The A9 Project: Climate Change in the Central Highlands

The A9 Project: Climate Change in the Central Highlands used a novel area-based approach to climate change risk assessment and decision-making, involving collaborative techniques to share information across sectors.

Its aim was to help organisations:

• assess climate change vulnerability in a co-ordinated way
• develop integrated adaptation strategies
• learn about the use of a range of climate change adaptation tools, including the latest UK Climate Projections (UKCP09).

The project design was based on the assumption that working together to understand the complex and interacting impacts of climate change is critical to ensuring that organisations adapt in a way that is best for them and others.

Through a series of three workshops, supported by Adaptation Scotland staff, over an eight month period in 2010-11, delegates were led through a collaborative process of assessing climate change vulnerabilities in a region, as a basis for integrated adaptation planning.

42 organisations, across all sectors with interests in the A9 corridor were invited to participate. The 32 delegates who attended one or more of the events were of mixed levels of knowledge and experience; some had worked on high level adaptation strategies; none had prepared draft plans.

A review of feedback from these participants shows many benefits of this project:

1.       Understanding and awareness of climate change vulnerabilities and their interactions, across sectors;

2.       Network building – a platform for more focussed collaborations;

3.       Learning opportunities in the practical use of adaptation tools;

4.       Spin-off initiatives (during and following the project) on themes such as community engagement, coastal change, building climate change into development planning – and agency collaborations around these themes – each feeding back to share learning with other participants.

5.       Development of the role of Adaptation Scotland, building networks, sharing information, raising awareness of its services (highly regarded by participants), testing and modifying adaptation planning techniques in practice, learning better ways of communicating these issues, and highlighting areas of future demand.

The project has demonstrated the value of a collaborative, area based approach. It has helped to build a community of interests addressing climate change adaptation in the A9 corridor, familiarised participants with adaptation tools and processes and laid useful foundations for further assessments and decision-making.

The benefits of this project have been mainly in building relevant networks and learning the skills and techniques of adaptation planning. As understanding, confidence and skill levels of practitioners improve, and as more organisations make progress in their own plans, this approach will have increasing value.