The French Cour des comptes’ Annual Public Report on Public Action to Adapt to Climate Change
By Pierre Moscovici, First president of the French Cour des comptes
The French Constitution entrusts the Cour des Comptes with the task of informing the public through its public reports. The Annual Public Report (APR) is an essential vehicle for this information. The law specifies that it concerns “a major public policy issue to which the Cour des Comptes wishes to draw the attention of the public authorities and contribute to informing citizens”. In its 2024 annual public report, the Cour des Comptes examined the theme of public action to adapt to climate change.
This issue concerns all areas of public action. It primarily concerns administrations of all kinds and at all levels – government departments, local authorities, national and local public establishments, public companies – but must also involve all players in society: households, businesses, the educational community, associations and the world of research. The citizen, however, is at the heart of the matter. Nothing can be done without them, let alone against them. And yet, many of the measures envisaged to respond to the effects of climate change will modify their living conditions, in their most essential aspects: food, housing, transport, leisure activities and so on.
Adapting to climate change is a complex issue. It involves adapting to extremely diverse phenomena (heatwaves, forest fires, cyclones, floods, etc.), the effects of which manifest themselves on different territorial scales and time horizons, in an otherwise changing context. These particularities make adapting to climate change a particularly suitable topic for financial jurisdictions to exercise their role as trusted third parties in relation to decision-makers and the public.
The investigations undertaken for this report involved the six thematic chambers of the Cour des Comptes and all 17 regional and territorial audit chambers. Most of them concerned policies shared by the State and local authorities. They were designed and carried out with a view to providing answers to the major questions that the French ask themselves when the theme of adapting their living environment, their surroundings and their activities comes to the fore.
The first is to know what to expect in concrete terms, and in what timeframe: they want to understand and anticipate the consequences of climate change on their everyday lives. They also want to know how the efforts required to adapt to climate change are to be identified, decided and shared between all the players involved: adaptation must not be seen only from a technical point of view, it is also a democratic issue. The complexity of adaptation and the scale of the expenditure involved, at a time when the state of public finances is increasingly worrying, finally lead them to ask how to design and implement solutions that are both appropriate and sustainable: what can be done efficiently at the lowest cost?
With this in mind, the financial jurisdictions first looked at three cross-cutting themes: the place and role of public research in adapting to climate change, the role of financial and banking institutions in adapting the economy to climate change, and the contribution of the Agence française de développement to adapting to climate change in developing countries.
The financial jurisdictions have also examined the impact of climate change on the living environment of the French people and on major public infrastructures. To this end, they examined the issue of adapting housing and urban centers, as well as integrating this issue into the State’s real estate policy. Taking account of the consequences of climate change in the management of nuclear power plants, hydroelectric facilities, electricity transmission and distribution networks and railroads, in terms of both operation and investment, is also a major challenge that has given rise to specific investigations. The specific situation of the French Ministry of the Armed Forces was examined from the same angle.
Climate change also has consequences for the natural environment in which the French live and work. The financial jurisdictions have examined the way in which these effects are anticipated and dealt with in forest and coastline management, as well as in the prevention of climate-related natural disasters overseas and the protection of vulnerable people from heat waves. They also looked at how cereal crops and mountain resorts can adapt to climate change.
Four key lessons emerge from this body of work.
The first is the need for better knowledge of the effects of climate change, the risks to which we need to adapt and their magnitude. We absolutely must improve the data we need to make more accurate and reliable projections, and adapt the applicable standards to take account of changing risks. In these three areas (data, projections, standards), the work of the financial jurisdictions has highlighted the extent of the progress that needs to be made. For example, the tools used to survey and diagnose the condition of the 200,000 or so buildings that make up the State’s real estate assets are still in the process of being deployed, and provide incomplete data for only two-thirds of them. The financial jurisdictions have also noted that weather forecasts for the French overseas territories are of poorer quality than those for mainland France, despite the fact that these territories are more exposed to risks and more vulnerable due to the concentration of the population on the coast and the high proportion of precarious housing.
The second key lesson concerns the need to inform citizens and decision-makers about the challenges of adaptation. Informing the public about the risks and the choices to be made, but also about the opportunities offered by adaptation measures, is the sine qua non for public support for the approach: the effective deployment of these measures must be preceded by major efforts to convince people of their necessity and their benefits. For example, financing comprehensive renovation projects, including not only changes to heating systems, but also improvements to ventilation, insulation and solar protection, not only enhances comfort for residents, but also encourages building firms to recruit skilled professionals to carry out this type of work.
The investigations carried out by the French financial authorities have also highlighted the need for public action to develop a coherent, coordinated strategy, in other words, to plan society’s adaptation to climate change. First and foremost, adaptation objectives need to be reconciled with those of many other public policies – for example, in tourist areas such as mountains and coastlines, the desire of elected representatives and local populations to preserve their economic model for as long as possible. We also need to establish a genuine culture of planning and risk management, deploying planning instruments at the right territorial scale and, in the many areas where several players are involved, coordinating these instruments with one another. Implementing rigorous, appropriate planning is a necessary but not sufficient condition for effective action: we also need a pilot who can arbitrate and coordinate the actions of these multiple players. The State must also play its full role as strategist, setting clear objectives and defining a path to achieve them.
Lastly, the sixteen surveys carried out by the financial jurisdictions have highlighted the scale of the challenge of financing adaptation policies. In a tight budgetary context, this challenge can only be met by making the search for efficiency – that is, effectiveness at the lowest cost – an absolute priority. In this respect, the report warns against the risks of maladaptation inherent in the implementation of emergency measures (such as over-reliance on air conditioning, the systematic deployment of artificial snow production systems in winter sports resorts, or the regular replenishment of sand on beaches threatened by maritime erosion) that are effective in the short term but costly in the medium and long term. Research obviously has a major role to play in finding appropriate solutions and helping public players to determine the right methods and timetable for their implementation. We also need to improve our assessment of the costs of adaptation, which is still too often incomplete or non-existent. The “price truth” is indeed an essential element of arbitration in defining and implementing financially sustainable solutions. However, adaptation need not necessarily involve new public spending. There are other levers that can be used, and these involve encouraging players to act and making them more accountable.
In most of the sectors examined, there is still a great deal of progress to be made, but the urgency of adaptation is now recognized and, to varying degrees, public players have begun to organize themselves in response. For its part, the Cour des Comptes, which is involved in the ClimateScanner Initiative, has decided to support this process by producing an annual report on ecological transition, the first edition of which will be published in September 2025.
