https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5492-2217
Figures
Abstract
Clear adaptation outcomes are essential for driving climate action and assessing progress. However, developing a shared vision of desirable adaptation outcomes and the steps to achieve them requires a shared understanding of what constitutes a well-adapted place and what resources are needed to enable communities to create and implement such visions. The third Scottish National Adaptation Plan (SNAP3) has “communities creating climate resilient places” as a key outcome. Our research draws upon a collaborative workshop that used storytelling techniques to co-produce adaptation visions: developing a shared narrative and identifying ‘turning points’ to put it into practice. Participants included community groups, public sector, and government officials. Key turning points included shifts in governance structures toward local communities inclusion in developing adaptation visions, consistent knowledge-sharing across scales via dedicated platforms/procedures, and enhanced communication and engagement around adaptation narratives at the local level. Unless these measures are implemented, communities will struggle to create the climate-resilient places envisioned in SNAP3. Our findings indicate that local adaptation targets are perceived as potentially useful drivers of adaptation action, but with limitations to their effectiveness: i.e., adaptation targets risk becoming siloed and failing to integrate broader resilience or community priorities. Our research highlights the positive and negative narratives around local adaptation targets, underscoring the need for continuous monitoring and a cautious, place-based approach to their implementation.
Citation: Yule EL, Avi-Lorie J, Candea P, Porter J, Vantaggiato F (2026) Turning points in climate change adaptation: Storytelling and co-producing visions and pathways for creating well-adapted places. PLOS Clim 5(9): e0001056. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0001056
Editor: Thomas Thaler, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, AUSTRIA
Received: January 20, 2026; Accepted: August 14, 2026; Published: September 21, 2026
Copyright: © 2026 Yule et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Data Availability: Coding and thematic analysis themes are provided as supporting information. This, along with the outline of the methodology used, will allow the study to be replicated with other groups of workshop participants.
Funding: This research paper was supported by a grant from Kings College London AHRC Impact Accelerator Fund 1123357 (IAA Arts & Humanities Accelerator fund) to EY, JP and FV. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
1. Introduction
The need to adapt to the impacts of climate change has become inescapable as the frequency and intensity of many extreme weather events continue to increase [1]. Floods, heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, and storms pose a significant risk to lives, livelihoods, and economies. In addition, adaptation is required to respond to slower-onset changes including rising temperatures and sea-level rise. Therefore, building adaptive capacity and community resilience is essential. Yet adaptation is more than a technical challenge about how to reduce climate change risks and design resilient infrastructure. Adaptation is a deeply social and political process that requires communities, governments, and businesses to agree on what constitutes a resilient, well-adapted place and to work collaboratively toward that vision [2,3].
Co-production has been widely discussed as an effective way to design and implement local adaptation strategies by bringing together diverse forms of knowledge, values, and expertise to form place-based responses [4–7]. Such thinking sits in opposition to top-down, technocratic approaches that may limit community involvement by excluding or involving communities too late in the process [8,9]. By including communities in the shaping of adaptation goals and actions, it is argued that co-production can increase the relevance and implementation of adaptation measures [4,5,7,10]. Although the value of co-production is recognised, there remains a notable lack of research on the practicalities of co-producing adaptation solutions.
A key challenge with co-production is how to balance the unequal power relations between communities, stakeholders, and interested parties whose voices are heard and who can privilege particular ways of knowing and envisioning over others [5]. We propose storytelling as a method to tackle those concerns. In co-production of adaptation visions [11], storytelling can help introduce a level playing field where different viewpoints are valued, without letting technical knowledge determine what climate change adaptation is or how it should be done [12–14]. Adaptation efforts can benefit from recognising the multiplicity of stories within communities - what might be termed polyvocal storytelling [15]. Instead of a single, overarching narrative disconnected from the lived experiences of the community, with storytelling, multiple voices can co-exist, reflecting the diverse ways individuals and communities experience and respond to climate change [16]. This is crucial for adaptation where place-based solutions are needed as opposed to a one-size-fits-all approach [17].
In this paper, we document a co-production process where storytelling was used to define visions of well-adapted communities in Scotland. Through a facilitated storytelling technique, participants representing local communities, public sector organisations, and government bodies took part in an online workshop where they articulated their visions of a well-adapted place, identified what was needed to achieve those visions, and reflected on the extent to which adaptation targets help or hinder progress towards those visions. The storytelling workshop aimed: first, to understand participants’ visions of what a well-adapted place might look like; and second, to explore how monitoring and evaluation approaches might contribute to achieving such visions. Our research contributes to debates on the role of co-production, storytelling methods, and adaptation targets, and argues that visions of a well-adapted place are multi-faceted and must not be prescriptive a priori, or they risk jeopardising local involvement.
1.1. The need for (and drivers of) well-adapted places in Scotland
Scotland’s ten warmest years on record have all happened since 1997, with the average temperature rising by 1°C between 2015–2024 compared to 1961–1990 [18]. Heatwaves and droughts are expected to increase in frequency, whilst flood risk remains a persistent concern [18]. Despite an awareness of these risks, limited progress has been made towards implementing and monitoring adaptation action [19].
Adaptation aims to minimise the negative impacts of climate change, which arise from the interplay of hazards, exposure, and vulnerability, whilst also taking advantage of any opportunities presented [1]. Climate change adaptation involves modifying human systems in response to anticipated or existing extreme events, including heatwaves and floods. This can include a range of actions such as large infrastructure projects including flood alleviation schemes and building community knowledge and capabilities around climate change adaptation.
To identify climate change risks, and prioritise responses to those risks, a Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) is performed every five years under the UK Climate Change Act 2008. Following this, a Scottish National Adaptation Plan is produced that sets out what adaptation actions will be taken to support local communities, the public sector, businesses and the natural environment, as part of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 [20]. The third Scottish National Adaptation Plan (SNAP3) sets out adaptation outcomes from 2024 to 2029 [20]. A long-term goal of SNAP3 is “Communities are creating climate-resilient, healthy and equitable places” (ibid). In SNAP3, “place” refers to the specific local contexts in which climate impacts are experienced. Places can be defined for a variety of spatial units, including towns, neighbourhoods, coastal communities, rural regions, or urban districts, each with different social, environmental, and infrastructural characteristics. This frames “place” as a socio-spatial system rather than a particular geographical location. Additionally, it aligns closely with the Scottish Place Principle, which defines “place” as “where people, location and resources combine to create a sense of identity and purpose,” [21] and emphasises that places are shaped by how services, assets and investment are coordinated and used. This approach builds on the “Principles for Locally Led Adaptation” developed by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the World Resources Institute (WRI), which seek to ensure that adaptation is led by local communities (ibid). The goal of creating a climate-resilient place, therefore, requires a shared understanding and vision of what constitutes a well-adapted place, and in turn, what is required to realise that vision.
1.2. Envisioning a well-adapted place
Defining what constitutes a well-adapted place is often challenging. Conceptual ambiguities exist over what adaptation looks like and the extent to which one type of adaptation impacts another. In addition, how to identify and implement actions can be challenging when adaptation is place-based and where solutions may work in one location but not in another [17]. The politics over what to adapt, how to adapt, who decides, whose knowledge is prioritised, and who benefits (or loses out) [22] must be considered. Despite these challenges, it is crucial to define and envision what a well-adapted place is via the use of narratives to determine how we understand and practice adaptation: where funding should be directed, which policies should be enacted, how success will be assessed, and to understand who is responsible and why [23]. We argue for a narrative, storytelling approach to envisioning climate change adaptation in a context of co-production. Thus far, narratives have often been used for the purposes of science communication on climate change and the importance of adaptation [13]. While recognising the value of these efforts, we set ourselves a different task, closer to what Pelling et al. call Normative Future Visioning: a process where communities start from desired futures rather than projected risks and use their imagination and their knowledge of their local context to envision those shared futures [11]. We propose to achieve a form of collective visioning using storytelling techniques, where storytelling is used not solely as a communication device but as a collaborative process through which participants co-produce visions of alternative futures [24]. The emphasis on local knowledge is a common theme in the adaptation literature [25] and treats communities as active agents in adaptation planning rather than bearers of risks only. Storytelling has been shown to enhance engagement and understanding, in the context of climate change by making scientific information more relatable and therefore accessible, while shifting from problem or risk-focused framings to more action-oriented ones [12,14]. As such, facilitated storytelling techniques provide a structured yet open-ended space in which diverse knowledges, experiences and values can be articulated and integrated into collective visions of adaptation.
Reid et al. highlight that climate change adaptation should be community-led, participatory, and place-based, integrating local priorities and knowledge with scientific insights to be useful [26]. Well-adapted places should be created by those affected and with local knowledge of the area in which they are to serve. Co-production of adaptation knowledge is often cited as a way to reduce maladaptation by ensuring climate actions meet the needs of the place in which they are implemented [27–31]. Kvamsås, et al., argue that local knowledge is crucial to developing more contextual and relevant knowledge to support adaptation, and can help to overcome fragmentation and promote holistic thinking [28].
For this research, “co-production” is defined as an inclusive process wherein different actors, such as policymakers, experts and communities, work together to shape a collective outcome, which often reflects the lived experiences, situated knowledge, and social values of those involved [32,33]. As Howarth et al. explain, the ‘co’ in ‘co-production’ involves bringing together actors from a diversity of disciplines, backgrounds, and knowledges to share different perspectives to co-create solutions in a process of horizontal exchange in which no one form of knowledge is superior to another [4,34–36]. Despite this, local knowledge is often used only when it is observed to align with established scientific evidence [37].
A major concern in adaptation planning and action is that technical expertise is privileged over lived experiences. Flyvbjerg argues that modern governance often underestimates risks and overestimates benefits by prioritising economic, technological, and political drivers over local knowledge [38]. This imbalance reflects how different forms of knowledge are valued. While technical expertise such as flood models can inform decision-making [39,40] so too can lived experiences highlight the opportunities and challenges of developing flood resilience [4,7]. Adaptation planning often operates within a particular techno-scientific narrative structure that forecloses opportunities for communities to provide their input [23]. However, excluding local knowledge and lived experiences not only questions the institutional-political commitment to co-production, but also ignores key insights that can inform place-based solutions.
Storytelling has been argued as a method that can embrace different ways of knowing [15,23] and help structure co-production. By framing experiences, observations, and local knowledge as narratives, stakeholders can communicate their perspectives in ways that are accessible, relatable, and legible across institutional and cultural boundaries. Storytelling not only surfaces different forms of knowledge but also creates a shared space for dialogue, allowing for negotiation of meanings, priorities and trade-offs [41].
Climate change adaptation efforts can benefit from recognising the multiplicity of stories within communities - what might be termed polyvocal storytelling. Instead of a single, overarching narrative and vision imposed by institutions, multiple voices co-exist, reflecting the diverse ways individuals and communities experience and respond to climate change. Willis expands on this by drawing from Aristotle’s concept of phronesis—practical wisdom rooted in lived experience. Unlike technical rationality, which seeks universal, rule-based solutions, phronesis is context-dependent and shaped by individual and collective experiences. This distinction is crucial if adaptation is to be truly place-based [15,17].
1.3. Tracking progress towards a well-adapted place
To assess progress towards a well-adapted place, the monitoring and evaluation of adaptation actions is essential. This can help identify which adaptation actions are most effective, in which places, and why. Targets can also help coordinate action and introduce accountability. However, a key gap in adaptation science is what “effective” adaptation progress means and how it can be measured [22,31,42,43]. The creation of adaptation targets can be challenging as the place-based nature of adaptation opens up debates about how they should be designed and by whom [43].
Global frameworks for monitoring and evaluating adaptation progress exist, including the UN’s Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience (UAE Framework) and national frameworks for monitoring adaptation [44–46], but gaps exist over the implementation of such systems at a local level [47,48]. Understanding and tracking adaptation requires an understanding of how actions translate from the national to the local level and vice-versa and how such actions should or could be shared and communicated across scales [49,50]. Global and national adaptation targets are only useful when they can be tailored and utilised for local implementation as adaptation is context-specific and shaped by local priorities and constraints [3,51].
Alongside SNAP3, a monitoring and evaluation framework was published by the Scottish Government to measure progress [52]. To track SNAP3’s outcomes, indicators were developed to capture the progress of communities towards the creation of climate-resilient places, including the level of community awareness of climate change, local climate action, and the number of people who use flood warning services [52]. Within the SNAP3 monitoring and evaluation framework, an “outcome” refers to the longer-term change being sought, an “indicator” is a measurable metric used to assess progress towards that outcome, and a “target” refers to a specific level or threshold set for each indicator over a defined period. This structure seeks to improve the clarity and accountability of adaptation monitoring by linking actions to measurable results. Additionally, in the UK Climate Change Committee’s Progress in Scotland report that was published ahead of SNAP3, it was recommended that quantified adaptation targets were put in place to ensure a clear link between activities and outcomes [19]. This raises questions about the extent to which national-scale targets can reflect local level realities and whether locally defined targets are more effective in achieving visions of well-adapted places.
1.4. Research questions
A key outcome of the Scottish National Adaptation Plan (SNAP3) is for communities to create climate-resilient, healthy and equitable places [20]. To measure progress against this outcome, a shared understanding of what constitutes a climate-resilient, well-adapted place between communities and decision-makers is required. In other words, what does a “climate-resilient” place look like for both communities and policymakers? And what are the key changes required to enable communities to create those visions of resilient, well-adapted places?
In storytelling frameworks including speculative fiction, “turning points” or points of change refer to events that characters must navigate and go through. This is different from Theory of Change [11], which aims to identify the pathways (i.e., who, what, how, where and when) needed for policy change; rather, “turning points” represent shifts in the structure of the narrative (see Fig 1). We borrow this concept from narrative inquiry and narratology — where turning points designate critical transitions or nodal events in a personal or community story [14,53] — and apply it to the climate change adaptation context, where, to our knowledge, it has not previously been used in this sense. Werners et al. use the notion of “turning points” in adaptation to indicate “the specific situation in which a social-political threshold of concern is likely to be exceeded because of climate change” (53, p.3). They use it to avoid confusion with neighbouring terms in the adaptation literature such as “tipping points”, applied for example by Paarlberg et al to indicate a major change in the biophysical system or social innovations that transformed how adaptation is studied [54]. That definition shares similarities with the Avelino et al [55] “game-changers” concept used to explain policy shifts. For us, a “turning point” is neither a threshold in a biophysical system nor a shift in a policy system [56]. Instead, it is a moment that redirects the story itself (what is said, by whom, where, when, and how). It is a moment at which the narrative embraces more inclusive, participatory, and empowered futures. In the context of the workshop, we identified turning points as moments of collective visioning that redirected the narrative participants were developing toward empowerment to affect their adaptation futures. In practice, we embedded Pelling et al’s normative visioning process within a storytelling context [11]. Our ‘turning points’ can be understood as conceptual precursors to the practical, action-oriented “game-changers” emerging from a similar visioning process carried out within the European Union-funded project IMPRESSIONS [57] featuring a Scottish case study and reported on in Tàbara et al. [58] and Hölscher et al. [59]. In the IMPRESSIONS project, “game-changers” are specific, narrowly defined actions or policy options – e.g., environmental fiscal reform or using carbon tax revenue to fund free public transport. Our “turning points” are shifts in the narrative collectively developed by the participants that signify their emerging awareness of the key issues where the narrative around adaptation and ‘what is possible’ needs to change. “Game-changing” actions would then follow within each of these broad areas. As shall be outlined below, our participants identified knowledge use, participation, national-local relations and budgeting as spaces where “turning points” may occur. Importantly, our turning points are also different from those defined in Werners et al as moments in time when a social-political threshold is reached because of climate change and requires a new policy response [53]. In our approach, turning points designate critical experiential moments in a personal or community story.
Inspired by the potential of storytelling to elicit collective visions of adaptation, we provided a space where community groups and public sector officials could co-produce narratives leading to normative visions of a well-adapted place [11]. Storytelling can help engage and support dialogue around climate change irrespective of backgrounds by highlighting motivations and value within a structured narrative and reflecting on the “turning points” needed for a well-adapted community to be realised [15,60].
Our research questions were:
- What key characteristics shape visions of well-adapted places?
- What are the “turning points” envisaged to realise those visions?
- What role (if any) can local adaptation targets play in helping to reach the visions?
We begin by presenting the methods used in section 2, including the discussion questions used in the workshop. In section 3.1 we discuss the key characteristics of participants’ visions of well-adapted places and in section 3.2 we outline the turning points discussed by participants. In section 3.3 we discuss the participants’ views on the role of local adaptation targets to meet the visions presented. In section 4 we provide thoughts on the use and value of this approach within adaptation research.
2. Method
2.1. Workshop scope
To understand the relationship between visions for a well-adapted place, and the role of storytelling in realising that vision, we held an online workshop on 21/11/2024. Building on other co-production method efforts [28,59,61], this workshop was designed to bring together community representatives and policymakers from Scotland, and to examine how storytelling techniques can help people weave together visions of well-adapted places. Importantly, co-production is a form of co-creation that differs from co-design and co-delivery [62]: the former indicates that researchers and participants designed the study together in addition to the co-production itself (the joint generation of knowledge); the latter that researchers and participants jointly delivered the research outputs [63]. In our case, there are elements of co-design and co-delivery as reflected in the authorship team which comprises university researchers and the Scottish Communities Climate Action Network team, but the workshop itself focused on co-production of knowledge with workshop participants.
2.2. Participants
28 participants took part from community groups, including Scottish Island communities, as well as representatives from policymaking organisations and the public sector. Participants were recruited from 15/09/2024. Invitations were sent through the Scottish Communities Climate Action Network (SCCAN). All participants represented either a community group or a public sector organisation in Scotland and either worked in climate change adaptation or had a fundamental understanding of climate change adaptation, which was determined using a pre-workshop survey. SCCAN provides training, support and knowledge-sharing opportunities to strengthen community climate initiatives. By partnering with SCCAN, the research used tried-and-tested techniques for engagement to be as accessible for participants as possible. This included considerations around the time of day to hold the workshop and its length. We decided to run the workshop online to remove financial barriers to in-person participation and achieve wide coverage of Scottish local communities and types of participants (from the public as well as the non-profit sector). Further, the allocation of participants to group discussions forced participants to share their experience of their local context and think through their adaptation vision with counterparts they do not usually interact with.
2.3. Workshop process
A pre-workshop survey determined the composition of the workshop groups and was used to obtain written consent to participate. Each group was balanced between public sector and community groups. This ensured that ideas produced were co-produced between community groups and the public sector actors. Groups were also divided geographically into regions: rural, urban, and coastal areas to help reflect place-based needs.
After explaining the structure of the workshop, 28 participants were divided into six groups of 4–5. Each group had a designated facilitator and notetaker. The role of the facilitator was to allow every participant the opportunity to contribute. A facilitator briefing was held a week prior to the session to outline requirements. Facilitators were asked to present Fig 1 to the participants within their groups to support them in thinking of possible adaptation actions and implementation as a story and what actors and turning points may need to be faced within their own contexts. The notetakers were asked to record participant quotes and key points made throughout the session. In the Results & Discussion section, participant quotes are indicated with superscript numbers [1–6] corresponding to the group from which each quote was obtained. The initial discussion centred on the participants’ visions of a well-adapted community.
The second and third activities, “What are the “turning points” to get to that well-adapted vision?” and “What targets could ensure that change is made?” were conducted, in the same small groups, using the lens of the above narrative approach (see Fig 1). These questions relate to the research questions 2 and 3, detailed in Section 1.5. The discussion on the turning points allowed participants to consider and discuss the changes required in current structures and governance to get closer to their visions of well-adapted places. This was viewed as a key point of change in a story or narrative, or a “point of no return” in the narrative that enables a character to change from one state to another. This allowed for discussion about the “journey” of change to reach the visions of well-adapted futures and the potential obstacles that might be encountered enroute. The aim was to harness creativity both from people’s experiences and future aspirations and the existing strategies in conversation to explore and register the key changes required to meet the visions of the future discussed. By viewing this as a narrative, it allowed participants to consider the key actors at play and the current barriers to reaching the visions of a well-adapted place. Because adaptation is inherently uncertain and requires imagining futures, the storytelling approach provided a structured yet flexible way to explore possible trajectories of change, revealing not just what needs to happen but how and why those changes might take place. This storytelling approach, in other words, allowed participants to create and discuss potential plots in which adaptation solutions are implemented, while crucially, identifying the characters and the changes required in their environment for those changes to be realised [12].
A final plenary addressed research question 3 by covering questions relating to the value and potential consequences of implementing adaptation targets and if they could assist in reaching turning points and to reach their visions of well-adapted places. The workshop was structured using techniques similar to those used in studies that have investigated or employed co-production methods with a variety of stakeholders [28,61].
2.4. Post-workshop analysis
Discussion notes were recorded by notetakers (with consent), and uploaded to Nvivo 12, a qualitative data analysis software package. The data was thematically coded to identify answers to the research questions and compare them across groups [64,65]. This involved drawing out themes by reading and grouping the text in an iterative process to inductively explore the data [66,67], see S1 Table. The coding was initially conducted by one researcher and the emerging themes checked and verified by three of the workshop facilitators.
Following the workshop, a podcast [68] focusing on the project and workshop was created to reach and engage with a wider audience outside of the academic community, and we will support members who wish to engage further or hold further workshops focused on local adaptation and co-production.
3. Results & discussion
3.1. What key characteristics shape visions of well-adapted places?
The visions and the characteristics that shape them, as described by participants, align closely with the principles of community-based adaptation discussed by Reid et al. [26]. Their research highlighted that for adaptation to be useful it must be community-led, participatory, and place-based, integrating local priorities and knowledge with scientific insights. Participants across the breakout rooms emphasised that a well-adapted community is one that is engaged, empowered, equitable, and resilient, where local people actively shape decisions and take ownership of adaptation strategies. Rather than rely exclusively on external authorities to provide direction to local adaptation efforts, participants emphasised that communities should be supported to foster self-determination and local leadership to ensure adaptation efforts reflect their needs.
As one participant put it, “adapted communities are places where members are involved and engaged5,” and another added, “a well-adapted place looks like people feeling in control of their lives1.” In this community-led space, learning and flexibility were deemed essential, with the ability to experiment, fail, and adjust over time: “I think sometimes it’s okay to make mistakes and not know the answer2.” The importance of trialling new ways of working without the fear of failure while strengthening the ability of a locality or project to continually learn and adjust practices are points also echoed in the wider adaptation literature [49,69,70] particularly in papers focused on policy experimentation for climate change adaptation [71,72]. An important outcome of experimentation is learning, both social learning [73] and cognitive learning about what worked and what did not [74,75].
Local self-sufficiency was another prominent theme, with participants envisioning communities that generate their own renewable energy, grow and distribute food locally, and are less reliant on external supply chains: “A well-adapted community would be able to sustain itself, living within our means without importing too much3.” The mental wellness and resilience approach discussed in Doppelt [76] further reinforces the need for social cohesion and shared responsibility in adaptation efforts. This work emphasises that communities facing climate challenges must not only develop practical adaptation strategies but also build wellbeing or emotional resilience. This supports participant concerns that a well-adapted community should empower its residents, ensuring they “feel in control of their lives1” while having a collective sense of purpose and preparedness. Doppelt’s social-ecological model suggests that adaptation should integrate mental well-being, physical infrastructure, and community engagement—the kind of holistic, people-centred approach envisioned by participants [76]. Community activity as well as locally grown food and greener environments are themes encountered in other adaptation storytelling workshops [61]. In this study, these elements were identified as areas of value for participants highlighting the importance of taking values and “things of value” into account in adaptation decision-making. Our research also highlights the importance of these values including community activity and empowerment as well as having ownership over local resources such as food.
Fairness and inclusion were also central themes. A well-adapted community, participants argued, should acknowledge inequalities and strive to sift them out of the co-production and envisioning process, rather than reinforce them, ensuring that those at greatest risk receive priority support. “A community with no hierarchy, where nobody or few are holding the string of power6” over adaptation decision-making was one vision shared, alongside the belief that adaptation should involve everyone: “Where everyone has opportunities and is not held back by climate risks3.” Previous studies have also emphasised that community resilience should go beyond climate-specific responses (e.g., 26) —it must address broader social, economic, and environmental vulnerabilities too. This connects directly to participant feedback about reducing inequalities and ensuring that adaptation efforts uplift the most vulnerable rather than leaving them behind.
Nature-based solutions were seen as fundamental, from accessible green spaces that encourage people to appreciate their environment to sustainable infrastructure like parks designed to absorb flooding. One participant noted, “we should be flexible with using our spaces differently1,” giving examples such as football fields that double as flood management areas. Doppelt highlights the importance of nature-based solutions in building resilience due to the psychological benefits of green spaces in fostering well-being [76]. This aligns directly with the workshop participants’ emphasis on biodiversity, green infrastructure, and regenerative agriculture, demonstrating that their priorities are supported by current research.
Participants also acknowledged the need for a proactive, forward-thinking mindset where risks and methods of building resilience are understood rather than a reactive one that only responds to acute emergencies. They expressed frustration with current systems, and stated that “the public has become resigned to that system of reactivity rather than proactivity5.” Instead, they called for greater capacity-building at the local level, such as increasing capacity and available resource within local councils to anticipate and prepare for risks rather than responding only after crises occur. A greater understanding of risks and different methods for building resilience was discussed. This included an understanding of how risks may change across timescales and how to build resilience to both current and future risks, “a well-adapted community understands the now and the future5”.
Another theme that emerged was the need for a holistic, place-based view of adaptation. Participants emphasised that adaptation outcomes should be integrated with other local priorities, rather than treated as a separate policy domain. This suggests that adaptation plans or targets should not be developed in siloes but instead aligned with the broader elements that contribute to community resilience. In practice, participants drew little distinction between adaptation and resilience goals, or between adaptation and other local priorities. For example, local food and energy initiatives were discussed not only as ways to reduce climate-related risks but also as opportunities to enhance financial self-sufficiency, with income from community energy projects used to fund local adaptation activities. This illustrates how mitigation and adaptation can be mutually reinforcing—what has been described as “climate resilient net zero” at the local level [77].
Policies or strategies that fail to acknowledge these interdependencies may overlook the nuanced realities of those most exposed or vulnerable to climate hazards, leading to interventions that do not align with peoples lived experiences. This is relevant for adaptation, where integrating local knowledge, cultural contexts and place-specific evidence of impacts can reduce maladaptation by ensuring solutions are genuinely place-relevant [6,17]. Overall, this indicates that adaptation actions pursued in isolation, without contributing to wider community resilience, could risk becoming a form of maladaptation by missing opportunities to deliver broader benefits.
3.2. What turning points need to be reached to achieve visions of well-adapted places?
Workshop participants discussed key turning points that are needed for local adaptation actions to be developed and implemented effectively. We defined “turning points” as pivotal changes or shifts in the narrative that lay the foundation to realise the visions of a well-adapted community and allow communities to create them. In the workshop, the turning points discussed by the participants comprise how to address the barriers and challenges to effective community adaptation action: problems of scale, community involvement, funding models. Participants realised that the knowledge held at community level is valuable in adaptation planning. This awareness steered the narrative away from disempowerment and toward empowerment and various forms of community participation (e.g., participatory budgeting) that become part and parcel of local adaptation visions.
3.2.1. Bridging national-local scales for adaptation.
How different “scales” of governance interact with each other from communities to the national government level and back again was a key turning point. This is a recognised challenge in adaptation science research [2,51,78] and in adaptation target creation – how can targets at the global level be translated into usable local targets to promote action [79,80]? Workshop participants discussed the role that local adaptation plans and targets could play in tying together local action to the national level, helping to highlight “What is happening on the grassroots level to meet national targets…to weave all of this together1”. Local adaptation targets could be used as a method not only to translate national targets to the local level, but to evidence more clearly what local actions are contributing to national outcomes and to re-calibrate national targets as necessary where local knowledge provides a more accurate reflection of need.
A key theme that emerged from the workshop discussions was around local decision-making power and ensuring community involvement in adaptation-related policy decisions. Reasons for this included the ability to integrate local knowledge of the existing and evolving vulnerabilities of the community into adaptation plans and the value of diversifying voices to increase creativity in adaptation solutions. It was discussed during the workshop that a change in policy or attitude will need an associated shift in how decisions are made if it is to be effective. An objective of SNAP3 at the national level is “communities and individuals are supported, informed and able to take locally led adaptation action… [20]”. This objective aligns with the visions of well-adapted places discussed in this workshop and to reach it, various shifts related to scale would need to occur.
First, access to knowledge at different scales was believed to be a key barrier to implementing adaptation action. Local areas and communities have local knowledge that could inform national level planning on impacts, exposure and vulnerability. At the national scale, there are data and information on physical hazards as well as the technical capacity to apply such data at the local scale. Local communities would value improved access to such data and expertise to inform their decision-making and to contribute to co-production processes.
Data was also considered important for communities to better understand “what an island or community could have control over or identify the things that cannot be controlled6”. There was also discussion around how data collection at the local level, including data on vulnerability to hazards for example, could “help to create a sense of community3”.
A shift to a more decentralised model, with locally-led adaptation and decision-making would require a “system in place so the information that we really need is available5” and this would require new ways of working or coordinating across scales, from national to local levels and vice-versa. The required data and information on climate change projections at the local or regional level is an example. Alongside an increase in data and knowledge access, are the resources and capacity to interpret and utilise the information. Participants mentioned that communities and individuals “should be involved to an extent so we feel we might have agency, even if we do not have the capacity to be able to perform those kinds of activities3”, in relation to monitoring adaptation action. For adaptation to be community-led, support and resources are required and a shift in funding structures with a participant commenting that “resources required for change are only available at the national level4”. A major challenge for national climate policy is understanding what is happening on a local scale. The Climate Action Hubs set up in Scotland, could be a vehicle to facilitate collaboration between local and national scales. The hubs form a network across Scotland supporting community-led climate action and can help channel local insights and lived experiences back into wider discussions of climate policy at the national level [81].
A key turning point is a shift in how funding and resources are allocated across scales. Some ideas from the workshop included participatory budgeting. This is the process in which local communities directly decide how a portion of public funds should be allocated. “Participatory budgeting is being looked at in some areas for small amounts…in some areas it has really captured the imagination5” and “ringfence funding to be used by each unique community to help them with adaptation5”. Resourcing and funding are also seen as critical to reduce burnout and community fatigue as volunteers play a large role in community groups and organisations building local resilience, “volunteers (are) currently taking a lot of responsibility5”. Participatory budgeting has been used in other regions to create connections between local governments and citizens and increasing the “readiness level” of local areas [82], and in Scotland a framework was agreed in 2017 where at least 1% of local government budgets were to be subject to participatory budgeting by the end of 2021 [83].
With this shift to a more decentralised, locally-led approach comes a shift in accountability and responsibility. “How do we decide what to abandon when funding is not working?4” Participants questioned how it could be ensured that “decisions being made are actually reflecting local communities2” and their collective needs. A shift is therefore required in how decisions are made at the local level. A fair and equitable process would need to be put in place to ensure that decisions made about what projects to fund for example, reflect the needs and wants of those within the community. Local referendums or citizens assemblies were mentioned here. A consensus existed that “people need more meaningful participation in planning where decisions about communities are not made at a distance1”. An example of heightened local decision making related to COVID19 where “decision-making and funding became more localised – when trust was put in communities about where things needed to happen (and) positive learning came from this1”. During COVID19, Scotland mainstreamed participatory budgeting where local government worked with communities to deliver emergency support [83]. Reduced bureaucracy around funding, and trust in community groups to allocate funds, were seen as success stories. Disasters such as pandemics or extreme weather events were considered to be turning points that create shifts in governance structures [84], [85]. Having ways to learn lessons from such events so they can lead to positive change will be critical [86].
3.2.2. Enhancing engagement and collaboration.
Effective engagement and collaboration are key to community-led adaptation and are fundamental elements of decision-making across scales [87]. Improving collaboration and engagement was a key turning point required to meet visions of well-adapted places with participants commenting that, “limited and ineffective communication and conversation are the biggest barriers to effective policies4”.
The use of storytelling and narrative were discussed as ways to effectively engage with individuals and communities [15,60,88]. The need for more engagement within and between communities and between communities and the public sector was discussed as the need for “space and time to talk to each other3”. However, when it came to engagement there was a difference in opinion between participants, “at the end of the day there is no wrong kind of engagement3”, while other participants mentioned that some forms of engagement can be isolating or alienating. For the latter, a community may feel like consultation is tokenistic if no evidence is provided on the outcomes of the consultation, they “need to know if they are consulted it will have impact2”. Examples included concerns that decisions were made at a distance, even following some form of engagement, “People need more meaningful participation in planning, where decisions about communities are not made at a distance1”.
Engagement can also cause isolation if the narrative used does not align with that of the community or individuals. This included being able to “meet people where they are3” and finding the best ways to invite people into the space, for example considering the language within invitations, where and how they are shared and the location of meetings. It also involved considering what the priorities may be of those you plan to engage with, “It’s very important how you frame things – if you are talking to someone who is in poverty and impacted by climate change, how much does climate matter to you?1” Considering narrative and framing carefully was considered key to effective collaboration by many participants with one stating that “there are many people I want to engage with but I want to get the narrative right3”. This resonates with Pelling et al.’s [11] argument for normative future visioning as a neglected but generative component of adaptation planning: starting from desired, community-articulated futures rather than from projected risks unlocks imaginations and creates the conditions for transformative action.
Even though no “right” narrative exists, as this is dependent upon the context and who is involved, there was general agreement that a positive message had been most effective in encouraging engagement by, “helping communities to see that, yes there is a future for this place2” with engagement that “help(s) them to imagine what they are aiming for1”. Framing adaptation around what it can bring to communities was seen as important, “reframe to reflect the benefits4” with a “focus on the positives in adversity for example community action and social connection4”, “If you frame the discussion as our communities and children having a place to live2”, with one participant stating, “Make the adaptation movement fun and more interesting. Make it joyful!4”. As Paschen & Ison [23] argue, how communities “story” their environment determines how they understand and practice adaptation, and which futures they can conceive as possible — including who is authorised to speak in the debate and what policy options are placed on the table. The term “resilience” for example “is often perceived as quite a negative thing as it comes out from dealing with circumstances beyond control and just surviving1” and so even the terms used around adaptation have the potential to be jarring and disengaging.
These findings resonate strongly with the Hopeful Futures project [89] where researchers used a positive framing of resilience to extreme heat risk to assess if such framing changes how participants understood and responded to the problem. Researchers found that feelings of indifference and disempowerment prior to engagement gradually evolved over the duration of the workshops into feelings of hopefulness and confidence that communities can take meaningful climate action. Similar to Hopeful Futures, we found that participants believed that their communities had the agency, capacity, and motivation needed to cope with risks such as flooding, droughts, and extreme heat now as well as in the future if these risks increased in frequency and severity, on the one hand, and highlighted there may be opportunities [90] from climate change including less disruption to transport networks in the winter, increased tourist seasons, and potential health benefits of outdoor lifestyles. Another challenge we found is that adaptation was often considered as something “invisible”, “you often do not notice a resilient place, as you do not want flooding or coastal erosion1”. Framing adaptation as something where communities have control over how they reach their visions of a sustainable future is key.
In addition to stories and narrative being important elements to encourage engagement and collaboration, stories were also considered helpful to gather local knowledge and to share this knowledge across scales. “Putting localised stories on a national level would raise the profile what communities are going through and what they are doing in response to this1”. This movement of knowledge across scales through narrative is also central to Wilder et al.’s [91] concept of narrative networks — communities that, in narrating their socio-ecological experience, simultaneously construct shared identity, activate local knowledge, and build the relational infrastructure needed for collective action. Stories were considered a useful tool both to share what climate impacts are being felt in communities by “document(ing) and talk(ing) about the crisis so they aren’t seen as isolated incidents5” and also to understand what adaptation actions are being completed and to monitor their effectiveness, “getting stories to get the principles of success… to create learning that is practicable3”.
Within the workshop setting, we found storytelling to be a particularly useful framing to explore turning points. Firstly, because it allowed for reflexive discussions about what participants felt was holding back progress in reaching the visions of well-adapted communities and participants could also visualise their own role in the process - what Pelling et al. [11] describe as the generative moment when normative future visioning enables communities to connect aspiration with agency. Secondly, because the storytelling approach allowed for and recognised the multiplicity of stories. As Paschen & Ison [23] argue, dismissing local accounts in favour of expert-authorised framings excludes precisely those voices whose experiential knowledge shapes adaptive capacity; acknowledging multiple co-existing stories is therefore not only a methodological choice but a political one about who is authorised to participate in the adaptation debate. Amorim-Maia & Olazabal [25] note that emerging paradigms of adaptation justice reflect the plurality of local knowledge systems and community priorities that a storytelling approach is uniquely positioned to surface, and can be illustrated through the co-production of adaptation-stories by researchers and stakeholders as described in Pirttioja et al. [13]. Multiple voices can co-exist, reflecting the diverse ways individuals and communities experience and respond to climate change [15,92]. Additionally, stories can be powerful because they have an elusive nature and focus on the bigger picture, not just the details and this allows people who are located in different areas of the spectrum of climate action to come together and talk [15,28,60].
3.3. Could local targets get us closer to the visions of a well-adapted community?
As shown in Table 1, workshop participants reflected on both the positives and negatives of creating and implementing local adaptation targets. Positives included, for example, the process of creating targets to build connections in and between communities and create more self-sufficient communities. This highlighted that the process of creating the targets and what may result from this process was deemed important, not just the targets created or the outcome of specific targets [31]. It was thought that local adaptation targets could lead to a shift in local decision making with communities having more control.
However, potential negatives included creating community division, hostility or disengagement. As discussed in section 3.2.2., engagement can be isolating if it is felt that communities or individuals did not see the end-result of the action or if the narrative and/or framing did not align with communities or individuals, then detachment could emerge. This highlighted the importance of creating accessible and inclusive spaces for whole-community discussion. This is especially important for climate change and adaptation where fear and anxiety can be created over the future of communities [93–95].
There were also potential negative effects relating to the level of risk and the role of adaptation targets in adjusting people’s perception of risk. For example, could targets, if met, create a false sense of security? If targets are standardised could this lead to increased risk exposure? Weather events are variable and are expected to become even more variable as the global temperature increases [1,20] and so having standardised targets could change communities’ perceptions of risk without reducing exposure or vulnerability, potentially even leading to maladaptation [22,31,96]. For example, a community may come to rely on a flood defence, rather than undertaking additional measures including household readiness or building community capacity, thus increasing their vulnerability. Community-led projects were discussed where they “they did not have targets, it was more a feel good thing in the community3”. In this case, the process was considered more important than the end-goal for which targets are usually created, “the process is really important…setting out a principle which then would guide to where you are trying to get to would be helpful but just having targets without understanding why would be useless6”.
Lastly, it was thought that introducing local adaptation targets would not lead to the large, systemic changes required at the national level to meet wider adaptation (and mitigation) goals. The need for systems change and transformational change [97–100]was a key theme emerging throughout the workshop discussions and the concern that local adaptation targets may only produce incremental adaptation actions was discussed. In this context, participants highlighted that achieving meaningful adaptation would require deeper mainstreaming of adaptation into wider policy domains, alongside a stronger emphasis on justice considerations and shifts in decision-making power. This implies not only institutional change but also a broader shift in mindset, moving away from narrowly defined, hazard- or climate-risk–focused targets. Such targets may, therefore, struggle to capture the complex social, political and structural dimensions of vulnerability and adaptation, particularly over the short and medium term, where existing governance structures could limit the potential for transformational change.
Conclusion
Our research investigated the perceptions of community members and public sector stakeholders in Scotland concerning what constitutes a well-adapted place. Storytelling was used to co-produce visions of well-adapted futures and communities, identify turning points to realise those visions, and to understand the role that local adaptation targets could play in supporting these visions.
Key characteristics of a well-adapted community included empowerment, self-sufficiency, inclusivity and fairness. Nature, and particularly access to green spaces, and the importance of a holistic approach to adaptation where adaptation plans are embedded alongside other local priorities, also emerged as key themes. These visions resonate with previous studies [17,28,61,100]. Our findings show that when envisioning well-adapted communities, participants tended to view climate action holistically - linking adaptation and mitigation together in a place-based vision of healthy natural environments, local self-governance, and self-sufficiency. Adaptation actions pursued in isolation, without contributing to wider community resilience, and disconnected from communities’ experiences of climate change, risk maladaptation by missing opportunities to deliver co-benefits. In turn, our research supports a growing number of studies that show how positive framings can play a significant role in empowering people to feel confident about being climate resilient and realising meaningful change [89].
We found that several turning points need to be navigated if the SNAP3 outcome of communities creating climate-resilient places is to be realised. Given that communities are expected to create these spaces requires a shift in governance towards more decentralisation and co-production of collective adaptation visions. Such a shift requires a radical rethink of how communities, local authorities and the national government share knowledge, power, and experiences across geographical scales and how resources (financial, technical) are allocated to support the creation of climate-resilient places [6,17,49]. Our research suggests there are opportunities for engagement, narrative framing, and communication to facilitate sharing of knowledge and learning across scales.
To support communities in realising their visions of well-adapted places, the implementation of local adaptation targets was greeted both positively and negatively by participants. Positives included the process that helps build connections in and between communities and provides more self-determination. Of interest, the process of creating adaptation targets was just as important, if not more, than the outcomes. For participants, the process of creating targets was thought to have the potential to bring people together to agree on which parts of their visions were key. Negatives included community division and anxiety, a false sense of security, and a fear that targets may only prioritise incremental action. Moreover, efforts to standardise an adaptation pathway could risk oversimplifying diverse, place-based adaptation processes, potentially leading to maladaptation [30,31]. Our findings highlight that if communities move towards a local adaptation target framework, the emphasis needs to be on flexibility so that targets can accommodate multiple trajectories towards resilience. Creating targets and monitoring progress must also be collaborative and inclusive. In doing so, adaptation planning can move beyond prescriptive metrics toward enabling multiple, dynamic pathways to well-adapted places.
Building on that point, it is important to note the limitations of this research. First, and despite a broad agreement that adaptation targets should reflect the conditions, capacities, and priorities of each community, there are methodological questions over how to aggregate progress on place-based targets from the local to national scale, and moreover, how to compare communities when different metrics are used. High-level adaptation targets, focused on specific climate risks is one approach explored by the Scottish Government [52], where communities retain the autonomy and flexibility to co-produce locally aligned targets, could work in theory, but will require support on data collection, coordination, and verification, which prove difficult in practice. Second, to ensure comparability between each co-produced vision, participants were presented with a single assumption about future climate conditions. A different approach would be to use multiple scenarios spanning different time horizons and climate variables to explore how visions differ under alternative plausible futures. Lastly, as co-production increasingly becomes the norm for adaptation planning, critical conversations are needed on the alignment of terminologies. The theory of change has gathered momentum as a key method for defining adaptation pathways [11] yet other approaches such as “turning points” used in this study offers an alternative approach which requires researchers to be reflexive about the appropriateness of these methodologies for different problems and the risks of reproducing (instead of challenging) existing ideas.
Future research is needed to determine whether the turning points required to reach visions differ per region or context, for example, by replicating this study in different geographies. While we find that the characteristics of visions of well-adapted visions are similar to those conducted in other regions (e.g., 57), it is unclear whether the same or different turning points would be required to reach each vision. In other words, how different are the journeys required to reach similar visions of well-adapted places in different contexts and locations?
Supporting information
S1 Table. Emerging themes.
Emergent themes (bold type), their descriptions (normal font) and example quotes (italics) that addressed the three research questions posed at the Workshop (columns).
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0001056.s001
(DOCX)
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to everyone who shared their time, insights, and experiences with us during the workshop, which informed our understanding of the topic. We would also wish to express our thanks to both reviewers who provided constructive and thoughtful comments that significantly improved the manuscript.
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