Session Description
Climate adaptation is not constrained by knowing what to do. It is constrained by knowing who benefits, who bears the cost, and when we invest. Environmental and social impact assessment and adaptation have become increasingly sophisticated. Yet a critical gap remains between understanding impacts, selecting pathways, and implementing adaptive actions.
The session offers a new framework for moving from evidence to implementation. It proposes an expanded role for impact assessment that extends impact assessment through a transparent sequence: impacts → benefits → beneficiaries → contributors → investment timing → funding mechanisms → implementation.
Drawing on recent research in Aotearoa/NZ on flood resilience, adaptive pathways and equitable funding, the session demonstrates how different pathways generate different combinations of public, private, environmental, cultural and intergenerational benefits—and how these evolve over time.
Decisions made today may create benefits for decades, while delays can increase costs, reduce future options and transfer risks and financial burdens to future generations. The framework combines benefit quantification, stakeholder analysis and Social Return on Investment (SROI) with funding principles including beneficiary-pays, public-pays, ability-to-pay and exacerbator-pays to support more transparent allocation of adaptation costs and financing.
Session Summary
Impact assessment should extend beyond identifying impacts to determining who benefits, who contributes, when investment is needed, and how climate adaptation can be financed across changing generations and adaptive pathways.
Session Chair
Peter Cochrane
Tonkin & Taylor
New Zealand