Climate Change Adaptation Toolkit and User Guide: a comprehensive guide to planning for climate change adaptation in three steps

The impacts of climate change are already being experienced in our community from heat waves and intense bushfires to devastating floods. Despite adaptation being discussed for a number of years, organisations are still grappling with how best to respond to this complex problem.

Net Balance, in collaboration with RMIT and the City of Greater Geelong, has developed an Adaptation toolkit. The Toolkit will assist organisations to prioritise their climate risks and adaptation actions and make climate change risk consideration a part of their everyday operations.

Based on practical experience, the Toolkit takes organisations beyond risk assessments – exploring implications of uncertainty on risk and adaptation actions and supports embedding climate change within the decision making processes.

The Toolkit aims to support organisations to:

• Integrate adaptation and support effective and efficient risk management
• Be more responsive to climate change shocks and trends form linkages across different work areas, internally and externally
• Make effective and consistent decisions regarding climate change.

The Toolkit consists of three tools, stepping the user through key considerations of climate change risks, and potential adaptation actions.

Tool 1: Exploring the Risk Context – explores in detail key climate change risks previously identified. The tool explores the interaction between the risk and their broader social, economic and environmental context. It also outlines a process for considering, overcoming or accepting, and documenting the uncertainty associated with each relevant climate change risks.

Tool 2: Developing Adaptation Actions – provides a process for identifying, exploring and evaluating adaptation options, to assist organisations to prioritise actions.

Tool 3: Screening for Climate Change Interactions - outlines a process for decision makers across an organisation to consider any interactions between a new proposal/project and climate change risks and adaptation actions.

The toolkit and user guide are available for free download.

Acknowledgments

The Climate Change Adaptation Toolkit is a comprehensive guide to planning for climate change adaptation in three steps. The impacts of climate change are already being experienced, generating a new series of risks for organisations. Climate change is a complex problem that requires a new integrated and collaborative risk management approach. The Climate Change Adaptation Toolkit has been developed by NetBalance in partnership with the City of Greater Geelong and RMIT University’s Climate Change Adaptation Program.

• Read more about the toolkit here