate-kic.org/news/towards-climate-neutral-agriculture-system-insights-from-clienfarms/}.}
(co-developing and upscaling systemic, locally relevant solutions for
climate-neutral and climate-resilient sustainable farming---lead INRAE)
and Credible\footnote{\url{https://www.project-credible.eu/}.}
(building consensus on the methodologies to maximize the capacity of
soils to act as carbon sinks---lead Climate KIC). Larger initiatives,
such as those described in previous sections, also abound in concrete
case studies, from regeneration through natural urban spaces in
Ukraine\footnote{\url{https://www.climate-kic.org/news/how-a-ukrainian-city-is-finding-resilience-in-nature/}.}
(Bucha Forest Classroom, with EIT Community New European Bauhaus) or
\mbox{lighthouse} \mbox{districts} for \mbox{low-emission} collective
heating systems in
Leuven\footnote{\url{https://www.climate-kic.org/news/leuvens-lighthouse-districts-green-heat/}.}
(as part of the Deep Demonstration of Healthy, Clean Cities) to
piloting sustainable construction and green budgeting in
Zagreb\footnote{\url{https://www.climate-kic.org/news/netzerocities-zagrebs-model-for-sustainable-urban-transformation/}.}
(with NetZeroCities).

\section{A few insights from the first fifteen years of the Climate KIC
journey} \label{sec6}

A complete overview of what Climate KIC's journey to date has been
would widely exceed the scope of this paper, and other documents
published by Climate KIC will do it more comprehensively and from an
organizational perspective. I will therefore limit myself to a few
personal insights.

The European Institute of Innovation and Technology was proposed by the
European Commission and established in 2008. The first three Knowledge
and Innovation Communities (KICs) were selected through competitive
calls at the end of 2009, Climate KIC being the community chosen to
work on the topic of climate change. As there was no economic sector
focused on tackling climate change and its consequences, and no large,
interconnected market beyond a few emerging niche markets, the very
notion of focusing on a growth and job agenda around climate change was
challenged by some as hardly being realistic. In parallel, it is fair
to say that the creation of KICs was initially seen by some public and
private organizations primarily as a new source of EU subsidies that
could add to existing R\&D funding mechanisms.

While none of the above was groundless, what quickly emerged was that
Climate KIC should not be yet another traditional counter to apply for
project subsidies or start-up grants. One of the reasons was that
markets for solutions were mostly immature, latent or even
non-existent, and that they would not develop merely out of push from
the technological side or of economic demand. There was also very early
awareness that the nature and complexity of climate-related challenges
would probably require something other than an accumulative approach,
based solely on the addition of point solutions and incremental
progress, and that technology would not be the only lever to activate
to foster innovation at scale and in time.

The systems narrative was present from the very first phases of Climate
KIC's history. It is quite interesting to observe that although Climate
KIC has been one of the most constantly changing and evolving in the
family of KICs in terms of community members, organizational structure
and formats, programs, areas of work and more, some of the fundamental
assumptions were already present from the onset.

In the first ten years, innovation projects of all sizes were selected
through competitive calls on a range of topics. In the very first
phase, we all had to explore together whether there was appetite and
potential to generate a critical mass of innovative ideas, and
proposals were very eclectic in scope and evaluated essentially on
their individual merits, not yet in a project portfolio logic. The same
applied even more to the selection of start-ups accelerated across
Europe and, in different ways, to education programs such as the
Journey summer schools, Pioneers into Practice and many others. Within
two or three years, we had moved to a more thematic approach. In
contrast with usual EU calls, ideas were always discussed within the
community, both collectively and bilaterally between Climate KIC teams
and community members, upstream from proposal submission, after project
selection and during the whole lifetime of the project, or even beyond.
This did not create bias in selection processes but opened space for
joint progress and significant reorientation of projects, based on what
all those involved had learnt and tried together.

In retrospect, it might seem difficult to assess exactly what lasting
impact was created in those early years, to which extent each of the
individual projects was successful. One has to remember that not only
markets were emerging (and many still are, despite the progress made
worldwide in the last fifteen years and the accelerating pressure
coming from tangible effects of climate change), but also that various
organizations in the community had very different perceptions of what
mattered or not, depending on their positions between science and
business, their topics of expertise, their sectors, their geographic
locations and more. However, a lot was learnt through facilitating and
enabling organizations and teams who had never worked together, or only
in \mbox{contractual}, provider to customer relations, to gather around
climate-related challenges on which none had full control and
expertise. We also learnt a lot from what failed, or at least stayed
far from anticipated outcomes, not only about the inadequacy of some
ideas but also, more probably, about the enabling conditions required
to unlock the potential of innovative ideas. While it has always been
difficult to trace and monitor the benefits of projects after they
ended, we keep discovering, in discussions with long-time or former
community members, that our joint activities contributed in multiple
ways to developing further products and informing strategic choices,
beyond the hundreds of solutions that were made available as more
direct results from projects.

Some of the most valuable lessons learnt along the years were
transversal to the specific topics of projects and, therefore, harder
to capture in reports or deliverables. One virtue of working with a
logic of community and longer-term partnership is that it gives space
to create trust. I shall come back to this in the closing remarks, but
what I have in mind here is the opportunity to share some of the
actual, harder barriers that teams and organizations are facing, and
which are not routinely discussed in project meetings or in public
conferences. Those can pertain to internal tensions, to resistance from
local communities, to doubts about the viability of current business
models, to the capacity and determination of organizational leadership
to prioritize actions consistently with longer-term challenges, but
also to cultural misalignment within project consortia, to defiance and
conflicting time horizons between academic and industrial actors, and
more. While none of those are unheard of, working on a wide diversity
of topics and formats, often in unchartered combinations, opens a
window upon more complex and stimulating \mbox{dialogues}.

Working with places through national hubs, in regions and cities has
also allowed us as a community and organization to deepen our
experience of building climate innovation ecosystems, and to understand
how much more it meant than merely identifying the best actors and
bringing them together within project consortia. Significant time and
energy were wasted in the early days after some projects were kicked
off, when the lack of mutual knowledge and vastly different working
cultures created confusion about expectations, roles, and even the
\mbox{actual} \mbox{ambitions} and expected outcomes of projects beyond
formal results.\ As the emphasis on system innovation became stronger
towards the end of the 2010s, notably with the development of the first
Deep Demonstration initiatives, the role of ``challenge owners'' became
more central, and the traditional logic of project consortia needed to
be revisited, all the more so, since KICs had to diversify funding
sources and the share of subsidies from one institutional funder
sharply decreased. This now leads the community, and its subsets
focusing on more specific topics, to increasingly self-organize, to
embrace more roles than simply delivering a work package or a task in a
project. It also requires all of us to start from the challenge spaces
we want to address and explore together possible schemes to fund and
resource the work. However, this diversification of resources is
necessary anyway to deal with the greater variety of interventions
required to implement system innovation programs and roadmaps.

Maintaining, regenerating, and further growing the energy and
commitment of such a diversity of organizations to work together on
hard, interdependent issues is difficult. One has to accept that not
every single component of systemic innovation programs can be systemic
and complex in itself, and moreover, that a large part of the positive
impacts on climate will probably not come from initiatives and
activities that have climate change as their primary driver. Individual
actors need to see, and to show, that concrete progress is being
achieved within the scope of their roles and responsibilities. Yet,
there is no escaping the increasing need for integrated, consistent
decision-making, planning, resourcing at the scale of systems and
subsystems. Supporting all stakeholders to embrace systemic approaches
without creating paralysis and confusion from a sense of unmanageable
complexity is a challenge that we, as an innovation community, need to
address \mbox{constantly}.

\section{Four ``closing'' (open) reflections} \label{sec7}

(1) ``In the last ten years'', one eminent research director once told
us, ``we have made good progress in the scientific understanding of
urban transitions, and in fifteen years from now, we should be able to
start acting on it''. But can, and will, cities really wait for another
fifteen years?

When it comes to acting in the face of climate change, launching
innovation programs before their scientific foundations are fully
mature is not only unavoidable, but creates potentially fertile ground
to accelerate our understanding of these ultra-complex systems. We
believe that the scientific community should accept and embrace this,
beyond the discomfort and tension that it may create with the standards
and demands of academic research and peer-reviewed publications. We
advocate that science must be given the means and resources to remain
at the heart of this race and, on various subjects, to regain the lead
over time as concepts and theories advance. The main risk is not so
much that urgently needed action for climate change mitigation and
adaptation would be delayed until science is confident and ready
enough. It is rather that communities confronted with climate
challenges, their leaders, the multiple actors trying to contribute to
emerging service markets shall not wait and will proceed with
experimentation on, and implementation of innovative solutions, with
little or no scientific insight, guidance and analysis of observed
results, which is (in our view) a lose-lose situation, and a
potentially dangerous one for all sides in the longer term. One
critical question is then: can scientists ``get their hands dirty'' in
conceptually impure projects, without sacrificing their careers because
interdisciplinarity is still deemed suspicious, if not outright
mediocre, in many academic communities, all the more so, when some of
the theories involved are not yet fully mature?


(2) Financing the transformation is not just a question of figures. Not
only do the capacities of local authorities or the State have their
limits, but various categories of public or private organizations can
take and assume different risks. Exploring the possibilities of mixed
financing also falls within the scope of climate innovation.

If mitigation and adaptation could be achieved by taking each lever,
each sector one after the other, we would not be complicating things
just for the sake of it. Of course, we need to implement many fairly
simple and potentially positive measures. But that alone will not be
enough. This is where the construction of innovation portfolios becomes
necessary and \mbox{relevant}.

One must allow projects to be redirected as the whole portfolio
progresses. Failure must be accepted as an integral part of the
process, and several paths must be explored concurrently to determine
which one generates the most positive impact. All this needs to be
built into the funding model: you do not invest only in achieving
results, but in everything you learn from developing and implementing
the \mbox{portfolio}.

Transforming complex systems entails combining multiple interventions,
in ways that have not yet been fully explored. Even a clear roadmap
still contains open questions---it is almost never a single possible
route, entirely known in advance, to be implemented in a linear and
sequential way. In other words, trial and error is not just a
collateral risk, but an integral part of systems transformation.
Sticking to more traditional, incremental improvements based on tested
and validated point solutions might seem safer, yet it represents a
much higher risk of falling far short from climate targets. Betting on
a small number of isolated, disruptive technologies is equally
dangerous---massive investment in simplistic solutions can fuel massive
maladaptation or uncontrollable chain effects. The key point here is
that, to enable the required transformations, political leaders, public
and private funders, industrial actors, must explicitly build into
planning and resourcing the license and the financial capacity to fail.
And citizens need to understand and accept this as well. It does not at
all mean that innovation should be hazardous. What we should not do is
to turn our backs on open questions and on experimenting on multiple
options. Greater uncertainty demands a higher sense of responsibility,
integrating all relevant knowledge, especially when innovation needs to
progress before supporting science is fully mature.

Even though combining policy instruments, blending funding mechanisms,
coupling transformation levers create more complexity and apparent
uncertainty, it is key to understanding more quickly how systems
actually react, and ultimately to better adjust and control the
implementation of bolder climate pathways.

(3) Five or six years ago, when we advocated more ``systemic
innovation'', we were asked ``do you mean systematic''? Now, we are
being told ``of course you are doing systemic innovation, like everyone
else''.

In reality, not everyone who talks about systems and follows fashion
does systemic work. Many are launching activities in several sectors in
parallel, but still in silos. We, in the Climate KIC organization and
community, may have genuinely pursued systems thinking and started to
experiment with real challenge owners for several years, but we (as
anyone else) still have an enormous amount to learn about the practice
of system innovation in the field, and from addressing the conceptual
and operational challenges that emerge from it. It is a huge
undertaking, far from being well-defined or mastered yet, one that
cannot be further delayed. This makes it all the more urgent that we
really embrace and tackle it \mbox{together}.

Some equate systemic approaches with a dissolution of responsibilities:
if so much is based on interdependencies and systemic coherence, would
the players no longer be individually accountable for the efforts
expected of them? This is obviously misleading: the more complex a
system is, the more acutely it can react to the contributions of each
of its players. To use a musical metaphor, just because you play an
instrument in a symphony orchestra, with a conductor to lead the
ensemble, you cannot afford more false notes than a lone performer, if
you truly respect and serve the musical intent.

(4) A central issue, as mentioned before, is trust. It cannot be
decreed or imposed; it must be crafted, built together, and deepened.
In the course of the Deep Demonstration work in Slovenia, funding
agencies that had seen themselves as competitors within the same
government ministry came to develop common criteria for selecting
low-carbon projects. Those new criteria, in turn, are building
coherence and confidence in the economic sectors, and transparency in
public debate by reducing opacity and the risk of greenwashing. They
create a framework in which civil servants have a mandate to experiment
and an explicit right to fail before identifying promising
\mbox{avenues}.

Obviously, this need to create and maintain trust, and to understand
the many factors that enable and unlock or erode and destroy trust, is
not at all limited to public administrations. Working with a variety of
people and organizations, we regularly meet exasperation, and even
desperation, that knowledge, expertise, know how, are not being applied
while they have the capacity to solve the climate crisis. This is
particularly frequent with academic experts, but also with providers of
technological solutions, and in different ways with militants and
activists. Much of this sense of exasperation is understandable and
even highly justified, when clear science keeps being neglected,
downplayed or even contested with weak, dubious arguments or downright
with demagogical lies.

Those, however, might be only the tip of the iceberg. Beyond the
political games and the vested interests, there is also the more or
less implicit perception that between the theoretical potential of
applying and implementing what science and technology are telling us
about climate phenomena, indicators, levers for performance
improvement, and the actual impact of this knowledge on complex human
and natural systems, multiple factors and their interdependencies come
into play and can either improve or hamper impact. Not all of them can
be precisely modelled and monitored at this point, and even less their
interplay. Nonetheless, treating them as marginal or immaterial, or
ignoring them altogether, will also erode confidence in their full
relevance to concretely resolve climate-related issues and their
capacity to inform the decisions that public and private actors have to
take, and that are not limited to climate dimensions. Awareness of such
gaps is finally starting to grow, but acting on them proves to be more
difficult. This is not least because most actors have quite strictly
delineated conceptions of what their role should or shouldn't be,
because organizations and their internal subdivisions are siloed; and
because increasing pressure to focus on one's own objectives,
indicators and resources is not conducive to tackling such gaps in
collaborative and effective ways, which is complex work that takes time
and demands conscious, sustained efforts from all involved.

The necessary transformation of a system only begins when the key
players in the system have the confidence to admit that none of them
can achieve this transformation under their sole control, and that in
spite of the countless obstacles created by different cultures,
organizational patterns, economic models, temporal and geographic
scales, definitions of impact, there is no alternative to deep
collaboration.

\section*{Acknowledgements}

The author would like to thank the organizers of the conference
``Climate Emergency: A Decisive Turning Point?'' for their invitation,
Herv\'{e} Le Treut and Alain Dupuy for many highly enriching
conversations on climate adaptation and resilience, as well as his
colleagues and former colleagues at Climate KIC for their information
on systemic innovation programs, in particular Andoni Hidalgo, Bart
Stegeman, Denyse Julien, Ekaterina Smaguina, Mar\'{i}a Garc\'{i}a
Rodr\'{i}guez, Marl\`{e}ne Zanier and Stefka Domuzova.

\section*{Declaration of interests}

The author is employed by Climate KIC, a Knowledge and Innovation
Community supported by the European Union (European Institute of
Innovation and Technology).

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