No Community Left Behind: Inside Scotland's Regional Climate Adaptation Partnerships.

Alexa Green - 20th March 2025

“This transition will abandon no community.” These were the words of First Minister John Swinney, during a speech given on climate action delivered at Glasgow Botanic Gardens on Wednesday 19 February 2025. In fact, the importance of community-led and community supported climate action was mentioned more than ten times throughout the speech.

Communities are increasingly being seen as important leaders in climate action initiatives and climate policy creation in Scotland and around the world. Words like collaboration, co-creation, and participation are becoming a regular part of the rhetoric around the response to the climate crisis and other socio-environmental issues.

One way in which communities are collaborating to deliver climate action is through regional climate adaptation partnerships supported by the Scottish Government, Adaptation Scotland, and Verture (formerly Sniffer). I recently attended a workshop to discuss ways these partnerships can be better supported and particularly how Scottish Government can support local communities to achieve their climate adaptation goals in line with the third Scottish National Adaptation Plan (SNAP3).

Catriona Lang, Deputy Director of Energy and Climate Change with the Scottish Government spoke about the ambitions for SNAP3. She cited the need for “transformational change” in supporting “resilient communities” particularly in a way that considers just transition principles. Dr Alasdair Allan, Acting Minister for Climate Action highlighted the importance of “collaboration to develop the right policy solutions” saying that “partnership working is what works”.

The importance of collaboration was indeed a theme throughout the presentations from regional adaptation partnerships in Scotland and abroad. They shared their progress, key learnings, and future plans, expressing their desire to build knowledge and capacity that will inform local place plans and inspire other communities to develop their own regional adaptation partnerships. A summary of the projects highlighted during the workshop are listed below:

• Climate Ready Clyde is the longest running adaptation partnership in Scotland and have developed a strategic project pipeline to help them prioritise funding for future projects, like Creative Climate Futures, in the Glasgow City Region.
• Climate Ready South East Scotland mapped 917 stories (and counting) of lived experiences of changes to local climate and weather events to help identify locally appropriate adaptation solutions.
• Climate Ready Tayside used tools like the H3Uni Three Horizons framework during participatory workshops to imagine a more sustainable future for their region.
• Highland Adapts covers 33% of the land area in Scotland and aims to develop a strong evidence base to support place-based adaptation exercises using student dissertations, graduate internships, and consultancy experience.
• The TalX and TalX2 projects in Ireland demonstrated that partnership working is crucial for transformational change and it is important to build individual capacities and address lack of resources at the national policy level.
• The Pathways2Resilience project funded by Horizons Europe supports 100 regions and communities across Europe to design pathways to climate resilience and has found that while there is no “one size fits all” approach, having a central platform of support which allows for responsive and iterative design leads to transformative adaptation.

During the workshop discussions, we shared our views regarding what support communities and regional adaptation partnerships will need to ensure successful and sustainable projects moving forward. Some of the ideas discussed included:

1. ensuring there is a clear evidence base in terms of “what works”;
2. establishing a mechanism for communities to easily share and translate local learning to national government policies;
3. conducting and mapping a distributional analysis of climate risks; and
4. considering the role that personal transformation and leadership plays in supporting community-level climate action.

Some mentioned that this is a time for experimental and breakthrough learning and cited the importance of creative and artistic measures of engagement.

The overarching theme throughout the event and over the recent month has been loud and clear. Communities are at the forefront of the climate action movement and national policies need to support current efforts and make resources available to enable more communities to take part. The speeches given by the First Minister and other Scottish Government representatives cited above demonstrate a clear willingness to support community-led climate action. Meanwhile, the regional adaptation projects discussed at the workshop show that collaborative partnerships effectively help bridge the value-action gap.

This is an exciting time for SISC to help contribute to the growing evidence base to support community-led climate action bringing to light some of the exciting examples of best practice in Scotland and beyond.

If you’re interested in following our progress or getting involved, please follow us on LinkedIn, subscribe to our mailing list or get in touch to share your ideas.