First Focus Group in the Italian Pilot: 7 Working Women & Climate Adaptation in Rome

This case study is part of the Italian pilot case study within the AGORA project. AGORA promotes societal transformation to empower local communities to address the climate crisis and aims to achieve this through a multidisciplinary, integrated approach and four pilot studies in Europe.

AGORA is a HORIZON Europe project started in January 2023. It supports the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change.

Summary

The first focus group in the Italian pilot region of Rome, Italy involved 7 women workers who shared their personal experiences with climate change, co-created solutions and identified the best climate adaptation strategies geared at community involvement. This first event set the stage for following discussions of climate adaptation in an urban context.

Introduction

Following the inception workshop organized by CMCC last November, the Adaptation AGORA team organized a focus group in Rome on June 19^th.  The event, held at the University of Roma Tre, aimed to explore how climate change can impact the lives of urban workers and to identify adaptation strategies through community involvement.     

Methodology

The focus group participants included 7 women workers from Rome and commuters, all from various professional backgrounds.  The focus group was organized into three activities.  The first had participants share their own experiences with climate change, how it has impacted their daily working lives and any daily adopted strategies they have used.  In this first activity, participants identified climate change impacts related to mobility and transport, the allocation of funds managing climate emergencies, the impact on workers’ health and well-being, and the perception of public institutions regarding climate change.   

The second activity focused on the co-creation of soft adaptation measures using the Nominal Group Technique.  This technique involves participants writing down their ideas and selecting one they feel is the best. Then the participants share their chosen ideas, and together, they rank each using a point system to determine the best idea.  From this activity, the most shared adaptation measure was related to raising awareness and stressing community thinking to promote greater management flexibility in approaching climate change.   

The third and final activity focused on effective engagement strategies for climate adaptation and used the “Think, Pair and Share” methodology, which involved individual reflection followed by paired reflection and sharing among all participants.  The results from this activity highlighted a strong interest and preference for strategies that involve citizens in public meetings and consultation events, with interesting insights on methodologies that combine physical and online meetings, ensuring hybrid modes.

“I welcomed the participation in this event with great enthusiasm, particularly appreciating the valuable contributions made by all the participants, including two commuting workers from different regions. The input from all the participants, enriched by their experiences in diverse urban contexts, was fundamental to the success of the Focus Group within the AGORA project”.

Marta Ellena, a CMCC researcher who conducted and facilitated the event.

Next Steps

This event was the first in a series of three focus groups that aim to dive deeper into the topic of climate change adaptation, focusing on urban environments with specific population targets.  A concluding workshop will also be organized to wrap up the consultation process with the citizens carried out by the AGORA project in the Rome pilot, thanks to the collaboration of the Rome Municipality Climate Department.