The award-winning learning to adapt professional development series is back in 2021, responding to the local, national and global challenges of climate change. Our first course will deliver targeted skills development on climate change in infrastructure environmental impact assessment. Our focus is on the NSW jurisdiction, exploring themes that apply just as well elsewhere.

Guided by expert speakers from the research and policy communities and by case studies presented by practitioners, we will be considering how best to assess the risk of climate change related environmental, social and economic impacts on infrastructure projects, and the risk of impacts resulting from these projects, such as increased emissions of greenhouse gases. These climate change risks arise because of the acute and the chronic physical impacts of a warming planet on infrastructure projects and because of the risk of evolving human efforts to curb this warming have for these projects, what are now often called transition risks.

Who should attend?

This course had been designed for early and mid-career environmental practitioners in regulatory, policy, consulting and infrastructure development sectors looking to develop specialised skills in climate change and infrastructure EIA.

L2A Infrastructure EIA course details

Session 1 Considering climate risks in infrastructure EIA will position climate change in the NSW policy context, exploring the implications for EIA practice of current NSW planning law and policy relating to climate change. We will survey current policy tools, as well as some of the emerging proprietary products that assess transition, acute and chronic physical climate change risk in your infrastructure project.

Session 2 Risk assessment and adaptive pathways in infrastructure EIA will explore different approaches to climate change risk assessment, drawing attention to how these fit into current NSW EIA processes. We will consider how climate risk assessment in an EIA relates to community context, project scope, financing and ownership, leading us to consider how an adaptive pathways approach can be established in your EIA.

Session 3 Communications for resilience in infrastructure EIA will review how external and internal stakeholders engage with climate change risks associated with infrastructure projects of different scales, and in different locations. This informs how your whole EIA project team should be engaging in managing climate change risks.

Course delivery

Online via zoom, 9am – 12.30pm

Services we provided:

• Learning Program development
• Training delivery, facilitation and assessment