Cortés Arbués Ignasi, Chatzivasileiadis Theodoros, Storm Servaas, Ivanova Olga, Filatova Tatiana
Department of Multi-Actor Systems, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
Department of Values, Technology and Innovation, Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.
Commun Earth Environ. 2025;6(1):470. doi: 10.1038/s43247-025-02454-3. Epub 2025 Jun 17.
Climate-induced hazards are becoming more frequent and severe, causing escalating economic losses worldwide. Consequently, climate change adaptation is increasingly necessary to protect people, nature and the economy. However, little is known about who is adapting and how much they spend on adaptation measures, especially in the private sector. This article focuses on firms-the backbone of economic development, yet understudied in climate adaptation research. Here we present insights from a unique panel dataset detailing businesses' adaptation investments across 28 European countries (2018-2022), 5 hazard types, and 19 economic sectors. Our descriptive analysis reveals low but increasing adaptation investments across Europe (0.15-0.92% of national gross domestic product, annually increasing by 30.6-37.4%). Moreover, we highlight considerable differences in adaptation intensity across sectors, including low adaptation intensity in manufacturing and retail trade. Additionally, our econometric analysis indicates that public adaptation spending crowds in private investments in adaptation, highlighting opportunities to facilitate autonomous adaptation.
气候引发的灾害正变得越来越频繁和严重，在全球范围内造成经济损失不断攀升。因此，适应气候变化对于保护人类、自然和经济愈发必要。然而，对于谁在进行适应以及他们在适应措施上花费多少，人们知之甚少，尤其是在私营部门。本文聚焦于企业——经济发展的支柱，但在气候适应研究中却未得到充分研究。在此，我们展示了一个独特的面板数据集的见解，该数据集详细记录了28个欧洲国家（2018 - 2022年）、5种灾害类型和19个经济部门的企业适应投资情况。我们的描述性分析显示，欧洲各地的适应投资虽低但在增加（占国内生产总值的0.15% - 0.92%，年增长率为30.6% - 37.4%）。此外，我们强调了各部门在适应强度上存在显著差异，包括制造业和零售贸易的适应强度较低。此外，我们的计量分析表明，公共适应支出会带动私营部门的适应投资，凸显了促进自主适应的机遇。
