The Federal Government's Clean Energy Futures program (2013-2016) funds Natural Resource Management bodies to update regional plans by incorporating climate adaptation provisions. Multiple academic consortia have provided research to support this process. Eighteen months into the program three key realisations appear to be emerging:
- Traditional NRM plans involving identification and protection of priority natural resource assets don't work
- Cyclical planning processes and the development of statutory provisions are too slow to keep pace with business and community adaptation initiatives, and
- Hardly anybody reads, accepts, implements or reviews NRM plans anyway.

Dwight Eisenhower said "in preparing for war I have found plans are useless, but planning is indispensable". And so it is with managing the resources which form the building blocks for our health, wealth and well-being in the war against the human-induced acceleration of climate change. In contributing to climate adaptation we can provide strategic direction by:
- Educating people about the nature of complex socio-ecological and economic systems
- Focusing on developing the tools and processes of education and social marketing and
- Staying grounded in the knowledge that planning which does not tangibly change people's attitudes and behaviours is worthless.

We don't need plans for climate adaptation. We need to create learning processes, decision support tools, and a platform for those with understanding the voice to influence leaders and legislation. Like the changing game plan in a sporting match, this can't be a single document. It lives in multi-media tools which track and influence adaptation.