Taking action through Adaptation

Adaptation is the term used to describe responses to effects of climate change. In particular, it refers to planned responses aimed at minimising the threats and maximising the opportunities of a changing climate.

Whilst climate change is a global phenomenon, its impacts are felt locally and are affected by physical, social and economic factors specific to a locality. Local authorities and strategic partnerships therefore have a vital role in adapting to a changing climate.

Because of these local variations, there is no simple, generic recipe for adaptation. Although recent events, such as the 2007 summer floods, cannot be attributed directly to climate change, they do highlight the importance of weather and climate to our well-being. UKCIP?s experience suggests that one of the most useful ways of looking at adaptation is as a continuing process of managing climate risks. This is the basis of the approach suggested in this guidance.

The approach consists of:

· Identifying current local vulnerabilities to climate and weather events

· Developing an understanding of how projected climate changes are likely to affect your locality

· Identifying the threats and opportunities these represent

· Undertaking a risk assessment in order to prioritise responses

· Identifying preferred adaptation options

· Developing an Action Plan to implement the preferred options

· Monitoring the performance of your Plan

This process is applicable to all three roles as Estate manager,Service provider and Community leader. The guidance offered here is general and it will be up to you to decide how best to implement it within your authority or partnership. For instance, a number of authorities have decided to tackle adaptation at a directorate or service unit level. This can make good sense because effective adaptation is often about detailed decisions. Where possible we have included links to guidance and case studies so that you can see how others have undertaken the process. We will be adding more material as it becomes available, so it is worth coming back to the site as you develop and implement your Plan.

This guidance stresses the importance of engaging all relevant staff (and where practical other stakeholders) throughout the process and suggests that workshops are likely to be the most effective mechanism for achieving this. However, workshops are often difficult to organise and absorb staff time. Although we have broken the process of developing adaptations into a number of discrete steps, you may be able to deal with more than one step during the course of a workshop, for instance, identifying threats and opportunities and undertaking a risk assessment, or identifying and assessing adaptation options.

For the first time the new Performance Framework (2008) includes an indicator on Climate change adaptation (NI188). Because of the local nature of adaptation outlined above, NI188 is unusual in being a process, rather than outcome, based indicator. Although the levels of achievement do not map directly onto the stages described here, working through the process will enable you to meet the requirements of NI188.