Strategies for Embedding Climate Change Adaptation ...

Centre for Urban Research

Strategies for Embedding Climate Change Adaptation in Public Sector Organisations A Review of the Academic and Grey Literature

Sophie Turner, Hartmut Fünfgeld and Sarah Robertson

January 2016

Strategies for Embedding Climate Change Adaptation in Public Sector Organisations A Review of the Academic and Grey Literature

Sophie Turner, Hartmut Fünfgeld and Sarah Robertson Centre for Urban Research School of Global, Urban and Social Studies RMIT University January 2016

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Acknowledgments This report was prepared with funding from the Victorian Government Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) through the Victorian Adaptation Sustainability Partnership (VASP). The authors are grateful for comments and contributions from Alianne Macarthur and Fiona Silke from Loop & Co. (formerly NetBalance). The report also benefitted from feedback from the project partners, in particular Burke Renouf (City of Greater Geelong), Karen Cameron, Kathy Duffy and Michael Oke (City of Yarra).

© RMIT University 2016

Citation Please cite this report as: Turner, S, Fünfgeld, H and Robertson, S (2016): Strategies for Embedding Climate Change Adaptation in Public Sector Organisations: A Review of the Academic and Grey Literature. Melbourne: RMIT University Centre for Urban Research. ISBN: 978-0-9941890-5-9

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Contents

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Introduction

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2.

Characterising organisational adaptation

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2.1

What is climate change adaptation?

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2.2

Adaptation is a process of organisational change

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2.3

Adaptation is situational: organisational context as a starting point

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2.4

What does it mean to ‘embed adaptation’ in an organisation?

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2.5

Adaptation: iteratively managing climate-related risks

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Climate change adaptation as a task for organisations

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3.1

Drivers for organisational adaptation

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3.2

Organisational change and climate change adaptation: complex processes

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3.3

Understanding the process of organisational adaptation

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Strategies for embedding adaptation in organisations

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4.1

Interpreting the organisational framing of adaptation

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4.2

Aligning adaptation with existing strategies and policies

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4.3

Garnering senior management support & political leadership

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4.4

Collaborating across the organisation and beyond

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4.5

Encouraging multi-loop organisational learning

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4.6

Embracing organisational change

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Conclusion

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References

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1. Introduction This report discusses recent academic and grey literature on current knowledge, approaches and strategies for embedding adaptation into an organisation. Six strategies for embedding adaptation have been identified, being to 1) interpret the way adaptation is and can be framed within an organisation; 2) align adaptation initiatives with existing strategies, policies and plans; 3) garner senior management support and leadership; 4) collaborate within and beyond the organisation; 5) encourage organisational learning; and 6) embrace the need for organisational change and transformation. The report draws on literature predominantly from the last five years to elicit current knowledge about the strategies and processes for embedding adaptation in public sector organisations and, in particular, in local government in Australia. Where available, case studies from local government organisations around Australia illustrate how these strategies have been implemented in ‘real-world’ contexts, including how their associated challenges have been addressed. A general discussion on climate change adaptation and its meaning in organisational contexts precedes the review of documented strategies for embedding adaptation. This report is a research output of the project ‘Embedding Adaptation’, funded by the Victorian Government Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) through the Victorian Adaptation and Sustainability Partnership (VASP) from 2014 to 2016.

2. Characterising organisational adaptation 2.1 What is climate change adaptation? A number of definitions of climate change adaptation exist, all of which refer to adjustments of systems at different scales in response to climatic variables1. These adjustments may be to adverse effects of climate change, such as changes in rainfall patterns, or they may be in response to opportunities provided by climate change, such as enhanced tourism potential arising from less rainfall in certain coastal areas. Anthropogenic climate change is unequivocal and will pose major challenges to human and natural systems throughout the 21st century and beyond. Irrespective of the success of current negotiations to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, it can be expected that the global average temperature will continue to increase for decades to come. Adaptation to climate change will need to take place across scales of policy and decisionmaking, from the macro-scale of international agreements on financing adaptation efforts to the micro-scale of household and individual decision-making about how to prepare for more frequent and more intense extreme weather events, such as heat waves and bushfires in south-eastern Australia. This review of the literature focuses on adaptation at the organisational scale, with an emphasis on strategies for how large public sector organisations, such as local 6

governments, can embed considerations about climate change risks and impacts into their strategic and operational planning and decision-making. We consider organisations as complex systems that can adapt to climate change spontaneously and in an uncoordinated way, or they can do so in an anticipatory, planned and strategic manner. Füssel describes planned adaptation to climate change as: ‘the use of information about present and future climate change to review the suitability of current and planned practices, policies, and infrastructure’2. Planned organisational adaptation is therefore a process by which organisations, or parts thereof, make a specific effort to integrate consideration of, and responses to, climate change impacts into organisational structure and processes. To conceptualise adaptation processes at an organisational level, it is helpful to refer to the concept of adaptive capacity. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines adaptive capacity as: ‘the ability of a system to adjust to climate change, including climate variability and extremes, to moderate potential damages, to take advantages of opportunities, or to cope with the consequences’3. Organisational adaptation to climate change, in most cases, will be a mix of these three broad strategies for adjustment. The process of adapting to climate change in an organisation therefore involves gathering evidence about where potential damages may occur, the opportunities that may arise and how they can be harnessed, and how the organisation and its clients or beneficiaries can best be enabled to cope with unavoidable consequences.

2.2 Adaptation is a process of organisational change To understand the drivers, opportunities and barriers for embedding adaptation across an organisation it is useful to consider fundamental assumptions about climate change adaptation and the extent to which it can be planned for by organisations. Unlike organisational climate change mitigation, which can comfortably sit in one or across a small number of organisational units (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions accounting and reduction strategies can be negotiated between the environment, finance/accounting and strategic corporate planning departments), climate change adaptation cuts across all divisions, departments and organisational units within large public sector organisations4. Embedding climate change adaptation across an organisation therefore requires changes to many business processes across an organisation. Organisational adaptation can be approached from two vantage points5: 1. Firstly, adaptation can be viewed as an outcome (or end point) of an organisation ‘being adapted’. 2. Secondly, adaptation can be considered a process of institutional and organisational change, where continuous climatic change will require on-going social adjustment and institutional innovation6,7.

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Outcome-focused adaptation is typically associated with developing ‘hard’, technological solutions, for example constructing a sea wall to protect a settlement from the impacts of sea level rise and more frequent and more intense coastal storm surges8. Both outcome-focused and continuous process-based approaches may be forms of planned adaptation. But there is a risk that organisational adaptation is misconstrued as a once-off project leading towards an end-point of ‘being adapted’. Organisational adaptation is therefore best conceptualised as a process of on-going organisational change. Only conceptualising adaptation as such a process’ and accepting a degree of uncertainty9 provides the necessary flexibility for iterative changes required when dealing with changing climatic parameters. An important step for organisations tackling climate change adaptation, therefore, is to ‘refram[e] adaptation as a set of policy problems, rather than as a social goal or desired end state’10. Addressing these problems requires more than just one policy intervention – it consists of an indefinite series of changes to organisational processes and structures that are owned and implemented by the people that make up an organisation. Sustainably embedding climate change impact and risk considerations across an organisation requires developing a process-based approach that uses expert organisational knowledge to develop innovative solutions suited to the needs of individual organisational units and their core tasks. Still, the diversity of contexts in which adaptation may need to take place within an organisation implies that a significant customisation of adaptation processes will be required for each organisational unit. Ultimately, organisational adaptation means building adaptive capacity; that is it involves increasing the ability of individuals, teams and/or other organisational units to adapt to changes, and to transform adaptive capacity into action by implementing adaptation decisions11.

2.3 Adaptation is situational: organisational context as a starting point A behavioural or actor-centred perspective focusing on the capacity of individuals and groups to create and implement adaptation decisions has dominated research on climate change adaptation. However as much of the literature also suggests, organisations are always embedded in social, institutional and cultural contexts12, which put formal and informal constraints on the range of decision options available to individuals and groups of people. Both the actor-centred and contextual perspectives need to be considered in understanding how organisations adapt to climate change. This is particularly important for public sector organisations because they are subject to direct public scrutiny, and, in the case of government organisations, political trends and events. Organisations differ in terms of their organisational structure, their purpose and goals, the services they provide, the workforce they can draw on, and the social, institutional and political contexts they are bound by. Any organisational adaptation process needs to be designed to reflect and respond to the organisation’s particular needs and context13. For this reason, there are limits to developing standardised approaches for climate change adaptation across organisations, even where organisations (i.e. local government organisations) are embedded in similar contexts14. These limits and the need for context8

specific adaptation are often not fully recognised and result in blueprint approaches to organisational adaptation. In the context of planned adaptation to climate variability and change, decision-makers in the public sector first need to become aware of the potential impacts and risks associated with climate variability and change, and how these risks may affect them or their specific business, management responsibilities and organisational context12. This awareness needs to be coupled with a fuller understanding and capacity to analyse such information in order to develop policy initiatives, strategies and plans. Part of such adaptive capacity is allowing a degree of uncertainty to influence the analysis and development of such strategies by enabling iterative assessments and solutions (such as new technological solutions) as they develop over time9.

2.4 What does it mean to ‘embed adaptation’ in an organisation? To date, the adaptation literature lacks agreement about what ‘embedding adaptation’ means. The terms ‘mainstreaming’ and ‘integrating’ are more commonly used, and mostly interchangeably. Academic scholars working on adaptation characterise the notion of embedding, mainstreaming or integrating adaptation considerations into an organisation in the following ways: •

Processes of adaptation involve changes to ‘organisational routines’. Routines represent much of an organisation’s on-going activity, which come to be challenged and adjusted in processes of learning13.

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Horizontal policy integration as coordination across sectors and portfolios within a jurisdiction10.

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Connecting adaptation to more familiar sets of issues, and to existing decision making and policy processes in areas like conservation planning, emergency management, regional development programs, and strategic planning15.

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Managing climate change impacts by bringing them into established practices and procedures such as business continuity and asset management16.

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Integrating adaptation planning and action on climate risk and resilience into an organisation (or specific function within an organisation) to become ‘business as usual’17.

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For climate change responses to become socially acceptable to facilitate a social transition11.

Rather than proposing one definition, we suggest that the above characterisations provide opportunities for developing a shared organisational meaning for ‘embedding adaptation’. These characterisations also point to entry points for strategies to embed adaptation into organisations, which are discussed in detail below.

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2.5 Adaptation: iteratively managing climate-related risks In Australia, many organisations initially adopted a climate risk management process for adaptation, as recommended in the Australian Government’s Climate change impacts and risk management: a guide for business and government18,i.

Figure 1: Steps in the climate risk management process. Source: Australian Government (2006)18.

Risk management can be a useful approach for making adaptation work across organisations and for embedding adaptation in complex organisational systems and processes19,20. A key benefit and purpose of using risk management for climate change adaptation is to evaluate strategies for responding to an uncertain threat21, making it a more suitable policy approach than traditional decision-making approaches based on an understanding of cost and benefits or of utility. However, a shortcoming of conceptualising adaptation as climate risk management, as illustrated in Figure 1, is that adaptation can appear to be a single, linear process that, when completed, leads to an organisation being ‘better adapted’ to climate change than before. Such an outcome may well eventuate, but the suggested simplicity and linearity relegates any transformative adaptive actions (i.e. changing how organisations plan and make decisions) to a once-off ‘selection of the best risk treatment option’ in the last step of the process. Contrary to this linear climate risk management process, adaptation is an institutionally complex and iterative process that requires experimentation, innovation as well as continuous monitoring and review. Acknowledging this complexity allows new ideas, processes and data to emerge and calls for greater engagement with a multitude of stakeholders across the organisation, in a continuous or, at the very least, periodic way5. i

In early 2014, the Australian Government was developing new practice guidance on climate change adaptation processes for decision-makers across sectors, called National Climate Adaptation Process Advice (NCAPA) (personal communication with Department of Environment, 7 May 2014). This process was discontinued in 2014 and no further guidance on adaptation planning has since been issued by the Australian Government.

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The literature points to the importance of such on-going communication and review to ensure that people interact and take ownership of adaptation across departments of an organisation22. An iterative, contextual process of adaptation also enables strategies and/or plans to be developed with a degree of flexibility whilst still setting clear objectives for opportunities and risks23. Building such iterative consideration and re-evaluation into climate risk management processes is critical for ensuring optimal adaptation outcomes. Flexibility, iteration, and systematic and periodic review are part and parcel of thoroughly embedding adaptation in an organisation24.

3. Climate change adaptation as a task for organisations Before examining evidenced strategies for how adaptation can best be embedded in organisations, it is useful to briefly summarise the growing literature on ‘organisational adaptation’. Many of the published studies on organisational adaptation do not specifically emphasise or explain the process of embedding adaptation, but they imply that a degree of ‘integration’ of climate change considerations into business processes is necessary for adaptation to work effectively. More specifically, recent studies can shed some light on the drivers and processes of organisational scale. The current literature on organisational climate change adaptation documents approaches for embedding adaptation in the private and public sector and in various sub-sectors e.g. 13,22. Whilst these sectors may share exposure to the same social, economic and environmental impacts of climate change, the perceived effects, methods of adaptation, and change drivers vary considerably between these sectors and their organisations.

3.1 Drivers for organisational adaptation What drives an organisation to adapt to climate change, or to even take note of and consider climate change risks and impacts? A better understanding of general drivers for adaptation can inform how adaptation can best be leveraged and integrated into an organisation. If and how an organisation adapts will depend on its willingness and its understanding of the need to adapt to a changing climate25. Willingness to act is influenced by a range of contextual factors, including the exposure to, and recent experience of, climate related events26. Event experience can change an organisation’s perception of the need to adapt and result in tangible changes to the way organisations operate and cooperate with partners. For example, since Hurricane Gilbert hit the Cayman Islands in 1988, the regulatory environment has changed significantly. These changes have filtered through to both behavioural changes and policy changes, which are attributed to better education and information, and, importantly, better integration of climate variability and change across government departments27. A review of observed adaptation in organisations in the United Kingdom, for example, suggested that adaptation is mainly taking place in sectors with large infrastructure investment demands through government initiatives at national and regional levels11. This suggests that the willingness is often also a reflection of the economic or 11

financial business case for adaptation; that is, where significant investments are made into assets that may be exposed to climatic risks, the perceived need to adapt may be greatest. As these considerations highlight, an organisation’s vulnerability and its capacity to adapt will be influenced significantly by market trends and events, as well as by governing policies and regulations, suggesting that climate change will always be only one of multiple factors driving adaptation12. Organisations with comparatively high climate sensitivity, i.e. where their ability to deliver services is directly affected by climate variability and change, are also more likely to engage proactively in adaptation13. For example, the long and short term ability of water utilities to supply the population with potable water is directly affected by local climate. Hence, water utilities are typically found among the leading organisations when it comes to embedding climate change adaptation considerations. On the flipside, organisations that have not experienced any direct climate-related impacts are more likely to only engage in adaptation in a reactive manner (e.g. working on response mechanisms and emergency management rather than strategic, planned adaptation)13,22. Case study: Adaptation that isn’t called adaptation Frequently, organisations incorporate specific climate-adaptive actions into company practices, but they don’t identify them as a climate change adaptation strategy, goal or action13. This suggests that important lessons can be learned from recent experiences of how organisations have dealt with directly experienced extreme weather events. A useful starting point for organisational adaptation may therefore be to take stock of recent extreme weather events and gain an understanding of how exactly (if at all) the organisation responded, what shortfalls and challenges the response can reveal, and how this learning can be translated into planned adaptation action. This was the path taken by Shoalhaven City Council on the South Coast of New South Wales in an attempt to decrease the vulnerability of low-lying communities along 165 km of coastline who were identified as having low resilience to extreme weather events17.

3.2 Organisational change and climate change adaptation: complex processes Organisational change and adaptation are responses to a complex set of factors, of which climate change and the associated risks are only one part. ‘Climate signals’ will often be difficult to detect as they are often tied up amongst other signals emitted from the organisation’s market and institutional environment12. Moreover, as noted above, decisions to do something (or nothing) in light of such signals are based on a complex set of internal and external factors, including leadership, organisational capabilities, external conditions and judgement12: ‘Many intervening factors and habits will play a role in conditioning whether the organization recognizes a climate risk or opportunity, and what it comes to see as an appropriate response. This may also include doing nothing or muddling through’12.

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A crucial question for better understanding organisational adaptation is to consider who decides that action needs to be taken and what constitutes an appropriate response or adaptation action28. Here, a bottom-up approach to climate change adaptation and engagement has been found to be the most effective approach for ensuring that adaptation considerations become understood, owned and embedded across an organisation22,29.

3.3 Understanding the process of organisational adaptation The stages and processes involved in organisational adaptation can be discerned in the following way12: •

Perception (also referred to as ‘signal detection’, ‘awareness’ or ‘climate change risk appraisal’) of the need to engage in climate change adaptation

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Evaluation (also referred to as ‘developing an adaptation strategy’, ‘experimentation’, ‘adaptation appraisal’, ‘analytic capability’) of adaptation options

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Enactment (‘decision’, ‘selection of options’, ‘knowledge articulation’, ‘implementation’, or ‘action’) of climate change adaptation decisions, and

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Feedback (‘review’, ‘evaluation’) of adaptation actions.

These four categories broadly characterise organisational processes and, when adapted and contextualised to a specific sector or organisation, can provide an overarching framework for understanding to what extent adaptation is being embedded in an organisation.

4. Strategies for embedding adaptation in organisations Since 2005, Australia’s federal government has pursued a range of initiatives to build adaptive capacity for local governments30. These initiatives have led to the proliferation of climate change risk assessments and adaptation planning by Australia’s local government. Studies show that at the local government scale, climate change adaptation is widely accepted as an issue of strategic importance. However, it is yet to be embedded in policies and every day planning practice across the board14,30,31. There are a number of different adaptation strategies that can be used within organisations, and these will vary according to an organisation’s structure, needs, resource availability, the climatic impacts experienced by the organisation and the local context32,33. Adaptation strategies can be implemented across varying timescales; they can be sector-specific, or they can have an organisation-wide, cross-sectoral and cross-departmental scope. The following describes some of the tested strategies that public sector organisations can adopt to facilitate integrating adaptation within their organisation. These strategies recognise that barriers to building organisational adaptive capacity exist at all times and that these may be structural, behavioural, or a combination of both.

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4.1 Interpreting the organisational framing of adaptation Within any organisation there are likely to exist a large number of different interpretations for climate change adaptation. This is due to the diversity of ‘knowledge’, experiences and personal backgrounds of the individuals who make up an organisation. These individuals will, consciously or subconsciously, identify and label processes or events they are engaged in. They will also contextualise them within their own set of values, ideas or political agendas, and their responsibilities within an organisation in order to arrive at a shared meaning and sense of purpose that can be communicated to others5,8,34. This process of interpretation is known as framing and acts as a ‘sense-making device’ for individuals and for organisations as a whole35. Framing is therefore a process by which individuals and groups construct meaning to understand a particular event, process or occurrence36,37. Since such framing of climate change adaptation is always enmeshed in social and political processes, the decision about which frame(s) to promote throughout an adaptation planning process is influential. Such decisions have the potential to give preference to certain ‘adaptation pathways’ or adaptation outcomes, some of which may prove to be maladaptations38,ii. Framing adaptation in diverse ways – experiences from across local government At a workshop held in 2010 by the Australian National University (ANU) and the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) participants were asked to share their experiences from adaptation practices at the local and regional scale of government. Discussions among experts from across local and state government showed that addressing the meaning and purpose of adaptation, i.e. framing and scoping any climate change adaptation project or initiative, significantly influenced the desired goals and outcomes, as well as the choices made about the methodology and stakeholder engagement. Adaptation initiatives were progressively reframed, as the shared understanding of impacts and their implications broadened, leading to reconsidering project goals and purpose, climatic and non-climatic stressors, the system of concern, and the processes, approaches and types of adaptation (as illustrated by the schematic on the next page).

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Maladaptation describes adaptation interventions taken to avoid or reduce vulnerability to climate change that, 47 in effect, increase rather than decrease the vulnerability of systems, sectors or social groups .

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Source: Fünfgeld et al. (2012) .

In order to make adaptation framing explicit, it is therefore important to discuss and validate theories, concepts and approaches used in a particular local contexts at the outset of adaptation processes5. It is also necessary to make abstract concepts such as ‘climate change vulnerability’ relevant to adaptation practice in a given organisation or unit thereof, which requires such terms to be ‘translated’ into a context-specific meaning (e.g. an organisation determining that its focus is people at risk of harm in relation to using the term ‘climate change vulnerability’). This process of translating scientific concepts into organisational language and practical applications is a decisive step in adaptation framing that is often overlooked5. There is no correct way of framing climate change and adaptation, as different framings each have their strengths and weaknesses16. Yet some framings prove politically more popular than others, e.g. because they are easier to support29. It is therefore beneficial to use the dominant organisational framing, if known, as a starting point and discuss contrasting framings as eye-openers for decision makers and thereby adding more diverse perspectives to the adaptation process41. This can be achieved through a participatory approach, including a diverse group of stakeholders and explicitly discussing the different values and assumptions that separate different groups16. In local governments, divergence in framing is common. An example of this may be between engineers working in capital works and asset and infrastructure departments on the one hand, and community development staff working in community development or community services departments. While engineers may discuss climate change vulnerability in terms of quantifying potential risks on the built environment, community development staff may use the same term to describe disadvantaged and 15

socially or economically marginalised people who are most at risk from suffering adverse consequences due to extreme weather events. In decision-making processes, such framings will have a crucial impact on the selection of a strategy and on the tools selected for the task of planning41. Where organisation-wide strategies are involved, developing a shared understanding about the framing of adaptation avoids working at cross-purposes and reduces inefficiencies and the risk of maladaptation. Case Study: Developing an organisation-wide understanding of climate change adaptation within the City of Greater Bendigo The City of Greater Bendigo (CoGB) in central Victoria (Australia) approached climate change adaptation by investing significant effort upfront to develop a shared understanding of the organisation’s motivations, responsibilities and needs with regard to climate change adaptation. The overarching rationale for their adaptation process was given in the Council Plan 2009-2013, which mentioned climate change as an ‘important factor already affecting our population’. The City had also formally adopted the precautionary principle as an overarching guide for decision-making (CoGB Council Plan 2009-13, p.11). Under the ‘built and natural environment’ theme, the Council Plan listed the following strategic objective for climate change adaptation (p.15): ‘Be a leader and role model in climate change adaptation and ecologically sustainable development’. For the financial year 2011-12, the Council Plan strategy 1.2: ‘Adopt and promote environmentally sustainable practices’ mentioned the following as an action to be led by the Manager Environment: ‘Complete Climate Change Adaptation Action Plan for City of Greater Bendigo’. These stipulations gave the City a broad framework for developing a pathway for adapting to climate change. With the Sustainable Environment Unit taking the lead, the organisation decided to approach adaptation planning by first developing a thorough understanding of what role climate change adaptation currently plays across the organisation and ascertaining to what extent a shared understanding exists. The City developed an approach towards adaptation that can be described by the following: • All adaptation activities are conducted in alignment with the CoGB’s strategic planning processes, as outlined in the Council Plan 2009-13 (and subsequent plans) and the Community Plan. • Climate science and climate change projections are accepted as a given, despite individuals being sceptical of climate change, and are the evidence base for adaptation planning. • Adaptation is approached as a process of on-going organisational change, managing uncertainty, decreasing vulnerability and increasing resilience, in order to maintain effective local government services into the future. • Adaptation is addressed using an exploratory, considered approach that involves ongoing involvement of internal and external experts, to avoid maladaptation and maximise effectiveness of all steps taken. This involved, for example, the CoGB participating in the ‘Framing Adaptation in Victorian Local Government’ project with RMIT University and the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research, and other collaborative initiatives. 16

• Regular and broad communication and engagement across the organisation is deemed critical for developing a shared approach and ensuring the success of adaptation planning. • Establishing partnerships with research organisations and expert practitioners (universities, think tanks, specialised consultants, e.g. in climate risk management etc.) helps ensure the adaptation process is based on latest scientific thinking and knowledge. Using the approach above, the City has embarked on developing an adaptation approach that reaches right across the organisation and engages all departments39,42.

Theory to action: strategic tasks to interpret the organisational framing of adaptation •

Discuss and clarify the meaning and purpose of adaptation for different parts of the organisation

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Identify existing different interpretations of adaptation

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Translate abstract concepts and important terms into locally relevant meaning and convey this meaning to all staff

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Decide on an organisation-wide framing of adaptation that the organisation will take on board and promote.

4.2 Aligning adaptation with existing strategies and policies Climate change adaptation cuts right across existing departments, portfolios and decisionmaking structures, and many objectives set in strategic plans and policies have the potential to be negatively affected by the impacts of climate change. Climate risk management and, by extension, climate change adaptation, it can be argued, is therefore predominantly a process of minimising the effects of climate-related uncertainty on achieving organisational objectives43. In other words, most if not all organisational objectives, as articulated in strategies, plans and policies could potentially be affected by the impacts of climate change. For this reason, climate change adaptation needs to be effectively aligned with existing organisational strategies and policies. Adaptation goal setting, therefore, needs to be an integrated and reflexive process that acknowledges the relevant institutional context, including existing policy instruments and rules20, and aligns adaptation with these. In practice, this may mean screening all existing strategic plans and policies for exposure to climate-related risks and identifying opportunities for adaptive strategies to be incorporated into these key documents and their associated processes. In undertaking this process, it is important to recognise that an organisation may well have many existing policies that can be considered climate change adaptation, but these may not be recognised as such because they have been developed for other purposes15. Aligning adaptation with existing policies, strategies and with the broader institutional contexts in which these policies and strategies sit is a core aspect of embedding adaptation into organisations. Here a distinction can be made between: 17

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Vertical integration, i.e. incorporating climate change considerations into policies at all levels of an organisation, from the daily operations level all the way to long-term strategic planning; and

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Horizontal integration, where climate change adaptation is coordinated across all departments and organisational units in an organisation.

While vertical approaches to embedding adaptation that emphasise top-down leadership are important, comprehensive and consistent horizontal approaches that aggregate climate change adaptation strategies across an organisation’s policies may see more robust responses in the longer term44. Case study: Integrating climate risk in the City of Melton, Victoria The City of Melton in Melbourne’s western suburbs employed a risk management process led by council staff and supported by the executive to embed climate risk into council operations. The council worked with other regional councils as part of the Western Alliance for Greenhouse Action to identify regional risks. Council management, staff and the executive then contextualised these risks in a workshop to incorporate each risk into the council’s risk register. Follow-up meetings ensured that all involved council staff were engaged and comfortable with the decisions and risks were assigned to relevant ‘owners’ across council. As an example of the outcomes of this process, the council’s Economic Development and Tourism Plan includes an action to educate local business people about the potential risks and impacts of climate change17.

Theory to action: strategic tasks for aligning adaptation with existing policies and plans •

Assess existing risks and opportunities to services and incorporate responses into strategies and plans

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Complete regular reviews of all policies to ensure they appropriately consider climate change impacts and risks

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Make changes to policies to embed adaptation in, for example, emergency planning, risk management

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Identify and consider removing institutional barriers to adaptation

4.3 Garnering senior management support & political leadership While the process of embedding adaptation requires developing social acceptance and new or modified routines across an organisation, an important starting point is to ensure that senior management understand, support and co-own the goals of adaptation and the chosen

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approach45,46. Engaging senior leadership and getting ‘buy-in from the top’ is key for unlocking resources for, and coordinating approaches to, organisational adaptation46,47. Experience from the UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP), an organisation set up to support businesses and local government with climate change adaptation, shows that ‘climate change champions’ can play critical roles in developing and promoting organisational approaches to adaptation33. A climate risk manager, for example, or similar role(s) with coordinating function can maintain direct links with senior management, facilitate their continuing buy-in and thus achieve significant success in building organisational adaptive capacity33. Active senior leadership support and engagement in adaptation is important not only within organisations but also with regard to developing and fostering inter-organisational networks for learning and exchange of knowledge48. Meijerink and Stiller argue the five essential functions of leadership in these networks are: being connective, enabling, adaptive, politicaladministrative and disseminatingsee 49, but that the relative importance of each function depends significantly on the organisational context. In climate change adaptation planning, inter-organisational networks can become particularly important for disseminating knowledge and innovative practices, for developing the business case for adaptation, and for developing cross-jurisdictional approaches to adaptation50,51. Significant relationship building and educational efforts are required to enable managers to relate climate change adaptation to their work tasks and routines on a daily basis25. In the first instance, educational effort may refer to enhancing managers’ abilities to analyse and use climate-relevant information in their decision-making. However, a lack of senior management buy-in can be more a result of a lack of understanding of the risks and potential costs of climate change impacts to the business than a lack of understanding of climate science information itself. Developing a robust business case that outlines organisational risks and opportunities, e.g. in the form of the potential financial and reputational costs of no action, alongside potential opportunities, is critical for motivating action.

Case study: Developing an adaptation business case at Gosford City Council In 2010, Gosford City Council developed a detailed business case for managing climate change adaptation. The purpose of the business case was to provide justification of Council capital works expenditure (both already budgeted and future funding requests) for addressing climate change adaptation impacts in the Gosford local government area. It combined an assessment of the level of impact that the Gosford local government area could expect to encounter through the 21st century and investigated how Council could shift its services and activities to manage these impacts. The business case also included an organisational history of Council’s progress on climate change action since 2007. The business case was instrumental in garnering senior management support and buy-in for climate change adaptation52. 19

Case study: Embedding climate risk in planning documents at Willoughby Council, NSW A risk assessment of Willoughby Council operations initiated and funded by the organisation’s insurance company successfully engaged key council staff in a process to embed climate risk into the council’s operational documents. Key staff from each division of Council participated in workshops facilitated by external consultants who then produced a report that was subsequently endorsed by council. The report identified climate scenarios, risks and adaptation actions and it was agreed these would be reviewed on a regular basis. Several aspects of the process are attributed to its success, including senior management’s involvement in the risk assessment process and their help to build climate change resilience within Council. Another successful aspect was the allocation of tasks to staff with relevant knowledge and experience across Council rather than limiting responsibility for implementation to the Council’s sustainability division17. Theory to action: strategic tasks for garnering senior management support •

Appoint a climate change champion who can be influential within the organisation

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Develop a business case for adaptation for discussion with senior managers

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Integrate adaptation in position descriptions of department heads and/or in senior managers’ key duties and responsibilities

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Engage Executive in co-developing an overall approach to climate change adaptation

•

Enhance managers’ abilities to analyse and use climate relevant information and understand climate change risks and opportunities.

4.4 Collaborating across the organisation and beyond Due to the cross-cutting and complex nature of adaptation as a policy issue, collaboration is increasingly recognised as an important tool for working effectively in climate change adaptation34,53–56. Collaboration can help individuals better understand how climate change impacts may affect an organisation and its respective services, including potential flow-on effects that specific climate change impacts, such as severe flash flooding or prolonged heat waves, can have on other parts of the organisation and the services it provides. Major new projects provide an ideal opportunity for enhanced intra-organisational collaboration. On commencing a new project, exploring potential climate change risks through ‘deep’ engagement with colleagues from different departments can yield more innovative project outcomes (beyond the goals of factoring in climate change impacts) and raise the baseline awareness on climate change impacts issues within an organisation54. From there on in, those involved in the project will bring different skill sets and knowledge bases that may be useful at different stages of the process47. Bringing different perspectives together is not always easy, but with persistence, collaboration can build trust between actors and strengthen the social support context and organisational culture for adaptation57. 20

Collaboration can also be understood as a function of intra-organisational or interorganisational networks. Networks can primarily be considered as ‘resources for the exchange of information’57. They are open ended forms of collaboration, with well-connected individuals being able to draw on the ideas and experiences generated by the network and its members, and compare the values of diverse others. Fostering and improving professional networks for adaptation is important for building on existing or establishing reformed systems for discussion and sharing of information53,58. Case Study: Collaboration to build community resilience in Sydney’s Northern Beaches In 2011, Pittwater, Manly and Warringah councils teamed up with the State Emergency Service (SES) to develop and implement a regional approach to building community resilience to floods and coastal hazards. The committee applied for external funding to survey residents to determine existing levels of awareness and knowledge gaps and then developed a four-year strategy, the ‘Northern Beaches Flood and Coastal Storm Education Strategy 2012-16’, to develop and deliver a “consultative and participatory approach to community education”. Key to the success of the strategy and the inter-council committee has been the shared and regional approach that also allows tailored approaches to be adopted should the need arise. To maintain the project’s momentum, the committee meets two times each year to review progress and commit to upcoming goals. According to the council: ‘Working with the neighbouring councils and SES has strengthened the relationships and communication lines between the organisations. An example is the sharing of information on social media and direct communication between the councils and SES media staff to exchange information and provide up-to-date information to the community during a natural hazard event’ 17. Theory to Action: strategic tasks for collaborating across the organisation and beyond •

Engage all staff across departments through awareness raising sessions on adaptation

•

Collaborate with external stakeholders on co-designing work being undertaken in climate change adaptation

•

Identify and appoint one contact per department to liaise between their own department and the sustainability department on adaptation work

•

Develop a cross-departmental adaptation taskforce or working group, which routinely reports to senior management

•

Ensure the adaptation working group relates with similar organisations and external experts as part of professional networks

•

Publish and share progress about climate change adaptation externally.

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4.5 Encouraging multi-loop organisational learning The process of adaptation more broadly, and in particular integrating adaptation considerations into organisational planning and decision-making processes, will require individual and collective learning even for the most advanced organisations59,60. Reflexivity is an increasingly widely recognised success factor for climate change adaptation and other complex organisational tasks61.

Figure 2: Single, double and triple-loop learning as part of climate change adaptation Source: IPCC 201262.

Adaptation requires continually reviewing adaptation decisions in order to ensure that, for example, funds are not routinely invested in pursuing an adaptation option that is either no longer necessary or is causing maladaptation38. Well-adapting organisations therefore need to invest effort to move from ‘single-loop’ learning that tends to adjust decisions in reaction to recognising a fault or inappropriate response, to ‘multi-loop learning’61 that reframes problems and challenges underlying assumptions (see Figure 2). Double and triple-loop learning means analysing lessons (failures as well as successes) and translating these into updated and more informed decisions in the future. At some stage of their adaptation process, most organisations develop formal training and capacity-building programs and tools to support staff in climate change adaptation. Working with external experts and knowledge institutions can become an important catalyst for organisational learning and change46. Formal learning processes and tools, including technical or decision-support tools for adaptation, can be useful for promoting an evidencebased approach to adaptation decision-making. In addition to such formal tools and formal types of learning, a range of informal learning processes and systems exist through which organisations exchange information, for example among regional offices or through regional peer-to-peer exchange61. Embedding adaptation into an organisation means committing to becoming a learning organisation, which also acknowledges that a business-as-usual approach will not be sufficient to address all climate change impacts sufficiently and that existing assumptions on 22

which the organisation operates may no longer hold true63. A useful starting point for fostering individual and organisational, formal and informal learning is to gain an understanding of what types of learning processes (e.g. single, double or multi-loop learning) are currently in place, how different types of learning are currently supported in the organisation, and which areas are participating in what types of learning opportunities64.

Case study: Encouraging organisational learning and change at Shoalhaven Council, New South Wales As a community made up of a significant number of retirees and vulnerable residents, Shoalhaven Council on the southern New South Wales Coast developed and implemented a Climate Change Adaptation Plan. The council identified that broad-scale cultural change would be important to implementing adaptive management across the organisation’s everyday operations and that on-going staff engagement and support were vital to facilitate this change. The council’s process for embedding cultural change across the organisation saw a lengthy review and engagement process to bring the council’s existing adaptive capacities to the fore. Climate change awareness was also integrated into an annual compulsory corporate training program for staff in supervisory roles. Meanwhile, senior managers from Shoalhaven and other councils participated in scenario-based planning in sessions developed and delivered in partnership with Griffith University. Six years into the process, Shoalhaven Council identify a range of lessons learnt, including the importance of high-level support, recognising stars and leaders, transparency, learning from experts outside council and engaging in on-going training. Another key aspect of the process has been learning to deal with uncertainty and taking time to engage key stakeholders to work through issues: “A key lesson is that not everything needs to be known or understood for all climate variables for decisions that increase adaptability to be made. Rather, spending time on working through climate options with the involvement of many stakeholders was most important”17.

Theory to Action: strategic tasks for encouraging multi-loop organisational learning •

Identify the learning practices for adaptive management currently in place (if any)

•

Make it a priority to develop multi-loop learning processes across the organisation, e.g. by incorporating multi-loop learning into new organisational processes or systems

•

Continually review adaptation options and actions

•

Work with external climate change adaptation experts to learn from them

•

Work with peer organisations on adaptation for networking and support.

23

4.6 Embracing organisational change Climate change adaptation is not a discrete, nor a once-off activity. Climate drivers are intrinsically cross-cutting and always interact with non-climate factors to determine impacts and consequences16. In the coming years and decades, this will require organisations to continuously change their current decision-making and operational practices from current practices. Increasingly, business-as-usual planning will need to be replaced with new, innovative planning processes and outputs that are transformative in effect65–67. A first step towards acknowledging the need for organisations to change is to gain a robust understanding of the current organisational structures and processes in place for supporting adaptation, i.e. how adaptation efforts are currently planned and decided, who is in charge of adaptation, and who is involved or consulted during the decision-making process. This understanding is important to identify where organisational barriers may occur and to make informed decisions about structural changes22,68,69. A pathway towards sustained organisational transformation can be initiated through pilot programs and reforms that allow for experimenting with new structural arrangements and processes. Scenario planning can be a useful tool for exploring the potential impacts of climate change on the organisation and its clients/customers and for developing an understanding for how organisational goals and aspirations may change under climate change. “Change and acceptance takes time … Council is a difficult space to work, as the leaders change every four years so staff are ‘stuck’ in a cycle of constantly explaining and retraining. Adaptive management requires the constant updating of information and plans. The key is to get adaptive management into Council’s integrated planning and reporting framework. This then sets the scene for change” 17

From theory to action: strategic tasks to embracing organisational change •

Ascertain current level of adaptive capacity and ability to respond in the organisation

•

Gain a thorough understanding of all decision-making structures and processes relevant to adaptation at present

•

Identify and remove any known structural barriers to adaptive management

•

Explore the options for pilot projects that challenge business-as-usual approaches and experiment with new forms of flexible planning and decision-making.

5. Conclusion Embedding considerations about climate change, risks, impacts and adaptation into organisational planning, decision-making and service delivery requires a complex program of strategic action that needs to be driven and supported by senior management, underpinned by a robust business case. Integrating adaptation means analysing climate change risks and opportunities across the organisation and developing more flexible approaches to planning 24

and decision-making that are based on multi-loop learning that occurs as part of formal and informal processes. In the years to come, embedding adaptation also calls for acknowledging that a business-as-usual approach to organisational planning and implementation may no longer be viable or sufficient to ensure staff and client/end-user safety, service quality and business continuity. Public sector organisations have an opportunity now to be proactive and ‘get their house in order’, before the next extreme weather event hits. Ultimately, embedding adaptation is an important on-going and strategic process and a driver, as much as a result of, changing organisational operating environments in the face of climate change. Organisations who take leadership on adaptation now will be well equipped to effectively deal with the consequences of climate change on the human and natural systems they routinely interact with.

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