According to the Pact of Amsterdam, the general aim with regard to climate adaptation is: “to anticipate the adverse effects of climate change and take appropriate action to prevent or minimise the damage it can cause to Urban Areas. The focus will be on: vulnerability assessments, climate resilience and risk management (including the social dimension of climate adaptation strategies).”

A concrete goal of the Climate Adaptation Partnership is to achieve a common awareness level of the criticality of climate change and related impacts in urban areas, and to progressively develop administrations' and people's capacities in a medium- to long-term perspective through action proposals of better regulation, funding and knowledge exchange.

To achieve the main goals defined above, the Partnership will assess what has already been done, which strategies, actions and working groups/networks covering these issues at EU and national level have already been implemented, and to use these as a starting point to define scoping papers to focus what the Partnership proposes to address.