This briefing discusses what can be done to build climate resilience at a local level in a way that also benefits health.

Working together for change

The Adaptation Scotland programme worked with Public Health Scotland (PHS) and the Improvement Service to develop this introductory briefing on working together to build climate-resilient, healthy and equitable places.

This resource is for local government and partners such as Health Boards, Community Planning Partnerships, and local organisations. It sets out how our changing climate can affect health and health inequalities both directly, and indirectly through impacts on housing, transport, and access to goods and services, which are the building blocks of good health.

People who are socially and economically disadvantaged often experience significantly poorer health and are more vulnerable to climate impacts. These inequalities are underpinned by poverty, lack of power and the unequal distribution of resources and assets in the community.

The briefing discusses what can be done to take a preventative approach to building climate resilience at a local level in a way that also benefits health. It starts with understanding how the challenges are interconnected, adopting a whole system approach and working together to identify actions that address the underlying causes. The resource includes a range of tools and case studies to support this.

Climate resilient infrastructure and construction

The Adaptation Scotland and Climate Ready Clyde programmes have collaborated to produce a toolkit for assessing and addressing risks in the development of infrastructure, built environment and regeneration projects. The guidance covers early screening to full risk assessments and adaptation planning, in a way which is aligned to the processes required by the majority of international financing and funding institutions, to reduce the barriers to successfully financing adaptation projects.

The toolkit outlines the changing financial and regulatory contexts for project development. It provides practical tools to allow organisations to consider risks alongside the development of business cases and delivery of projects. It also includes four project examples from Glasgow City Region which are embracing this approach. The toolkit is flexible and designed to be customised to fit individual organisation’s or area’s own unique context.

The guide has been informed by best practice approaches, including the Climate Change Committee’s UK Climate Change Risk Assessment and the ISO14091 Standard on climate change adaptation and risk assessment.

This toolkit can be used along with editable versions of the risk assessment and adaptation planning templates available to download below.

Download workbook templates

Strategic Risk Assessments

The Adaptation Scotland programme has developed guidance and tools to support organisations in undertaking climate change risk assessments. A strategic climate risk assessment is used to evaluate climate risks across your organisation or for key services / asset portfolios. This strategic ‘scan’ helps to understand the changing likelihood and consequence of a range of potential risks for your organisation. It enables you to prioritise climate risks, allowing you to better focus limited resources.

The guide has been informed by best practice approaches, including the Climate Change Committee’s UK Climate Change Risk Assessment and the ISO14091 Standard on climate change adaptation and risk assessment.

‘Connecting climate risk and strategic priorities: Guide to strategic climate change risk assessments’ can be used along with editable versions of the risk assessment templates in the accompanying Excel spreadsheet.

John Burnside is the Environment & Sustainability Manager with NHS Highland. He sets out below how NHS Highland have piloted a climate change risk assessment toolkit across their operations and estate.

NHS Highland has responsibility for over 230 buildings spread across an area equivalent to the size of Belgium. Many of the communities that we service are remote and rural, which creates particular challenges when thinking about climate risk. To ensure that we are able to provide high quality health services to the diverse communities in the Highlands, we are piloting a climate change risk assessment toolkit. The initial approach to assessing climate risks was developed in collaboration with NHS National Services Scotland as part of a cross sector Risk Assessment Working Group, which brought together Scottish Water, Aberdeen City Council and Historic Environment Scotland and was facilitated by Adaptation Scotland. An internal NHS working group was then established to oversee the development of the risk assessment tool, ensuring that it is user friendly for Health Boards.

At NHS Highland, we were the first Board to use the risk assessment tool to undertake a comprehensive regional assessment of current and future climate risk to health care facilities. SEPA data on flood risk and a high level Climate Change Impact Assessment for NHS Highland were used to inform the process. We also undertook internal workshops to understand how past extreme weather impacted on the delivery of healthcare services across our Estate. Over the past year, the risk assessment toolkit has been tested and reviewed by our estate managers. Their practical insights and feedback have helped us to develop an easy to use resource that can be applied to our main regional hospitals and smaller community health centres. We have also spent time building internal capacity around climate change risk and adaptation.

Our estate is managed to a 12 month maintenance cycle, and staff are used to thinking about their roles their workplaces within this 12 month context. This can make it difficult to think about long term challenges of climate change in their day to day jobs. As we roll out the climate change risk assessment toolkit, we’ll be working with staff on site to ensure that climate risk and adaptation are well understood, and adaptation is integrated into the way we manage our health care facilities.

Once we have collected information on the climate risks relating to the estate, these will be incorporated into site-based risk registers, which will feed into our corporate risk register and strategic risk register.

Building a strong evidence base for climate risk and embedding it into our risk registers will give us a clear understanding of the long term challenges and opportunities of maintaining healthcare facilities across our estate.

Scottish Canals are responsible for managing over 4100 assets that comprise our five Scottish canals, as well as the bridges, buildings, locks, water supply reservoirs and landmarks like the Falkirk Wheel and the Kelpies that make up Scotland’s inland waterways network. Much of this 140-mile network is inland, with only 6 coastal connections that are vulnerable to rising sea levels. The rest of the network is reasonably resilient to climate impacts in the short term, and can even contribute to resilience more broadly through initiatives such as the Glasgow Smart Canal Project. The Smart Canal is helping to manage flood risk and move water resources during projected hotter and drier summers.

Each one of its diverse assets has unique management and maintenance challenges which must be addressed to ensure that they remain safe and available for the millions of visitors who use the network each year. In the long term climate change will alter the way the assets deteriorate, and Scottish Canals’ Asset Management Strategy ensures that when making management decisions, climate impacts are taken into consideration, such as potential changes in rainfall, temperature and extreme weather that will contribute to the deterioration of assets.

To respond to uncertainty around how climate change will interact with its assets in the long term, Scottish Canals have developed a flexible planning approach to manage its assets in a way that is responsive to emerging risks. The Asset Management Strategy outlines how they will manage their priorities until 2030 to ensure the safety and long term sustainability of their assets. This long-term strategic direction is delivered through a 3 year forward looking Asset Management Plan that is reviewed and updated on an annual basis. This flexible management cycle allows Scottish Canals to take new and emerging risks into account, including those related to climate change.

Our flexible, risk-based approach to asset management is agile and responsive to direct and indirect climate impacts, allowing us to prioritise and plan a work programme that keeps Scotland’s canals safe and productive

Peter Robinson

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Video of Scottish Canals case study

The Adaptation Capability Framework identifies four capabilities that every public organisation will need to adapt to climate change, providing step by step tasks to guide your adaptation journey.

Public Sector Climate Adaptation Capability Framework Handbook

This handbook is an introduction to climate change adaptation for Scotland’s public sector. It provides an overview of the Climate Adaptation Capability Framework, which identifies four capabilities for a climate ready public sector. This booklet should be used alongside online Supporting Guidance which contains additional information about each task in the Framework.

New for 2025, the Handbook provides an overview of how the updated Public Sector Climate Adaptation Capability Framework can be used by any public sector organisation in Scotland to accelerate action on adaptation. It introduces the Framework, and outlines the four capabilities that an organisation will need to develop to progress adaptation.

Since publication of the first version of the Framework in 2019, more than 60 organisations have used the Framework to build their capabilities and benchmark their progress. We are proud that the Framework won the 2020 IEMA Sustainability Impact Award for Climate Resilience and Adaptation, and has gone on to inspire many similar adaptation capability approaches.

Adapting to climate change is not a standalone challenge – the actions that we take to adapt should deliver many benefits for society including addressing inequalities, supporting sustainable economic growth and nurturing a healthy natural environment. The Framework supports organisations to consider how adaptation support progress against wider societal outcomes and maximise co-benefits.

The public sector have a crucial leadership role to play in driving this response for a more climate resilient Scotland.

Gillian Martin MSP, Acting Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Energy

Starter Pack

Organisations getting started on adaptation may wish to start off by viewing the starter pack. The Starter Pack provides detailed guidance on the first stage tasks of the Framework. 

It is for professionals with limited prior knowledge of adaptation or for those working in organisations where adaptation work is in the very early stages.

It will also be useful for organisations that have progressed adaptation, to review and reflect on any steps they may need to revisit. Tasks and accompanying templates are provided to guide the initial adaptation actions needed to progress to the rest of the Adaptation Capability Framework.

An updated version of the Starter Pack will be published in March 2025, but the existing resource will still provide you with clear and actionable guidance on taking your first steps towards adaptation action in your organisation.

Benchmarking tool

New for 2025, the updated Public Sector Climate Adaptation Benchmarking Tool helps illustrate an organisation’s adaptation journey along the Public Sector Climate Adaptation Capability Framework. It should be used to provide a baseline assessment of your organisation’s current adaptation capabilities and how their development progresses over time. It highlights which capability areas the organisation is excelling at and others where more work may be needed. It can aid communication and engagement to show what your organisation is aiming for and the steps needed to get there.

The Benchmarking Tool aims to assess the adaptation progress of an organisation, not an individual employee, team or department. The tool, therefore, may need to be completed by a small group of colleagues initially, and then finalised through discussions with management and/or different departments.

This updated version of the tool aligns with the updated version of the Public Sector Climate Adaptation Capability Framework tasks, and also includes enhanced reporting features. It has also been optimised for screen readers, and has both red-amber-green and blue-scale colour options.

Public sector

The public sector has a crucial role to play in enabling Scotland to adapt to climate change. Taking a strong, proactive approach will ensure that vital public assets, infrastructure and services are fit for current and future generations and able to deliver positive outcomes across society.

Adaptation Capability Framework

The Climate Adaptation Capability Framework identifies four capabilities that every public sector organisation will need to adapt to climate change, providing step by step tasks to guide your adaptation journey.

Adaptation Capability Framework

Public Sector Climate Adaptation Network

The public sector has a crucial role to play in enabling Scotland to adapt to climate change. The Network is now comprised of over 60 public bodies who work together to benchmark their progress and identify and share learning on climate change adaptation.

PUBLIC SECTOR CLIMATE ADAPTATION NETWORK

An episode of Fife College’s CampusCast podcast

Verture’s Head of Climate Ready Leadership, Jonny Casey, joined the Fife College’s CampusCast podcast in 2024 to introduce listeners to climate adaptation. Jonny spoke with the hosts Hayley and Sharrell about the work the Adaptation Scotland programme has done with Fife College to support the integratation of climate change adaptation actions and design elements into its new Dunfermline Learning Campus.

Click below to listen and learn more about what climate adaptation is, how we can collaborate for action, and what you can do in your place to adapt: