“CLIMATE is our biggest war,” Ana Toni, the chief executive of the Cop30 United Nations climate summit, argued in June.

“Climate is here for the next 100 years. We need to focus and… not allow those [other] wars to take our attention away from the bigger fight that we need to have.”

Horrific though the genocide in Gaza, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and other conflicts all are, Toni undoubtedly has a point. The emissions trajectory we are on will likely lead to around 3°C of global heating by 2100 — a temperature rise that will be an “existential issue for humankind,” United Nations climate chief Patricia Espinosa warned in 2019.

But while it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and powerless in the face of such depressing information, it’s worth noting the important progress that has been made.

There is now a scientific consensus and a relatively high level of public awareness about the threat of climate change (the latter something the British and global climate movements can take a lot of credit for). Outright climate denial has been pushed to the edges of public discourse.

However, a new Climate Majority Project report, Strategic Adaptation For Emergency Resilience (SAFER), notes “soft denial” remains, resting on a “narrative that leaders have climate decarbonisation in hand, and will produce the policy or the technology to rein in the threat just in time, without any need for systemic change.”

For the report’s authors, Rupert Read, Rosie Bell and Liam Kavanagh, strategic adaptation is one way to overcome this complacent, and therefore very dangerous, framing.

So what is strategic adaptation? Let’s start with adaptation, which the United Nations defines as “adjustments in ecological, social or economic systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects.”

Taking key elements from short-term reactive adaptation (eg flood defences) and the more radical and deeper transformative adaptation, the report’s authors describe strategic adaptation as “focused on precaution and transformation rather than mere crisis response,” prioritising local resilience, ecosystems-based action and better social outcomes for communities in the face of the climate crisis.

The report lists a number of key themes and activities of strategic adaptation, including biodiversity and ecosystem resilience, retrofitting and energy efficiency, business transition, food security and viewing water as a keystone resource.

Those acquainted with the transition towns movement of the 2000s will find much that is familiar here.

Ed Jarvis, SAFER’s campaign development lead, highlights some real world examples of strategic adaptation being implemented in Britain: nature-based flood defences like sponge meadows and tree planting along the River Wissey and Deben Estuary in East Anglia, the Wild Haweswater project in the Lake District helping to reduce fire risk, and the resident-led movement retrofitting homes in the Balsall Heath inner-city area of Birmingham.

Though they stress adaptation shouldn’t replace mitigation (reducing carbon emissions) as the central focus of efforts to deal with the climate crisis, the report’s authors argue adaptation needs to become another key pillar of climate action, partly because it will likely catalyse action for greater mitigation — “by sparking a wider public reckoning with climate realities.”

Sadly the message doesn’t seem to have got through to the British government, with an April report from the climate change committee describing “the UK’s preparations for climate change” as “inadequate” with progress on “adaptation… either too slow, has stalled, or is heading in the wrong direction.”

This is why the central policy recommendation of the report is for the British government to develop and fund a National Adaptation Plan, which would “adequately protect all essential programmes of government” from ever-worsening climate damage, along with a public information campaign.

The report also argues the focus on mitigation has “struggled to inspire the scale of mobilisation that climate breakdown demands,” with working-class people significantly under-represented in the climate movement.

Instead, they believe a reorientation of strategy, rhetoric and action around adaptation could reconnect large sections of the working population with environmental concerns — by talking about issues such as living standards, rising bills, unsuitable housing and water shortages.

As Rupert Read, SAFER campaign lead and CMP co-director, pithily puts it to me: “Talking about invisible gases, carbon footprints and net-zero targets is alienating for many… putting the focus on protecting where you live brings it home.”

Perhaps most interestingly, the report contends strategic adaptation can help to neuter the rise of the hard right in Britain.

“The hard right’s approach is to polarise and drive division,” Read says. “Part of this is weaponising ‘net zero’ to turn people away from climate action,” with Reform’s culture war narrative based on people’s concerns about declining living standards.

In contrast “strategic adaptation tells a powerful, accessible story,” Read argues. “It says ‘Let’s make sure everybody can protect themselves from the coming damage (as far as possible).’ The narrative is about preserving and protecting your quality of life of life, not limiting your freedom.”

Read notes this casts climate action “as something people do together, not something that’s done to them.”

“Addressing immediate concerns like rising energy costs, food security, and community resilience shuts down right-populist rhetoric about elitism and highlights the inadequacy of their own policies,” he notes.

With this year’s summer the hottest on record in Britain and Zarah Sultana MP recently warning that fascism is “growling at the door,” the Climate Majority Project’s report is a timely intervention in ongoing discussions about the future of the climate movement.

To sign the Climate Majority Project’s petition urging the British government to “Fund a National Climate Resilience Plan” visit petition.parliament.uk/petitions/730062.

Visit the Climate Majority Project website: climatemajorityproject.com.