Climate Adaptation in Practice and Climate Just Training – 4/1/18

Date of presentations
4 January 2018

Speakers

Paul Fisher, University of Birmingham Paul Cobbing, National Flood Forum Alan Carr, SWM Nick Jackson, Defra Emma Davies, Cambridge City Council Rachel Walters, Environment Agency Mike Peverill, Climate UK

Purpose of the presentations

This event looked at how organisations are adapting to climate change. A combination of strong leadership and understanding, strategy and delivery of projects is required to implement successful adaptation and the range of speakers demonstrated good practice in each of these areas. Delegates learnt how communities, local authorities and the NHS can adapt by listening to examples of national good practice. Defra and the Environment Agency also outlined their national, strategic work on adaptation and put the local practice into context. Defra also outlined the timelines and stages of development of the next National Adaptation Programme and UK Climate Projections 2018. The afternoon session provided training for the Climate Just tool which is designed to help with the delivery of equitable responses to climate change at the local level. Its main focus is to assist the development of socially just responses to the impacts of extreme events, such as flooding and heatwaves, as well as supporting wider climate change adaptation. It is a hugely powerful tool for helping you plan for climate impacts in your area and includes a sophisticated mapping tool that you can use to identify where and who is most at risk of climate impacts. Delegates had a chance to create scenarios and interpret findings with the tool, as well as be introduced to the new version due to be released in February 2018.

Feedback

97% of attendees thought the event content was good or excellent and was organised to a good or excellent standard 98% considered the aims were met to a good or excellent standard “I enjoyed the presentations which were diverse and from a good range of organisations. Climate Just is a really useful tool.” “Event provided a wealth of real world examples both of projects but also underlying issues of strategy, communication and politics of local government/budgets etc. Many thanks.” “Reflections – everyone needs to build partnerships and collaborate; need to ‘mainstream’ adaptation; we all need to play a roll; more sharing of learning needed.”