Helping to understand and accelerate how organisations develop capabilities to identify and implement climate adaptations.
Adapting to climate change requires organisations to learn and apply new knowledge and capabilities to understand how climate change will impact their organisations, then translate this knowledge into actions to mitigate impacts, and pathways for implementing these actions at both an individual organisational level, and collective business-society level.
Organisational adaptation relies on collaboration and inter-organisational learning between different types of organisations – from businesses, research centres, development agencies, social and economic development institutions, to government agencies and institutes of higher education and learning, and individuals.
ISF collaborates with all types of organisations to help build learning, capacity and accelerate identification and implementation of organisational adaptation.
PROJECT | 2019-2020
Small business information needs
Extreme weather events such as floods, storms, droughts and bushfires can have devastating and disruptive impacts to economic activity. For small- and medium-sized businesses, the results can include business closures, loss of skilled employees and decline and delay in investment in business assets and innovative activities.
This project investigated how small- and medium-sized businesses have experienced extreme weather events, asking:
1. What is the experience and preparedness in the small business community for extreme weather events?
2. How is climate information currently being used by NSW small businesses – including identifying characteristics of current awareness of climate-related risks, direct and indirect impacts, current information sources, formats and types, and related processes where climate information may impact decision-making (e.g. insurance policies)?
3. What are the barriers and gaps in identifying, obtaining, or using climate information? How can these gaps be addressed?
Client: Office of the NSW Small Business Commissioner
Researchers: Samantha Sharpe, Rebecca Cunningham, Brent Jacobs
PROJECT | 2019
Industry transformation in response to climate change
Extreme weather events can have devastating and disruptive impacts for small- and medium-sized businesses.
PROJECT | 2019
Viticulture and climate change adaptation
This body of work investigated business innovation activity in response to impacts associated with a changing climate in the viticulture industry. For this, ISF researchers looked at two NSW case study sites in two different climactic regions: Orange, in the Central West Tablelands and the Riverina region, in Western NSW.
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PROJECT | 2019
Alpine tourism and climate change adaptation
This case study investigated business innovation activity in response to the impacts climate change has had in the Alpine and Highland regions of New South Wales. Climate change includes temperature changes, and changes in the frequency and intensity of weather events such as heatwaves, severe storms and bushfires.
PROJECT | 2018
Climate information needs in the business and finance sector
ISF partnered with Climate-KIC to complete a climate needs analysis for the business, finance, insurance and innovation sectors. This is an extension of project work under the Regional Innovation Systems theme in the Adaptive Communities Hub.
Client: Climate KIC
Researcher: Samantha Sharpe
PROJECT | 2017-2019
Alpine research network social network analysis
ISF conducted longitudinal analysis of the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage teams working in the Alpine region, to understand the way in which government agency staff working across the state and across agencies connect with each other over time.
Client: NSW Office of Environment and Heritage
Researchers: Samantha Sharpe, Rebecca Cunningham, Candice Delaney
PROJECT | 2013-2019
OEH Adaptation Hub: innovation systems and their impact on regional-level climate change adaptation
Focusing on the analysis of businesses and organisations, this research stream analysed and worked with selected communities in NSW to attempt to operationalise Regional Innovation System typologies and assess the pre-conditions within these communities for transformative change – change that results not just in survival but successful adaption.
Client: NSW OEH
Researchers: Samantha Sharpe, Brent Jacobs, Candice Delaney, Rebecca Cunningham
IMPACT STORY
Saving the systems: enabling regional adaptation to climate change
ISF researchers use systems thinking to help guide regional New South Wales to identify and plan for the flow-on effects of climate change.
PROJECT | 2013-
Adaptive communities node
A multi-faceted project impacts policy and empowers communities, businesses and government to meet the effects of climate change head-on.
PROJECT | 2013
Cross-scale barriers to climate change adaptation in Australian local government
A key feature of this study was to identify cross-scale barriers to planned adaptation within the context of Local Government (LG) in Australia. Many of the impacts of climate change and variability have or will be experienced at the local level. As a result, LGs in Australia (and overseas) have initiated plans to adapt to these impacts. However, the pathway to planning and implementation of adaptation is not a barrier free process. LGs are embedded in a larger governance context that has the potential to limit the effectiveness of planned adaptation initiatives on the ground. Drawing on current best practice, a framework and diagnostic tool was used to investigate and understand the governance architecture that gives rise to cross-scale barriers and their significance to certain contexts and sectors. This facilitated the identification of these barriers and related strategies to overcome them. Further, by identifying barriers experienced when coping with climate variability at a local government level, limitations and possible strategies to respond to future climate change induced impacts were be identified. Various methods were adopted in which end-users are engaged throughout the study, including: 3 workshops with LG representatives and multi-stakeholders, 5 case studies reflecting the critical barriers with a key focus on NSW but will have replicability at the national level, 20 key informant interviews in various States to validate results and desktop studies. A checklist matrix of 8-10 critical barriers for LG across Australia was be developed with proposed strategies to overcome them.
Client: National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF)
Researchers: Pierre Mukheibir, Natasha Kuruppu, Anna Gero, Jade Herriman
PROJECT | 2011-2013
Enhancing the adaptive capacity to climate change of small and medium enterprises
This project explored the key underlying factors and processes shaping the adaptive capacity of Australian small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) to climate change and associated sea level rise. Specifically, ISF investigated how SMEs have considered and integrated adaptation into business planning; the key underlying processes that constrain and influence the adaptive capacities of SMEs; and what types of support are required to promote SME business continuity under a changing climate.
The research adopted theories from political ecology and drew on literature on vulnerability and hazards to understand the processes that mediate the adaptive capacity of SMEs. The empirical research involved an online survey targeting SMEs, attending business engagement events hosted by chambers of commerce, 30 semi-structured interviews with secondary stakeholders, five case studies involving SMEs and secondary stakeholders, and finally a stakeholder workshop that brought together participants from both groups.
The central conclusion of this study was that underlying contextual processes are critical to enhancing the adaptive capacity of SMEs. These processes include: the social relationships between SMEs and support organisations; the relationships within support organisations themselves; the agency of SMEs to direct resources toward building resilience into business continuity; SMEs’ perceptions of climate risks; and power struggles between support organisations. This study suggested that the success of efforts to build the adaptive capacity of SMEs to future climate and related stresses will depend on how these underlying processes are addressed.
Client: National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF)
Researchers: Natasha Kuruppu, Pierre Mukheibir, Janina Murta, Anna Gero, Tim Brennan, Joanne Chong
