Closing the Climate Adaptation Gap and Unlocking Transformative Change

To effectively adapt and keep pace with the rising impacts of climate change we cannot maintain business-as-usual. However, a range of barriers, path dependencies and self-reinforcing ‘lock-in’ dynamics are impeding efforts to adapt and are proving difficult to change. While ‘carbon lock-ins’ have increasingly been studied in climate mitigation, this conference turns the spotlight towards the lock-ins restricting climate adaptation and seeks to understand how these play out across different policy sectors and countries. Only by understanding these can we identify strategies for ‘unlocking’ opportunities for transformative change.

The conference will bridge the gap between research and practice as we collectively try to accelerate adaptation to climate change. This will be a valuable opportunity to share knowledge, experiences and best practices across countries and policy sectors, such as flood & coastal erosion risk management, biodiversity, forestry, water and health. Our speakers have been invited based on their established expertise in these areas.