Community Adaptation Resources
Adapting the Levels: supporting communities to develop a shared vision for climate adaptation on the Somerset Levels and Moors, and beyond.
Adapting to the impacts of a climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time, requiring involvement and collaboration across society.
Communities should have an important role in planning and implementing adaptation actions. They have vital local knowledge, and diverse experiences and ideas that can help shape how Somerset prepares for and responds to our changing world.
To help communities across the Levels and Moors, and beyond, to take action and ensure a better future for their local areas, the Adapting the Levels project team developed a variety of climate adaptation resources.
Highlighted within these resources are Nature-based Solutions. These actions harness the power of nature to address climate adaptation challenges, and can provide multiple other benefits, from climate mitigation, to providing habitats for wildlife and improving the health and wellbeing of communities.
RESOURCES:
Climate Adaptation Toolkit
Learn how your community can adapt to climate change with our toolkit. We filled the toolkit with information and resources to help you take positive action in your community.
The Climate Adaptation Toolkit includes:
information about the need for climate adaptation
actions you and your community can take to adapt
advice on funding sources, consents and permits
You can also download additional resources we have produced, to help you turn the actions you are passionate about into a climate adaptation plan tailored to your community:
Climate Adaptation Training presentation
Do you want to learn more about adaptation and how you can create an adaptation plan with your community?
We have created a presentation to explain:
What climate adaptation means
Why we need to adapt to climate change (and not just limit greenhouse gases)
Future climate projections for Somerset
Actions that communities can take to adapt, using our toolkit
Give this video a watch, or organise a meeting with your community, and play this video before you have a discussion about how you could adapt in your local area.
Local climate animations
Currently, the way most land is managed in the Somerset Levels and Moors is both contributing to climate change (by releasing greenhouse gases like methane and CO2) and making us more vulnerable to its impacts.
But, by harnessing the power of nature and making a few changes to how we manage land, the Levels and Moors can deliver important solutions that reduce emissions and help us adapt.
Working with data visualisation experts Real World Visuals, we’ve created animations that explore two of the key climate issues in the region.
“Somerset’s Peat” reveals the invisible consequences of keeping our peat soils dry; 300,000 tonnes of CO2e leaking into the atmosphere every year. This is contributing to climate change, which is increasing the risk of floods, droughts and wildfires in Somerset.
However, if we raise the water levels in the peat, and stop digging it up for compost, we can keep the carbon stored in the soil, helping us tackle and adapt to climate change.
“Floodplain Connections” explores how reconnecting stretches of a river to the floodplain, in a controlled way, can reduce the risk of communities being flooded and help us adapt to other climate risks like droughts and wildfires.
“The Somerset Levels are an ever-changing, largely man-made landscape, and what we see today is a snapshot in its long history. Over the millennia, from primitive times, those who have lived in this unique place, who know how to read its nature and who respect, understand and deeply value it, have learnt how to live alongside the challenges that come with calling this landscape home. The changing climate now requires these same people of the Somerset Levels to adapt again in order to create a new vision for a climate resilient future.”
Changing Climate, Changing Business:
Climate change is happening now in the South West and we are already vulnerable to extreme weather. We need to plan for both current and future vulnerability. This film highlights the impact of climate change on tourism businesses across South West England and the steps they are taking to combat its effects.