Edinburgh City Council: Working together to move from ideas to city-wide action with impact

Date added: 10/05/2019

‘Edinburgh Adapts brought together a diverse group of over 50 stakeholders, representing a wide range of organisations and interests from across the city. Before the creation of Edinburgh Adapts, the Council had taken a high level, strategic look at what we could do to adapt to climate change. A high level risk assessment helped us to identify some strategic priorities, but we realised that our impact would be limited if we acted alone. Edinburgh Adapts allowed us to work with people from organisations across the city representing different views, interests and values.

To develop a vision and action plan for a climate ready city, we ran a series of workshops that focused on city-wide action that no one organisation could achieve alone. The first workshop brought as many stakeholders together as possible to discuss climate change adaptation and develop some initial ideas for actions to include in the plan. The next workshops were sector specific, and relevant stakeholders worked together to design shared ways to achieve the actions identified in the initial workshop. The final workshop brought all the stakeholders together again to review and refine the actions.

The collaborative workshop process worked well because all the stakeholders were clear on our shared goal to build a city that is well adapted to handle the impacts of climate change. People and organisations had differing ideas about how we should go about achieving that goal, but were motivated to come together to co-create workable solutions. Adapting to climate change is an opportunity to create more liveable and sustainable places, and Edinburgh Adapts is bringing in many perspectives and targeted actions for a climate ready future.

Working closely with diverse stakeholders helped to raise awareness of the impacts of climate change, and share knowledge and expertise between organisations and across sectors to help understand what we can to do prepare for those impacts. This is helping us manage the risks presented by climate, and also make the most of opportunities in being well prepared.

Edinburgh Adapts brought diverse organisations and people with different goals, perspectives and skillsets together to work on a shared goal, and allowed us to develop clear, achievable actions to start building a climate ready Edinburgh.’