The Towards a Resilient Sydney project: from Collective Assessment to Strategic Frameworks

At SOAC 2013, we presented on the Towards a Resilient Sydney (TARS) project, a partnership between the NSW environment and planning agencies to assess the regional vulnerability of government services to climate change and identify responses and opportunities to adapt (Lee et al 2013). Now two years later we reflect on the results of this participatory learning process, which engaged over 270 government participants, from 31 Metropolitan Local Government Areas, 37 State agencies and 7 Commonwealth agencies. We will report on how the process sought to improve resilience and minimise impacts in local communities by: building adaptive capacity; influencing decision making; and promoting collective actions. The paper explores key questions of how qualitative evidence and collective outputs are interpreted and implemented, and how strategic frameworks can account for and foster “on ground” adaptation action.