South Australia has developed a multi-award winning program to help communities prepare for the impacts of climate change.  The priority has been developing genuine partnerships with regional leaders to share the problem of climate adaptation, and work together to develop solutions.

Reform can be achieved with dedicated people and targeted seed funding.

This paper looks at South Australia’s ability to engender a strong culture of support and collaboration in leadership and communities.

Critical to achieving success with this approach was the strong focus on being an active change agent.  As well as focussing on standard policy approaches, South Australia has generated a sense of value and ownership amongst community leaders and organisations.

This presentation will explore the specific elements of the behaviour change framework employed to deliver the reform. It will include elements of:

·         systems thinking

·         knowledge, values and rules framing

·         communications and marketing

·         resilience framing.

By developing an approach that manages the combined complexity of these different framings, South Australia is delivering real adaptation reform and preparing its communities for the impacts of climate change.

Real reform can only ever be achieved through truly understanding the complexity of the issues..