Climate Ready Clyde

The Glasgow City Region faces numerous climate change challenges. Adapting to these challenges is easier, cheaper and more effective when we do it together. That's where Climate Ready Clyde comes in.

Why Glasgow City Region needs to get climate ready

The Glasgow City Region covers a third of Scotland both by population and economic output. As with the rest of Scotland, it faces a range of disruptive climate changes including increasing precipitation, sea level rise and rising temperatures. These changes have the potential to cause significant impacts to the health and wellbeing of the population, to economic investment and opportunities, and could exacerbate existing inequalities and raise the cost of doing business. Business as usual is not an option. But to become climate ready takes co-ordinated action and a clear strategic approach.

What is the solution?

Over the next three years Climate Ready Clyde aims to provide this strategic approach and, in so doing, help to ensure the Glasgow City Region continues to thrive long into the future.

Growing out of an initial Sniffer project, delivered through the Adaptation Scotland programme, with initial support and advice from Sniffer, Clydeplan, Glasgow City Council, Clyde Valley Green Network Partnership and the Scottish Government.

Engagement on the design and delivery of the strategy and action plan is ongoing the Board for the Climate Ready Clyde initiative now includes representatives from 15 key organisations across the region, including Glasgow City Council, East Renfrewshire Council, North Lanarkshire Council, South Lanarkshire Council, The University of Glasgow, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and SPT. James Curran, former Chief Executive of SEPA, has taken up the position of Chair of Climate Ready Clyde.

The initiative is also engaging with a much wider range of partners who have a role in helping the City Region to adapt through development of a stakeholder forum. You can learn more about how Sniffer drives change through collaborative action in this case study.

How Climate Ready Clyde is helping to lead adaptation action

Climate Ready Clyde is already delivering results, helping to secure a place for Glasgow in the Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities Group (including funding for a Chief Resilience Officer), helping to bring the European Conference on Climate Change Adaptation to the city in June 2017, facilitating the co-design of a shared adaptation vision for the City Region. You can read more about the background to the project here.

The initiative has secured funding for a toolkit to assess the climate resilience of major projects and a study on the economic implications of climate change for the City Region.

Having secured £100k of funding from the Scottish Government, Climate Ready Clyde is now bringing together stakeholders to create a shared adaptation strategy and action plan. Download the Prospectus and Work Programme to learn more about how you can contribute to helping the Glasgow City Region protect itself from the risks of climate change and seize the opportunity to be a safer, healthier, wealthier place to live and do business.

In late 2017 we held a stakeholder engagement workshop on our Risk and Opportunities Assessment. With an audience of over 40 city region stakeholders we reviewed and prioritised the climate impacts already identified. Read our workshop summary report to find out more about the findings and methods used.

We have also published a new report on our first full year 'Climate Ready Clyde - One Year On'.

What next?

Climate Ready Clyde will shortly publish it’s assessment of Climate change risks and opportunities for Glasgow City Region. This will serve as a stepping off point amongst senior decision makers on the overall approach to a City Region Adaptation Strategy and Action plan, which is due to be completed in March 2020.