Climate law and disaster law: To what extent do the international climate agreements contain enforceable climate adaptation duties in light of the existing challenges? Should more explicit attention be devoted to explicit climate adaptation duties? Should we move towards tailor-made international conventions aimed at addressing climate induced disasters? Are the existing international disaster response laws, rules and principles (IDRL) sufficiently resilient to fill up possible loopholes in the context of human-driven climate ? Can the IPPC-reports provide a suitable benchmark for a judicial review of the existing climate adaptation plans? How to align the mitigation and climate adaptation duties? Has sufficiently attention been devoted to climate adaptation in the EU’s Green Deal? Should the EU Climate Adaptation Strategy be updated and translated into more binding legislation?

Biodiversity, water and nature restoration law: Will the EU Nature Restoration Law succeed in facilitating more landscape-wide restoration efforts? Can the increased focus on quick wins for adaptation compromise the shift towards resilient landscape wide-restoration efforts? How to reinterpret the existing forestry policies at EU level in light of global warming? Does EU water law already push EU Member States towards a climate-proof water and land-use management? How to distinguish non-deterioration duties from improvement duties? To what extent does EU water law obligate Member States to envisage a large-scale restoration of wetlands as one of the key action points in the river management plans? Should we move towards ‘sponge’-landscapes?

Urban and land-use planning: How to find win-win scenarios, both in the context of urban environments as well as on the countryside? Are there good practices in some EU Member States that merit further consideration? Should we move towards a more flexible understanding of ‘building rights’, with a certain expiration date? And allow for trade amongst building developers? Should we move towards a more binding integration of climate adaptation-related concerns into planning policies and building permits? How to determine the compensation schemes that apply in cases of climate adaptation? What financial compensation is required for owners that are faced with climate adaptation measures in light of the right to property?

Agriculture and fisheries: Is the agricultural policy in the EU really climate-proof? Do we need a more transformative shift in the current EU agricultural policies and its funding mechanisms to safeguard food security on the European continent for the next centuries? How can climate adaptative strategies be implemented in fisheries policies? Are win-wins possible with renewable energy projects at sea?

Partcipation, EIA and access to justice: How to align the existing participation demands with the limited timeframe faced when preparing the European continent for more climate-fuelled disasters, such as heatwaves and storms? How to quantify and integrate the positive climate-impacts into EIA, in light of the increased attention to climate in the 2014 revised EIA Directive? How to ensure effective access to justice without providing for unnecessary delays for much-needed climate adaptation infrastructure? Should we provide more flexibility, as also happened with the RED III for renewable energy projects?

Human rights law: How far do the human rights-obligations of States extend in the field of climate adaptation? Are States expected to do the impossible as well? Are they expected to protect their citizens to climate-scenarios that go beyond the existing commitments and the current predictions of the IPCC? And how to balance the climate-related human rights duties with other fundamental human rights, such as the prohibition on forced displacement?

Climate justice and tort law: In light of the recent strides in climate attribution science, should oil majors and other fossil-dependent companies not be forced to (partially) pay to address the damage they caused? And what if a State still falls short of timely implementing the necessary adaptation measures? Can one hold a State liable for not doing enough to protect their own citizens against climate disasters? To what extent can the inherent linkages between the right to a healthy environment and climate change, usher in new avenues in light of the important position of the former in many national constitutional orders? Should recent international developments also lead to a reassessment of the right to a healthy environment in the EU legal order? What would be the impact of a more intergenerational understanding of climate adaptation duties?

Opportunities and hurdles for adaptation in law and governance: Is the existing distribution of competences in the context of environmental and planning law clear-cut enough to allow for effective protection of humans and the environment against global warming, in particular in the context of urgent climate-related disasters? Do we already have good practices in some EU Member States on more comprehensive and effective climate adaptation approaches? What types of innovative funding mechanisms might bolster and facilitate comprehensive climate adaptation approaches? Are the EU rules on State Aid too strict to allow a shift towards more impactful climate adaptation plans? Could property rights be used as a lever for more ambitious climate adaptation plans? Should we move towards a new conceptual understanding of property rights, possibly also including more intergenerational approaches? Are current existing legal frameworks not too rigid to accommodate technological innovation needed to effective mitigate the impact related to climate change?

Multidisciplinary themes: How to prepare potentially vulnerable populations for potentially intrusive climate adaptation measures, such as expropriation? What role should law play here and what role is left to play for other disciplines, such as social psychology, sociology and mediation? How to back up climate adaptation plans with robust scientific studies?