Supported by our partner Westcountry Rivers Trust (WRT), our demonstrator focusing on the West Country Region in UK organized last year their series of workshop to co-construct adaptation pathways. They were the first demonstrator implementing the methodology developed in the Playbook on Transformational Adaptation through three online workshops. The main climate change hazards identified by the participants and the partners for the West Country region are:

  • Extreme storm events, notably heavy rainfall,
  • Droughts with decrease in river flow,
  • Heat waves and temperature rise in general.

This would entail great impacts notably in the agricultural sector but also lead to great challenges for the regions and its rivers’ catchments in general. The potential impacts on biodiversity in these areas are also concerning.

From the analysis of the context, exposure, risks and vulnerability of the region, participants brainstormed on the risks chain which focus on the three main topic identified: agriculture, biodiversity and water management.

Figure 1. Example of risk chain output on Agriculture

Following the Playbook methodology, participants then worked on identifying the main risks  and assessed different related impacts on each of sectors previously identified. They therefore focused on soil degradation/damage, degradation of water quality and scarcity, and eventually on the ecosystem function collapse.

Starting from these critical thresholds, stakeholders were invited in a third and last sessions to share their vision of the region on the long-term and find solutions in line with it, as a first step towards transformative adaptation pathways. Quantified objectives have been set and solutions listed and prioritized to answer the identified risks while contributing to reach the objectives. This process was repeated for each of the three sectors identified to provide an overview as illustrated in the figure below.

Figure 3. Overview of the listed solutions for water management

Learn more about the context and solutions TransformAr aim to deploy in our demonstrator in the dedicated page: Demonstrator #2 – West Country region, UK