On 17 June, JUST4CARE participated in the European Urban Resilience Forum 2026, known as EURESFO, held in Guimarães, European Green Capital 2026.
EURESFO is one of Europe’s main spaces for exchange on urban resilience, climate adaptation and disaster risk management. Since 2013, the forum has brought together city representatives, experts and stakeholders from local and regional institutions.
This year’s programme was organised around four thematic streams: People at the centre: Just resilience, housing, democracy; Strengthening the governance of resilience; Managing climate extremes in a place-sensitive way; and The tools we need, including innovative financing mechanisms, artificial intelligence and digital tools.
JUST4CARE contributed to the session “From Vulnerability to Active Citizenship: Fostering Inclusive Decision-Making Towards Just Adaptation,” organised within the stream “People at the centre: Just resilience, housing, democracy.” The session explored how communities most exposed to climate risks can be recognised not only as groups to be consulted, but as active participants and knowledge-holders in shaping adaptation decisions.
The discussion brought together perspectives from local governments, civil society organisations and European projects. Speakers included João Dinis from Cascais Municipality, Mari Puuram from the Estonian Forum of People with Disabilities, Johannes Klein from Demos Helsinki, Boryana Stancheva from the Association of Danube River Municipalities and Daria Kaliuzhna from Vinnytsia City Council in Ukraine. The session was moderated by Estíbaliz Sanz and Jaione Ortiz de Zárate from BC3 /JUST4CARE together with Vivien Franck and Laia García Fernández from ICLEI Europe / FairFuture Horizon Europe project.
FairFuture develops Resilience Action Labs, inclusive decision-making frameworks and scalable adaptation strategies, with a focus on ensuring that climate adaptation does not exacerbate existing inequalities.
Other European initiatives were present across the wider EURESFO programme, including projects and platforms such as Pathways2Resilience, DesirMED, NBRACER, ARCADIA, BLOSSOM, AdaptationHubs, Commit2Green, GreenInCities, RescueME, Land4Climate, GoNaturePositive!, CARDIMED, NURISH, SPADES, UNP+, CLIMATEFIT and NetworkNature. Together, these contributions reflected the diversity of current European work on adaptation, resilience, governance, finance, nature-based solutions and digital tools.
By taking part in EURESFO 2026, JUST4CARE contributed to a wider European conversation on how cities can adapt to climate change while recognising lived experience, avoiding new forms of exclusion and building resilience grounded in everyday life.