How Brussels wants to stop the climate disaster blame game

Por Zia Weise — Sustainability – POLITICO

How Brussels wants to stop the climate disaster blame game

New Commission proposal will seek to clarify who’s in charge of managing fires and floods.

By ZIA WEISE
in Paceville, Malta

Illustration by Natália Delgado/ POLITICO

The European Union’s effort to shield itself against multiplying climate disasters is running into a major problem: There’s no one at the wheel.

From Belgian ministers passing the buck after a massive wildfire to Spanish authorities trading blame over deadly floods, recent disasters have exposed a vacuum of accountability across the bloc. 

The uncertainty over whose job it is to protect people, landscapes and assets from escalating climate impacts doesn’t just have the potential to spark bitter political fights. The European Commission fears it also threatens to undermine prevention efforts. 

That’s why Brussels is preparing to unveil legislation that will force countries to assign responsibility — a move that may cause consternation in capitals.

“We will present a new framework for climate resilience next month,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said during her State of the Union speech last week. “And we will assess the risks — and at which level they should be managed.” 

Commission officials have indicated that so-called “risk ownership” — providing clarity on which person or institution is responsible for preventing, managing and anticipating certain climate impacts — is a key element of the upcoming framework, expected on Oct. 28. 

“We need to become much clearer — and we’re learning that, in some cases, the hard way — where the responsibility for specific action lies,” Climate Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told POLITICO in an interview in August. “Is that at a local level, is it at a regional level, is it a national level or is it at a European level?” 

How Brussels might ensure accountability for climate disasters remains uncertain, as disaster response is a national competence. One official, granted anonymity to discuss ongoing policy work, indicated that the Commission could introduce an obligation for countries to allocate responsibilities across their governing structures. 

The EU executive insists it’s not planning to micromanage disaster response: The “last thing” the Commission wants to do, Hoekstra said, is “try to steer this whole process from an ivory tower… there is no point in trying to explain to the Dutch how they need to build dikes.” 

“Having said that,” he added, “we do need to make sure that we are crystal-clear… Who is responsible for what? Who is responsible for the firefighting? Who is responsible for the financing? Who is responsible for planting trees in cities? Who is responsible for health care measures for the elderly? And so on.” 

Why it matters

Risk ownership sounds like a technicality. But in its absence, the response to and prevention of climate disasters can get muddled. 

Take the record-breaking wildfire in Belgium’s High Fens nature reserve last month. Local media investigations suggest the fire was likely caused by sparks from farm equipment mowing the bone-dry land — and that no one was in charge of mitigating fire risk. 

Belgium’s federal government is tasked with coordinating national preparedness against climate change, but land management is a regional competence, and various authorities can issue mowing bans. While one province near the High Fens imposed such a ban, none of the others did, and a regional Walloon government agency commissioned a contractor to carry out mowing in the nature reserve at the height of the drought. 

Opposition politicians have seized on the High Fens blaze to call for a centralized climate unit. At an event in September, the head of the Commission’s climate department, Kurt Vandenberghe, said the Belgian fire response demonstrated why the EU executive is working on improving risk ownership: “It clearly shows that there is a lot of work to do.”

If no one’s in charge of prevention, all governments can do is react to escalating disasters, experts warn. 

“If no one knows who the hell should be doing something about wildfires, then it becomes a mess,” said Suraje Dessai, professor of climate adaptation at the University of Leeds and vice-chair of the EU’s scientific advisory body on climate change. “There’s no action, or we’re just reacting to lots of disasters… One could argue that’s what’s happening now.” 

It’s not just Belgium and its multi-layered governing system. In Spain, a blame game erupted in the aftermath of the deadly Valencia floods in 2024: Central agencies provided warnings but the regional government was tasked with the emergency response and sending flood alerts to the population, which came too late for many.

Similarly, when floods swept Germany’s Ahr valley in 2021, officials at local and regional level pointed the finger at each other. 

“At the moment, no one is in charge of climate risks at EU level, most national governments aren’t taking ownership of the risks, and much is passed down onto cities and regions, which lack the resources to deal with the risks,” said Manon Dufour, Brussels director of think tank E3G. 

“Establishing clear risk ownership and accountability is a small but important step toward making managing climate impacts possible,” she added, “because otherwise you end up with a blame game.” 

Experts also say the Commission should ensure risk ownership isn’t limited to highly visible impacts such as fires and floods. 

Climate risks that cascade through financial systems, supply chains or the power grid — think of the economic impact of this summer’s heat — are “where there is the most obvious and most worrying gap,” said Theo Cox, senior strategist at the Strategic Climate Risks Initiative, who co-authored a recent proposal on climate risk governance aimed at the Commission. 

Thorny politics

While experts say improving risk ownership is common sense in the face of worsening climate impacts, they acknowledge the Commission’s move could stir controversy. 

For a start, allocating risks will force governments to increase transparency and accountability for regular citizens as to whose job it is to protect them. 

“Risk ownership ultimately is… a social contract,” said Dessai. In the Netherlands, for example, “there’s quite a strong social contract that people will have dry feet,” as the state is taking responsibility for flood protection through a massive dike-building program. 

That might open the door to legal liability in the event of climate disasters — something survivors of past floods and fires have been pushing for. In the case of the Valencia floods, an effort to hold the regional premier responsible for negligence failed in part because current legislation assigned him no specific duties.

“There is a clear and obvious disincentive to take on risk ownership,” Cox acknowledged.

That’s why he argued that Brussels can’t just stop at telling governments to assign risk. The new framework should also feature an enforcement mechanism, he said, or risk turning into a toothless “reporting exercise.”

“We are living in a world that all the systems that we fundamentally relied on were not built for,” Cox said, pointing to this summer’s unprecedented events. “And so there is an urgent need for us to adapt, not only in the traditional sense of the word, but also in how we conceive of our strategies, our governance and our statecraft, given the reality that we’re now in.” 

Fonte: Sustainability – POLITICO