ESPREssO (Enhancing Synergies for disaster PRevention in the EurOpean Union) elicits the needs, perspectives and opinions of stakeholders operating within and between the spheres of Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in Europe. It intends to analyze, synthesize and compare existing knowledge of legal, policy and science approaches to CCA and DRR; identify gaps and current challenges by asking the opinions of those at either end of the policy-practice spectra and, finally, explore ways in which ESPREssO’s 3 challenges are addressed in practice, by policy makers, researchers and practitioners, at various levels of governance. ESPREssO is funded under Grant Agreement No. 700342 of the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. The project invites stakeholder participation, not only from the six European countries represented on the project board (UK, Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany and Denmark), but from a global community of practitioners within CCA and DRR. Three core challenges form the backbone of the ESPREssO project: – Challenge 1: To propose ways to create more coherent national and European approaches on Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Change Adaptation and resilience strengthening; – Challenge 2: To enhance risk management capabilities by bridging the gap between science and legal/policy issues at local and national levels; – Challenge 3: To increase efficient management of transboundary crises. The current paper focuses on Challenge 3, summarizing key results of a study on the current state of transboundary crisis management in Europe. The national reports on DRR and CCA strategies developed for Switzerland [1], Germany [2] and France [3] constitute the basis for this paper.

۲٫ Transboundary crises

Disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies in recent years have led to improvements in the way crises are anticipated and managed, achieving important reductions in the extent of the sustained losses. An oft-quoted statistic, issued from the INSPIRE initiative is that, in the European Union, 115 million people are estimated to live within 50 km of a border, accounting for 20% of the European population. River basins which are susceptible to flooding often serve as natural borders in Europe, or otherwise cross two or more national boundaries, with the risk that any catastrophic flood event may propagate across borders exacerbated by future climatic changes [4].