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Climate Change Risk and Building Local Resilience
The effects of climate change are already shaping our daily lives.
Extreme events such as the UK’s first 40°C day in 2022 and the devastating wildfires seen in Los Angeles in 2025 are being made more likely by climate change which is also causing rising sea levels that impact small island states and coastal towns and cities globally. The need to prepare for a changing climate has never been more important.
While reducing emissions remains essential, local areas also need to understand the risks they face and take practical steps to adapt. This is about protecting people, places and services so they can continue to thrive in the future.
Aether’s data and climate specialists are well paced to gather risk and vulnerability data and provide an evidence base to help cities and local authorities assess their strategic climate risks. We translate this data into actionable insights and support organisations to prepare for the future climate by developing adaptation plans and strategies.
Every place is different, which means adaptation must be tailored. Local authorities – who know their communities, landscapes and infrastructure best – play a vital role in strengthening resilience. We work alongside them to apply local knowledge, prioritise actions and track progress, helping ensure that communities stay safe and well‑prepared for the challenges ahead.
For more information, please contact Chitra Nadarajah
What is adaptation?
As the climate changes, a wide range of impacts such as flooding and extreme heat will become more frequent and intense, changing the risks faced by people, places and economies. Adaptation encompasses a wide range of measures that help communities adjust to climate change and reduce harm or enable them to exploit new opportunities. Measures could include planting drought resistant crops, building flood defences or implementing early warning systems for extreme weather.
The Role of Local Authorities
Historically, reducing emissions has been more of a focus of climate action in the UK than adaptation. However, in recent years the impacts of climate change have been seen across the country and these are predicted to increase as the climate changes further in future. Key climate hazards facing the UK include: flooding, heatwaves, coastal erosion, drought, storms and wildfire, with negative impacts expected to affect infrastructure, buildings, public services, communities, health and wellbeing, agriculture and food supplies and the environment.
The specific impacts, and their scale, vary widely across different communities and geographies, meaning local actors have a key role in providing local knowledge for understanding and managing risks. The choice of appropriate adaptation action also depends strongly on the needs of local communities, and so local authorities have a key role to play in planning and delivery.
We help local authorities to understand these risks and use their local knowledge to drive action. Our approach to risk assessment includes aligning local risk assessments with regional and national assessments to support joined up action.
We also prioritise communication and translation of technical information to help stakeholders understand and act on this. Our approach to supporting adaptation planning is stakeholder focused and actions are co-developed to ensure local context and need are considered. We have a strong understanding of the policy options open to Local Authorities for adaptation from our previous work which has included a review of adaptation planning by all local authorities and a range of other public bodies in Scotland. We are also able to provide deep sectoral expertise with specialist knowledge in the built environment sector in particular.
Mitigation and Adaptation: Complementary Strategies
Rapid mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions is needed to reduce the impacts of climate change and the amount of adaptation required. Without adaptation, mitigation measures may fail under the future climate. For example, if trees are planted for carbon sequestration but are not resilient to drought or pests and disease that thrive in warmer temperatures, the sequestration benefit may be lost. Equally, there are some measures that can have benefits for both adaptation and mitigation, such as restoring peatland, and some where there can be a trade-off, such as well insulated homes potentially being at higher risk of overheating.
Aether accounts for these interactions, as well as those affecting broader policy areas such as health, by building on our wider impacts work and taking a holistic approach to developing adaptation strategies. We review and analyse policies to understand where there are opportunities to embed adaptation, maximise benefits and avoid trade-offs. We carry out stakeholder engagement across sectors to understand how these interactions play out within the local context and to generate cross-departmental buy-in to plans and strategies. Where possible, we like to work with organisations on mitigation and adaptation strategies simultaneously, building on our strong track record of net zero action planning, to ensure that action is joined up and complementary.
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