Our Vision and How We Live Up To It
PlanAdapt’s mission is to “work with and for people that struggle with the impacts of climate change and climate injustice, particularly in the Global South”.
We aim to achieve this by bringing together people, who are passionate and knowledgeable about innovative and effective ways to address future climate problems (i.e. increased impacts by hurricanes, droughts, floods, sea-level rise etc.) and who are keen to learn, share and collaborate. We provide interactive formats that allow our collaborators and fellows to collectively (a) pursue and create work opportunities, (b) develop new, innovative, equitable and just approaches to climate risk management and nature-based solutions and (c) learn and exchange in order to spread the ‘word’ and the ‘knowledge’ about possible solutions. By doing so, we aim to overcome constraints and limitations that we have encountered in other organisations that we previously worked for. The ambition is international in scope and focuses on the ‘how’ we operate apart from the ‘what’ we do (see our expertise and our projects).
Who We Are?
- passionate movers and shapers in our Coordination Hub that lay the groundwork to shape the formats that others use;
- PlanAdapt Fellows ellows that use the Climate Co-Adaptation Lab to collectively (a) pursue work opportunities and (b) develop new, innovative, equitable and just approaches to climate risk management and nature-based solutions;
- professionals that work as project staff in our transdisciplinary projects and initiatives advancing (a) action-oriented research; (b) effective advisory services; (c) impactful capacity development, learning and training and (d) knowledge brokering to walk the ‘last mile’ of knowledge-based services; and
- a global network of like-minded researchers, experts and advisors.
PlanAdapt has grown as a grassroots and informal network of collaborators since 2017. Then in late 2019, PlanAdapt was founded as an organisation to consolidate, support and strategically grow the network. We are like-minded professionals who share the same underlying principles that frame our doing:
- Social inclusiveness / leaving no one behind
- Nature-based / ’using ecosystems to better adapt’
- Economically just outcomes
- Who participates, who decides, who benefits – Process matters
- Who provides a service/ advice
Find more info about how we operate and why we do what we do (see our expertise and our projects).
What We Have Observed and How We Aim to Improve It
Knowledge about how to adapt best to future climate risk is still not reaching the people and the areas where it is most needed.
Adaptation science is still a young emergent scientific discipline and knowledge is hidden and often hard to decipher. Advisory services are often provided by external advisors ‘flown in and out’.
Professional education and training, as well as university education, is confined primarily to the Global North, and very limited in climate-sensitive countries, cities and communities in the Global South. We aim to enhance knowledge generation and transfer, develop capacities and skills to walk the ‘last mile’.
How We Grow and Shape Our Organisation
PlanAdapt grows as a bottom-up open organisation, shaped and even co-owned by Collaborators and Fellows. Everyone decides for themselves about the focus of the engagement – professional growth; collective learning; solutions to real-world problems. We earn, learn and grow together! We grow our impact by growing our 
network and the number of fellows (collaborating at Climate Co-Adaptation Lab). We integrate principles introduced by holacracy, sociocracy 3.0 and reinventing organisations thinking, in order to shape truly collaborative and participatory organisational structures and workflows. Learn more about insights that Fellows have shared about the Climate Co-Adaptation Lab.
