Protecting against the Social Risks associated to Climate Change in Europe: a comparative perspective – PROTECCT

How are European Welfare states adapting to the ever-increasing climate crisis? Combining comparative social policy analysis and sociology of risks and disasters, this project will highlight, map and analyze the protection mechanisms against social risks associated with environmental hazards linked to climate change. It poses the following question: how can we characterize and explain the different types of policies implemented in Europe to protect populations against environmental hazards? The aim is to study existing protection systems in European countries against the risks of drought, flooding, coastal erosion and heatwaves, and their adaptation to the climate crisis. Using a mixed-methods approach, the project will map protection policies against the social risks posed by climatic hazards in the EU (+U.K.), by building a unique comparative database; and will conduct a comparative case-study survey (France, Germany, Denmark, Ireland and Italy) that will account for the ways in which social and environmental protection mechanisms are being reframed to adapt to a warmer and more dangerous world, the actors involved, the options discussed and the institutions involved in these processes since the early 2000s.