Climate Adaptation: Community of Practice

The latest IPCC report (2022) defines adaptation as “the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects in order to moderate harm or take advantage of beneficial opportunities.” The report describes how “progress in adaptation planning and implementation has been observed across all sectors and regions, generating multiple benefits.” But this progress is also “unevenly distributed,” with many initiatives prioritising “immediate and near-term climate risk reduction which reduces the opportunity for transformational adaptation.”

While climate adaptation has come a long way, there is still huge uncertainty about how to best put it into practice. It is a challenge that organisations everywhere are facing, without clear guidance and often overshadowed by the more easily quantified mitigation efforts to net zero.

This event will aim to identify whether there is value in and appetite for an informal community of practice of organisations across the UK who want to more effectively build adaptation into their work, whether through planning, decision making, or impact measurement. Facilitated by the University of Exeter’s Green Futures Network, we will identify the gaps in resource, capacity, and knowledge, and how they might be filled.

The first event will use the University of Exeter’s Local Climate Adaptation Tool (LCAT) as a starting point, to highlight examples of good practice, and the various challenges including accessing data, communicating complexity, making practical recommendations, and locating organisational accountability for adaptation.

The Green Futures Network is a new initiative to increase access to academic research and resources around the climate emergency and to explore the complex challenges shared by organisations in a rapidly changing world.

Register here