Interested in climate adaptation?

Action on climate change can be split into mitigation and adaptation.

Many of these actions have synergies. This means that they overlap and work together in both preventing further climate change and helping us adapt.

Mitigation

Actions that reduce the rate of climate change. This includes actions that limit or prevent greenhouse gas emissions and activities that remove these gases from the atmosphere (IPCC 2022b).

Adaptation

Adjustment to the actual or expected effects of climate change. Adaptation plays a key role in reducing exposure and vulnerability to climate change, and can be proactive, reactive, incremental or transformational (IPCC 2022a).

Adaptation is about managing climate risk, maximising opportunities, and bringing everyone along on the journey.

If we can identify and manage climate risk, then we can minimise the loss and damage, and seize the opportunities.

If you work for or own a business, check out our simple guides on how to adapt for both small and medium and large business. Have you heard of climate reporting? It’s a complicated landscape. Read our climate risk ready guide, and the articles below.

Adapt now, win later

There are both challenges and benefits with being an early adopter, understand what it takes to be a champion for climate resilience in business

Barista making coffee at The Wharf Local cafe in Tathra.

Climate reporting: an effective tool for business adaptation

How business can understand transition risk and glean the greatest opportunities for directing capital into adaptation

Are Australians ready for climate change’s triple threat?

Physical risks from a changing climate are the basis for both transition and liability risks.

There is so much to discover

Join us at AdaptNSW Forum at UTS Aerial in Sydney, delivered over two days in December

See the program

A grouping of tall, narrow-leaved plants bearing clusters of small, white flowers is depicted in sharp focus, set against a gently blurred backdrop of a wooded area.

The opportunities are out there. Climate change is forcing us to re-think and change the systems that make up our society.

We have this huge opportunity, to decarbonise and adapt to climate change - by working together and creating new ways of being in our world. To do this, we need scientific and cultural knowledge, innovative ways of designing our desirable future, and new narratives.

close up image of underside of mushrooms

Designing new futures

Life-centred design tools can be used by business to help mitigate climate impact related risk and create opportunities for growth and innovation.

2 hands showing sands as part of an Aboriginal art and culture guided tour

Learning to love Country and adapt to climate change

Climate change is a Dreaming story that we have co-created, Gamilaroi woman Paris Norton told the AdaptNSW 2022 Forum.

image of a flooded street with brown flood water, green trees and blue sky

Tipping points and compound events: Climate adaptation’s new frontier

One of Australia’s first experiences of a compound climate event was in 2009, when an unprecedented heatwave culminated in the Black Saturday bushfires.

Aerial view of town centre with roads, streets and houses

Rising climate risks: Why accessible, affordable home insurance is under threat

One million Australian households – or 10% of the population – already spend more than four weeks’ yearly income on home insurance premiums.

Aerial view of green trees with some white trees in the group

The rise of eco-anxiety and building our climate resilience

How to overcome our sense of eco-anxiety and reframe our relationship with the environment

2 small business owners in their cellar smiling at the camera

How do we direct capital to drive adaptation at scale?

When just one fibre access node on the Richmond River failed during the 2022 floods, 80,000 people in Northern New South Wales had no way to communicate.

Artwork is an abstract visual map of the Australian cultural landscape past, present, and future. Caring for Country by Maddison Gibbs

Enabling wisdom

Aboriginal people have been using generational knowledge of land and sea management in response to changing climates over thousands of years.

Landscape of a countryside showing a river in a curve with a few trees and mountains in the background.

How Northern Rivers Living Lab is breathing new life into flood resilience

It may look like a regular shop front, but the Living Lab Northern Rivers is serving its community in a very different way.

Adapting to climate change in place

Climate change impacts different regions in different ways. This is because each region has unique climate hazards, as well as vulnerabilities. Local government and community groups are adapting to climate change in their specific region. Here are their stories:

Seedlings ready for planting at one of 11 sites across the region

How do we plant for a future climate?

The logic of traditional revegetation programs – that locally sourced seed has the best chance of survival – no longer holds true in a changing climate.

Group of 5 young people acting and lit in yellow and blue

How on earth: Helping young people overcome climate anxiety

Wave after wave of eco-disaster – bushfires and floods, drought and a global pandemic – had left a generation of young people in northern New South Wales feeling hopeless about the future.

A Fire Practitioner leading a group in a discussion on traditional burning techniques

How fire is a tool to care for country

Many people across New South Wales will forever compare future bushfire events with the devastation of 2019 and 2020.

Discover more about climate adaptation?

A couple holding a baby with a dog by their side stand in the bush

Bringing everyone on the journey

We know that climate change impacts the most vulnerable. It’s a social justice issue. Local government and community groups are adapting to climate change in an inclusive way where no one gets left behind.

Upskilling emerging communities to be better prepared for natural emergencies

Weather emergencies are hitting the Australian east coast like never before. How to keep safe during an extreme weather event was the key message for SCARF Refugee Support.

Building climate knowledge in native languages

Adapting to climate challenges can be daunting for newly arrived migrants and refugees. Removing the language barrier helps communities better prepare for climate impacts.

Wentworth Shelter dont Swelter participants

Link Wentworth - Shelter Don't Swelter

How do you cool down when your home is as hot as an oven? Link Wentworth asked its resident community this question.

Climate change is here.

NSW has warmed 1.4°C since records began in 1910.

Without climate action, the impacts will increase.

It’s not too late to act. But there is no more time to waste.