Climate-adapted conservation practices

This step involves analysing the information you’ve gathered to gain a deeper understanding of how climate risks affect your conservation focus’s values. You’ll refine your findings with your stakeholders to validate your approach and build support for adaptation. 

What this stage typically involves 

• Selecting and documenting your analysis approach, including risk assessment, decision-making, and tools and methods used. The size of your analysis will depend on the context and scale of your work.
• Refining and prioritising the list of values that your conservation focus supports and their sensitivity to climate change. This will help you prioritise your management actions later. When determining the relative importance of each value, consider stakeholder insights alongside the priorities of relevant conservation policies and plans, and the principles of the Climate Change (Net Zero Future) Act 2023.
• Understanding the current condition (baseline) of your conservation focus so you can measure change and track your progress. To find the baseline, review the sources of condition data you identified in the previous step. Your baseline dataset could cover parameters such as species richness and abundance, water quality, vegetation cover, or visitation numbers to parks and reserves.
• Analysing past, current and projected climate trends and events. This is informed by the climate records and projections you’ve identified and considers the role of your conservation focus’s current condition in the resulting climate impacts. For example, the same climate event will likely have a greater impact on a degraded ecosystem than on a healthy one. To help understand impacts, you can review existing research on the impacts of climate change in alpine areas, NSW ecology, aquatic and coastal biodiversity, managing changing landscapes, bushfire risks and impacts, cultural heritage and biodiversity, and how climate change will affect weeds, pests and diseases.
• Setting a climate-appropriate future condition. This involves prioritising the values of your conservation focus rather than its specific characteristics. For example, to conserve culturally significant plant species, a climate-adapted future condition might be to establish plants in new areas, rather than to maintain the current range which may not be suited to future climate conditions. This allows you to find solutions that work with nature, such as securing land that will have a suitable climate in the future. Some tools and datasets to help you determine a climate-appropriate future state (as well as climate impacts) include Restore and Renew webtool, ClimateRefugiaNSW, Data packages for the Biodiversity Impacts and Adaptation Project, BGCI Climate Assessment Tool and Climate informed modelling of landscape managed threatened species.
• Selecting condition indicators that reflect the key values you want to protect. This will help you achieve your desired future condition and overarching management aim in a way that is feasible in a future climate. For example, water quality indicators can reflect ecosystem functions, and species richness can reflect biodiversity values (noting that the types of species may change over time).
• Ranking your list of climate risks based on their likelihood, severity, timing and consequences for values. To do this, you might use a first-pass risk assessment procedure and generic risk assessment matrix, a threat matrix, or a cost–benefit analysis. Taking a Country-first perspective and talking with local landowners when assessing consequences for values can help you understand the direct and indirect impacts that climate risks may have on all aspects of social, cultural, ecological and economic values. 

This step involves assigning adaptation actions to the climate risks you prioritised in the previous step. You’ll identify actions that offer the best protection for your conservation focus’s values within your scope and context, and make a plan for implementation. 

What this stage typically involves 

• Considering whether a value can be protected or restored in place, and where transformation, planned relocation, documentation of cultural and social assets, or acceptance of change may be required. For example, it's not possible to maintain the historical temperature range of a reserve, but visitor comfort and safety can still be managed by installing shade structures and drinking fountains.
• Exploring potential adaptation actions by reviewing current literature around climate-adapted conservation, consulting landholders, and visiting well-managed sites. Existing risk frameworks are good places to start, including the Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) Framework, Climate-Smart Conservation Practice, and Towards a climate change adaptation strategy for national parks: Adaptive management pathways under dynamic risk.
• Choosing and prioritising actions based on their effectiveness, feasibility, alignment with values and cost of implementation, and your available resources and relevant policy or legislative settings. Depending on your context, you might identify actions such as
  • establishing captive populations of species where wild habitat is in decline, to ensure the future of the species (in captivity and the wild when conditions become favourable)
  • reconnecting First Nations peoples with environmental management to support biodiversity and cultural outcomes through cultural practices such as burning
  • moving eggs and nests of shorebirds and turtles to avoid coastal inundation risks
  • using nature-based solutions to build ecosystem resilience to climate change, for example, using revegetation to protect coastal areas from increased erosion risks.
• Developing a timeline for implementation. Using a pathways approach helps to schedule actions based on urgency, importance, and any triggers for implementation. For example, changing the focus of pest control based on future climate conditions, such as increasing predator control during times when native animals are already under pressure (such as from drought), and increasing weeding activities during periods of high rainfall.
• Securing support for implementation in the form of funding, collaboration and equipment. Think about what you’ll need, and how you can source it, for example, equipment to translocate species, access to climate-adapted plant stock (see Climate-adapted restoration practices), and equipment and trained personnel to plan and conduct prescribed burning and maintain fire breaks.
• Building adaptation actions into routine conservation practices, with a focus on flexibility to alter actions as climate change continues to unfold.

Regular monitoring will help you track your progress and fulfil any specific monitoring requirements of the Integrated Planning and Reporting framework (for local councils) or the reporting requirements of supporting grants or government programs. 

Depending on your conservation focus and risks and the actions you’ve chosen, you’ll likely need a combination of different monitoring methods. 

What this stage typically involves 

• Choosing appropriate monitoring techniques for your context. These could include genetic-based metrics for long-term monitoring of the qualities of a species or population, surveys to capture social engagement, using modelled data (for example, from the Biodiversity Impacts and Adaptation Project and Koalas in the landscape), or following the approach of the NSW Biodiversity Indicator Program. Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) can help detect early and subtle signs of changing condition – incorporate TEK in your monitoring regime through respectful collaboration with Aboriginal groups and knowledge holders.
• Planning a monitoring regime that suits the values, risks, goals and actions of your adaptation plan. This will support regular data collection to measure changes in your conservation focus’s condition (compared with the baseline). For long-term monitoring plans, you may need to increase the frequency of monitoring activities as the climate continues to change.
• Monitoring your identified indicators, along with climate events.
• Reviewing the performance of your actions relative to the baseline and desired future condition and adjusting your approach, actions and priorities according to monitoring data.
• Meeting reporting requirements of relevant programs and policies. 

Our knowledge of climate-adapted conservation is still growing. Your experiences can inform and inspire other conservation practitioners to incorporate values-based adaptation into their own planning, warn them about potential pitfalls, and provide valuable information to help them make the right decisions for their conservation focus. 

What this stage typically involves 

• Sharing success stories that acknowledge the contributions of stakeholders. This includes publishing stories jointly with collaborators, and following cultural safety protocols to ensure that traditional knowledge is shared appropriately.
• Encouraging project participants and stakeholders to champion their own successes and contributions to the project.
• Sharing your lessons (successes and challenges) at conferences and scientific meetings and events.
• Connecting with networks of conservation researchers and practitioners.
• Sharing stories through social media, newsletters, industry events and AdaptNSW case studies.