Our Roadmap to 2030SWM’s climate change adaptation lead, Alan Carr, shares his experiences of being a partner in the Maximising Adaptation to Climate Change (MACC) Hub project, approximately 18 months after it kicked off.
Tuesday 20 January 2026 will mark 12 years since I joined SWM. That, in itself, requires the use of the ‘mind blown’ emoji but sadly WordPress struggles to embed it into this block of text. I remember seeing the job I applied for at the time advertised in SWM’s monthly newsletter, and immediately thinking ‘I have to apply for this role,’ having admired the work of SWM since more or less the start of my career.
One of the reasons for this admiration was because I knew SWM to be a founding member of a body called Climate UK, which ran from 2011-2018 and promoted resilience to climate change through partnership working. Climate UK was made up of Climate Change Partnerships in each region, of which SWM was the West Midlands representative. It was actually doing adaptation, which is where I wanted my career to sit as an alternative to being a failed meteorologist.
(Who knew you had to be that good at physics?)
Sadly, the Government withdrew the Climate Ready programme in 2017, and it was this that funded Climate UK and its partnerships. So Climate UK dissolved, but SWM remained and started to stand more on its own two feet. Over time, the demand for a flexible and agile organisation to provide resources, support and expertise on climate adaptation grew and grew, as organisations increasingly accepted that adaptation was no longer something that could be ignored in the blinding lights of Net Zero. If they are to survive climate change, they have to build resilience to its impacts.
Following this recognition, by about 2022 my job became more or less full-time adaptation. I’m where I want to be. I’ve even, somewhat by stealth, managed to encourage/bribe/force [delete as appropriate] other colleagues into supporting me with our adaptation work, to the point where my wonderful colleague Morgan Roberts is also, now, more or less full-time adaptation.
It’s where the demand for support has taken us because – well – look out of the window. The climate isn’t waiting for policy and leadership from the national level to catch up, and local organisations and communities increasingly recognise this.
Climate UK’s demise was actually, to some extent, to SWM’s geographical gain – much of our adaptation work is not exclusive to the West Midlands anymore. But I still missed my friends from the other regions and preferred to work collaboratively with like-minded people who had more expertise in their regions than SWM or I ever could.
Then I saw this: Maximising UK adaptation to climate change hub – UKRI. But – but – but – I pleaded – isn’t this – sort of – like – Climate UK in a different guise? Being funded using different money? It was certainly the closest thing to Climate UK that had existed since – Climate UK. I knew instantly that SWM had to be a part of this, even though I was made quickly aware that accessing funding from these sorts of pots was a challenge for lil’ ol’ us, a micro not-for-profit enterprise.
But it was so worth it. The lead partner, King’s College London, took us under their wing and it soon transpired that London Climate Ready Partnership (LCRP), Verture and Climate Northern Ireland were part of the consortium too – it was like bringing the Climate UK band back together again, but this time we are powered by a core group of adaptation researchers and technical experts. As thus, the MACC Hub was born.
Our role in the MACC Hub is as a Knowledge Exchange Partner for England, working with our friends at LCRP and covering stakeholder engagement and synthesis, and bringing forth stakeholders to help us co-create and inform MACC’s outputs. For us, this is a reputation-boosting role, being placed at the heart of the MACC’s various workstreams and activities painting us in a leading light.
(I finally have leverage to say we operate across England on adaptation activity, not just the West Midlands).
But more importantly is what we can achieve through MACC. That’s the push for the next couple of years, using inspiration from the various partners* within the consortium along with views from stakeholders to create something that can actually turn the dial towards transformational adaptation – i.e. adaptation with clout.
*I mean these partners are just inspirational. We have the actual Tyndall Centre and I attend meetings with people who have vocabulary I could only dream of.
So what have we done so far, and what is coming up in the near future? Among other things…
- We’ve produced a stakeholder engagement plan, which outlines who our target audiences are. If you’re working in planning or health or the intersections therein, watch this space.
- We’ve chaired one workshop, and supported another, focusing on bringing about understanding and confidence in using climate data.
- We’ve supported a deep-dive analysis of the levers and barriers to adaptation led by the indefatigable Stephen Jones from Climate NI. This has helped to inform the forthcoming publications associated with the fourth UK Climate Change Risk Assessment compiled by the Climate Change Committee.
- Contributed to the criteria and assessed a selection of submissions to the Flexible Fund – money for local areas to do adaptation with vulnerable communities.
- On 24 February, I am chairing a webinar focusing on what transformational adaptation looks like on the ground. Keep an eye on our website for details in the coming weeks.
- Later in 2026, SWM will be convening the first ever conference for local and national planning policy officers that will focus on adaptation, which will help us to identify what the sector needs to embed adaptation principles into new developments and standards. Again, watch this space for details.
It has been a genuine pleasure to be part of the MACC team to date, and it feels great to be part of something BIG. Here’s to the next couple of years of delivery. And, you never know, maybe then MACC 2 will be born which I, for one, will be truly hoping is called ‘The Return of the MACC.’
– Alan Carr, Senior Sustainability Adviser, SWM.
