Climate Resilience Week Reflections - That's a Wrap!

Climate Resilience Week Reflections - That's a Wrap!

Following an inspirational week of activity, we reflect on the valuable discussions and insights shared throughout our Climate Resilience Week. Read on to hear more from Climate Resilience Transformation Lead, Phil Emonson, as he delves deeper into the key outputs from the week’s activities and explores the next steps to enhancing our climate resilience efforts.

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Reflecting on Climate Resilience Week

Throughout the third week of September, teams across JBA paused to consider the topic of “resilience to the impacts of climate change."

Climate Resilience Week aimed to share and celebrate the steps being made towards the whole of society's resilience to climate change, enabling future partnerships, and driving innovation and inspiration. 

Before Climate Resilience Week began, JBA Director Steve Maslen considered why we should bother celebrating “just another awareness week”. As he highlighted, the benefit, as we saw it, was to focus attention on the need for resilience to climate change. Which is central to all we do here at JBA. We also believe in its importance to the clients we work with, those organisations we partner and collaborate with, and indeed wider society. 

With colleagues from across JBA, I spent several months planning Climate Resilience Week, and there was one other important objective I wanted to achieve…to build momentum.

As we wrap up and reflect on an exciting, inspirational and busy week of activities, recent flooding across Central England and the impact it has had on homes, road and rail underlines the importance of resilience.    
This week of activities alone won’t change approaches to climate policy, funding, cultural mindset or our language choices. But, by bringing colleagues together for lunchtime learning; by sharing the insights of our technical leads on energy and water resilience; by collating CPD material for our teams; and collaborating with clients and partners; we believe we have initiated the conversation. And that is a good place to start.

Creating a lasting impact

For me, stand-out items included hosting a workshop on the role of Social Value in climate resilience for our supply chain partners. I also enjoyed hearing about the success of our BioBlitz, recording species data at a local nature reserve, and our workshops with clients in Scotland and Peterborough - problem-solving some of the challenges presented by the latest policy and guidance. I was particularly inspired by our activities using the arts and supporting educational leaders in raising awareness of climate resilience.

We even launched a podcast!

All these activities will deliver a legacy. We must tap into this and deliver the benefits that we need to collectively realise. For me, Climate Resilience Week didn’t finish at 5pm on the 27th September. Climate Resilience Week was just the beginning. As they say, 'You have to throw a stone to get the pool to ripple'. 

Collaboration: the key to climate resilience

Above all else, there’s one word that serves as a golden thread to everything we have learnt: collaboration. At the heart of Climate Resilience Week was an emphasis on people coming together, to share and learn. The list of those organisations who participated is exhaustive, and I would like to thank them all for their active participation, enthusiasm and valuable insights. Whatever organisation you work for or sector you work in, I urge you to consider how, and with whom, you can collaborate to improve climate resilience for the people and communities around you.   

This collaboration and sharing of insights and ideas helped the participants across the week feel better able and more confident to talk about resilience and the challenges that lie ahead. For example, in Scotland we hosted a workshop for local authorities entitled “Stress testing Scottish Government’s Flood Resilience Strategy”, the outputs from which served to remind that as well as engaging with communities, funding and organisational change is needed to deliver resilience. 

Building an awareness of the risk from climate change is central to adopting a resilience-based approach, and one event in particular highlighted how adopting different approaches can help raise awareness amongst practitioners and communities. In partnership with the University of Hull we hosted a serious board game workshop for clients and partners based on their Flood Recovery Game. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with the in-person collaboration opportunities being a real highlight and key to unlocking various stages of the game.

Ultimately, by enhancing resilience to climate change we are seeking to achieve better and more integrated outcomes and benefits from our work to manage the risks from climate change. Climate Resilience Week gave us the opportunity to make new connections (internally and externally), reaffirm existing ones, and ask ourselves what we can do individually and collectively to enhance the pursuit for whole of society resilience.

Next steps in our climate resilience journey

There are more events planned. 

In late October we are hosting an evening with communities along the Exe Estuary in Devon to explore how the arts can engage the public in climate change. In late November, we are bringing together industry leaders and academics to explore the challenges and opportunities in building the whole of society's resilience. 

We will also be releasing new episodes of the ‘The Climate Resilience Podcast’ featuring deep-dive conversations with inspirational leaders about climate resilience. Each episode will explore what resilience to climate change is, who has important roles to play in its delivery and the challenges and opportunities that exist to delivering it. The first two episodes are now available via Spotify, Apple and Amazon, and you can listen and subscribe to the Podcast here.

Episode one explores what resilience to climate change is all about, with JBA’s Steve Thompsett and Jenny Broomby. In our second episode, we dive deeper into the process of change, and how effective change in organisations and society is necessary to embed climate resilience. This episode features Neil Wiseman from JBA and Harjit Lota from North Highland.

JBA Consulting Climate Resilience Week. Understanding the Need for Resilience to Flooding event – Peterborough. 24 September 2024. 
Picture by Simon Hadley/ www.simonhadley.co.uk

Wrapping up an inspiring week

To conclude, and wrap up what has been a super exciting week and a privilege to have steered, I will quote JBA Managing Director Marc Pinnell when he said:

"With our partners, clients and colleagues we sought to drive the conversation on resilience. If resilience is a whole society endeavour, this conversation is the starting point. But this is only a springboard, and we mustn’t stop here. Resilience to climate change requires our continued drive and we must all take up that challenge."

Want to know more? Contact Phil Emonson, Climate Resilience Transformation Lead
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