The Fit for the future network is starting on a climate change focus in its new strategy. Specifically what can member orgs ‘do’. Climate change adaptation or in my words doing something about the impacts. Can I get one thing clear. Climate change is here and now. Its effects in terms of changing seasons, species changes, frequency of bad weather, overall increase in average temperature is ‘ now’. Think of the atmosphere as minestrone soup on a cooker. The more heat you put into the pan the more the soup will warm up but also the bits will swirl round in the pan (weather)

My house is environmentally friendly but the environment is not friendly to it. I must adapt

Mitigation plans are now starting to translate into action plans slower than needed but at least there are plans to basically slow down the rate, which the heat is going into the imaginary soup pan or Earth, as we like to call it. But there will be at least a 25-year delay between stopping (we are a long way off the stopping) and the heating slowing down. This will have an impact on us all… and so what do we do about this change how do we adapt or adaptation planning and adaptation action planning (the doing bit) seas are rising, diseases will spread quicker, heat with dry stuff out, water will be scarce or too much will fall in one go. People also talk of the upside and we in the UK are in the Goldilocks zone. Not too hot and not too cold . People talk of vineyards, extended growing seasons and such like but they will have storms and erratic rainfall  and all manner of impacts to deal with

The Fit for the future networks members have decided that the next strategic plan for the network will be looking at climate change and more specifically the ‘doing’ end of climate change. The adaptation side to the oncoming impacts. What do we do? The evaluation, sharing, action and business end of planning. To that ends a couple of days ago we sent out a questionnaire to members to see where they are on the ‘doing’ journey. Simple questions range from ‘where is your organisation on the climate change journey’ answers will range from ‘we are aware’ through to we have it built into our business plan with resources and people doing the adaptation work ’What does adaptation look like? This is a huge list and ranges from what type of trees to plant in ancient park lands as we are already losing our oaks in some sites as they can’t cope with sodden ground and high winds, rain water goods on buildings to deal with bigger lumps of rain,  through to sewage systems and where to put them on coastal areas if they will get more regular flooding, how do we deal with increased and or decreased rainfall by building resilience into landscape scale work eg reed beds, riverine planting, large attenuation ponds and so on

Lovely but threatened. National Trust are working on the adaptation planning for this area in N Wales

Before planning the journey we are asking our members where they are starting from?

Where are you starting from? Change is here and now it will only accelerate as these things do!