Climate Adaptation Toolkit - the experience of Wales
Categories: Action Line 1: Surveillance and monitoring, Action Line 2: Evidence-based policy strategy and capacity building, Climate-related emergency preparedness and management, Climate-smart workforce, Climate-transformative leadership and governance, Health systems wide resilience
Country: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Organizations: Welsh Government
The intervention
Wales has adopted a systematic, sector-wide approach to climate adaptation planning to protect public health and ensure continuity of care during extreme weather events. Through the Climate Adaptation Accelerator Programme (2025-2026), all 13 NHS organisations are developing climate risk assessments and adaptation plans using the Climate Adaptation Toolkit. The Programme builds capacity by training Climate Preparedness Leads through online workshops and e-learning modules on climate risk and adaptive measures. It fosters collaboration, shared learning, and leadership across health and social care, establishing a foundation for consistent, evidence-based adaptation across the Welsh NHS.
Success factors
The focus on building climate skills in the design has been crucial to enable the guidance to be used effectively and adaptation planning being progressed across the sector. For implementation, collaboration and communication has contributed a key part to its success. Designing the intervention with the practitioners ensured buy-in. Providing clear communications around the purpose and direction of the programme clarified understanding of what was required. Taking a systematic approach over a set period of time prompted collaborations to emerge driven by the practitioners. This has enabled significant progress to emerge across the sector on developing their risk assessments and plans as well as identifying potential improvements to systems. Adaptation actions have also emerged across organisations enabling the sharing of best practice.
Recommendations
The experience in Wales highlights the importance of leadership and ensuring early and continued user involvement from project design to delivery. Replication requires investment on capacity development of practitioners who will then use the guidance and toolkits that will inform adaptation planning. Providing clear leadership and communication to encourage and build knowledge and confidence amongst implementors and stakeholders is crucial. Lastly, designing a systematic, sector-wide approach rather than ad hoc initiatives accelerates adaptation while building long-term capacity.
Key resources
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