Highland Adapts brings communities, businesses, land managers and public sector together to facilitate transformational action towards a prosperous, climate-ready Highland.

The Highland Adapts partnership was formally established in 2021 when nine founding partner organisations committed to working together: Forestry and Land Scotland, NHS Highland, The Highland Council, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Changeworks, Verture, NatureScot, Highlands and Islands Climate Hub, Zero Waste Scotland.

These organisations agreed to distribute power throughout the partnership, recognising that diverse partners should be involved in Highland Adapts. Knowledge sharing and collaboration are key to everything that Highland Adapts does.

The objectives of Highland Adapts are to:

• develop a strong knowledge and evidence base, setting out the climate risks and opportunities that will affect the region
• facilitate information sharing through a range of resources
• identify opportunities to reduce and overcome these climate risks
• develop a shared adaptation strategy and suite of action plans
• support others to use plans to form the basis of projects and activities across the public sector, community, land management and business sector plans, strategies and investments
• support the public sector to embed climate change adaptation throughout their business
• support community climate change action

Highland Adapts is currently developing the first regional climate change risk and opportunity assessment for Highland, and has recently published a pioneering Economic Assessment of Climate Change Impacts.