Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași (UAIC) organized a Think Tank on Building resilience to climate change within cities and communities on Monday, March 10, 2025, starting at 9:00 AM at Tafrali Café. The event was attended by representatives of the university (students, professors, and researchers), Iași Municipality, Iași Environmental Protection Agency, Moldova Regional Meteorological Center, and civil society (Greenpeace Romania, Act for Tomorrow, CIVICA Association, Mai Bine Association, Iași Community Foundation, Association for Ecology and Sustainable Development).

The discussions held during the Think Tank aimed to identify solutions and policy recommendations for ensuring climate change resilience in communities. In this context, participants shared best practices, concrete actions taken so far, and encountered barriers, as well as ideas on how communities can adapt more easily to climate change. The discussion topics were proposed considering the general context established by the United Nations regarding climate change:

  • Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of the extreme weather and climate events that are affecting all countries. Left unattended, climate hazards are likely to increase poverty, worsen inequalities, exacerbate food insecurity and cause health problems, among other hardships.
  • Climate hazards also have differential impacts on people and communities within countries. Deep-rooted socioeconomic inequalities largely determine these impacts.
  • The universal consensus attested by the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides a unique opportunity to build climate change resilience for sustainable development.

The event belongs to a series of Europe-wide events in the framework of the EC2U European University Alliance that took or will take place in seven other European cities: Coimbra (Portugal), Jena (Germany), Linz (Austria), Pavia (Italy), Poitiers (France), Salamanca (Spain) and Turku (Finland), in universities that together form the European Consortium EC2U – European Campus of City Universities (https://ec2u.eu/).

The results of all the think-tanks will be presented at the EC2U Forum, which will take place in Coimbra, Portugal, in May 19-22, 2025, and will be used to formulate a joint policy recommendation that will contribute to strengthening knowledge transfer at the local and European levels and to jointly addressing the challenges related to climate change.