Climate change will have direct and indirect effects on the natural resources and human communities and will also exacerbate the existing pressures that are managed by NRM groups and the responses of people and the environment to these pressures. Although NRM groups have been involved in developing adaptive NRM plans (including strategic, investment and detailed management plans) for their regions for long periods of time, most of the NRM plans in Australia have not yet fully accounted for climate change nor fully considered actions aimed at adapting to climate change.

Despite this, many existing actions remain relevant while others may need tweaking discarding or reprioritising. We have developed a framework and approach to support NRM planners to take stock of their plans, evaluate the degree of climate readiness, and assess the forms of action required to develop a climate ready plan. The approach has been designed to be consistent with existing NRM planning approaches: from adaptive management to resilience and risk management frameworks. The approach is developed to be fit for purpose and non-prescriptive, but rather to highlight what the main issues are and support gradual improvement by learning from doing.  In this enabling approach we include discussion on a number of key challenges that are faced and provide a checklist for NRM planning frameworks.  Our approach is intended to support self-evaluation by NRM groups of their current ability to meet these four challenges.  It is built around five common stages or components: (i) assessment, (ii) strategic planning, (iii) implementation planning and action, (iv) monitoring, and (v) reflection.