New discussion paper: could climate adaptation be the movement's missing mobiliser?

Retrofit Balsall Heath - neighbours attending a housing protest march campaigning for retrofitting and better housing standards. Available here.

We've just published the second in our series of discussion papers exploring where the climate movement might focus its energy and resources.

This one, co-authored with Rupert Read of the Climate Majority Project, asks whether climate adaptation - long treated as a secondary concern by campaigners - might in fact be the movement's most powerful untapped tool for building a broad-based, politically potent constituency.

The paper draws on cases like Retrofit Balsall Heath, where a coalition of mosques, churches, and community trusts has retrofitted 650 homes in a lower-income Birmingham neighbourhood, and Greener Henley, where outrage about sewage in the Thames has grown into a town-wide climate movement spanning schools, rowing clubs, and local businesses. In both cases, climate understanding emerged from the adaptation work - not the other way round.

The paper also addresses the tensions honestly: the risk that talking about adaptation signals defeat, and how to avoid the maladaptations that would make things worse. The question is not whether we adapt, but how - and whether adaptation becomes a force for justice and solidarity, or a scramble in which the most vulnerable are left behind.

We'd love to know what you think.

👉 Read the full paper here

All the very best,

The Social Change Lab team